A strong sense of purpose, a commitment towards innovation and the ability to form diverse partnerships – these are the three most important traits leaders must possess in order to emerge triumphant in today’s connected world.  This is according to Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who spoke at the Singapore Management University earlier this month.

Professor Kanter, who was the 16th speaker at SMU’s Presidential Distinguished Lecturer Series (PDLS), holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specialises in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change.  She is also Chair and Director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiatives, which aims to build a new leadership force for the world.

In his welcome address, SMU President, Professor Arnoud De Meyer, described Professor Kanter as “a multi-faceted management specialist who provides strategic counsel to some of the most successful leaders at the top of their league.”

“If a ‘thought leader’ is defined as an individual who is acclaimed as an authority in a specialised field and whose expertise is sought after, then Professor Kanter is certainly one such well-respected, eminent individual who has made an impact in the our Century.  Her success is the result of a fusion of detailed and rigorous research work, practical industry experience, and her remarkable ability to translate her thoughts and ideas into clear substantive literature,” he said.

[Photo: SMU President, Professor Arnoud De Meyer, delivering his welcome remarks.]

In her PDLS lecture on ‘Leadership in a networked world’, Professor Kanter said, “The new, networked world needs a new kind of leadership.  A sense of purpose, along with values and principles, has turned out to be critical to the success of many companies and essential to the new generation of leaders.”

In highlighting the Procter & Gamble (P&G) experience, she said that the 175-year-old company has a set of ‘Purpose, Values and Principles’ (PVP) which are the foundation of P&G’s unique culture.  While its business has grown and changed, these elements have not only endured but also hold the global company together.

According to Professor Kanter, who is the former Chief Editor of Harvard Business Review, the sense of purpose can unleash innovation too.  She highlighted that IBM’s strong focus on its key values of Client, Customers, Responsibility, inspired its offices around the world to make a difference by being involved in education.  Its team in Philadelphia advanced their voice recognition software to enable recognition of a diversity of accents and pitches – making a huge impact on English literacy.  Empowered with a sense of purpose to lower infant immortality rates, P&G staff in Nigeria also developed programmes to ‘help babies thrive’, such as mobile clinics and mobile-phone reminders for vaccination.

“In a connected world, innovation becomes ever more important because competition is everywhere, sometimes even from outside the industry.”  Companies and their leaders need to act fast, be flexible and sometimes depart from tradition.

Professor Kanter cited the example of US telecommunications company, Horizon, which faced competition from IBM in data analytics, Amazon in Cloud Computing, and Google in fibre optics.  When Apple launched the iPhone with another network service provider, Horizon innovated.  It partnered with Google and started doing everything differently.  From a highly regulated telephone service company, it began to work with innovative teams which were much younger but were more knowledgeable about technology, it also partnered with Motorola to develop the Droid phone within 12 months, ahead of the usual 18-month product development cycle.

[Photo: Following the lecture by Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2nd from left), Professor De Meyer (left) moderated a Q&A session with the participants, who filled the SMU Mochtar Riady Auditorium.]

“In a connected world, everyone is independent… Power goes to those who connect across departments, companies, sectors, and those who define the agenda and start a conversation,” she iterated.  Convening power becomes a tool of leaders to create impact.

Former United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is one such example of a celebrity who is able to use her position to convene conversations on a broad level.  Motivated by an interest in women issues, she furthers her cause against ‘open fire cooking’ whenever she travels, and has successfully created a Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves by bringing together many private and NGO partners.

In her concluding remarks, Professor Kanter, who has been conferred no less than 24 honorary doctoral degrees, asked the audience if they had heard of Kanter’s law.

“Everything can look like a failure in the middle. Those who succeed are the leaders who never give up, who are flexible to change, who believe in their purpose, and because of that, they never give up.  Then you can persist.  Stamina is an essential characteristic of leadership in this connected world,” she said.

[Photo: Professor Kanter interacting with participants on and off-stage.]

[Featured Photo: Professor Kanter delivering the 16th lecture of the SMU Presidential Distinguished Lecturer Series.]