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The depth and the swiftness of the late 2000s financial crisis, as well as the ensuing recession, have challenged old assumptions across businesses and markets, leaving top executives at a loss for adequate responses to new demands. Sea-changes, which took place within days and swept away entire institutions of considerable reputation and established record, brought about transformational forces well beyond most market participants' imagination and often going against conventional wisdom eagerly subscribed to in the boardrooms and executive suites. Such a drastic departure from common business truths calls into question familiar ways of running organizations, from small-scale decisions to managerial choices to strategic objectives. In this uneasy environment, characterized by far-reaching shakeups that are difficult to predict and to manage, the leading role of executive development is impossible to overestimate.
Drawing on both cutting-edge research and hands-on business experience of high-profile educators, it looks beyond day-to-day concerns that are likely to skew the bigger picture, which in periods of crises is marked by greater fuzziness and requires a concerted and dedicated effort to decode properly. With its holistic agenda that transcends immediate concerns, it is well-positioned to help leaders take notice of the new patterns that their organizations have found themselves in as a result of the shifts. In an environment characterized by high levels of anxiety and uncertainty, such an ecological perspective that reaches beyond short-term analysis and better captures the complexity of the novel situation might be harnessed to persuasively redirect the company, in terms of short-term goals and long-term strategy, in ways that better reflect the challenges of the future. In practice, good executive development should now involve examining a wide range of business scenarios, some improbable to foster responsiveness to emergency and to afford a superb vantage point, much broader than usual and much needed in trying circumstances.
There is never enough reminding how vital the embrace of change for top executives is and the repercussions of the economic crisis have added new immediacy to highlighting this skill in training curricula. However, apart from the intrinsic dynamic of markets and businesses that everyone has been aware of, the events of the late 2000s might take credit for intense refocusing on unpredictable, expeditious and dramatic change that, due to the interconnected and fragile nature of the global economic system, is likely to remain a fixture for decision-makers to contend with. Increasingly disobedient and demanding, markets may force businesses to find ways of handling uneasiness and agitation that they constantly generate in growing amounts. Ideally, businesses will have to find ways to take advantage of these new anxieties that go together with the state of constant flux the crisis has left them in. Needless to say, directly informing and inspiring leaders, executive development is going to be at the forefront of this effort.
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