Staying on top in changing times

Publishing boss Barry Clarke is on a recruitment mission. He has flown in from Singapore, where he is Asia managing director of academic publisher Taylor & Francis, to recruit a CEO for the company's China operations.

The company, whose origins date back to 1798 when co-founder Richard Taylor launched the Philosophical Magazine, needs someone who can cope with one of the fastest moving and most complex markets in the 21st century.

Over four days Clarke－with Christoph Chesher, group sales director－met with potential candidates at the Crowne Plaza Beijing Zhongguancun Hotel.

"We had been hoping to make a decision while here but two were such good candidates it might take another two weeks. We might have to fly them back to England so they can meet the board.

"It is a very important appointment. The successful candidate would be responsible for relations with government, key academic institutions and publishing partners."

Clarke, who has been in Asia for 23 years and has been visiting China for 21 of those, says a person chosen for the role of CEO is increasingly seen as a unique individual.

"Increasingly organizations are like some ecosystem and you have to have a person who can deal with that kind of complexity and also ambiguity."

He believes that someone who has to do the job in China often finds it even more difficult operating in a society with deep-set Confucian values.

"These values are often hard to pin down or verbalize. You certainly would never put them in a job description. One example, however, might be that you are looking for a person who is more contemplative and reflective as well as perhaps half a dozen other traits you are looking for."

What capabilities a modern CEO needs－both in the West and in China－has been examined in The CEO Report: Embracing the Paradoxes of Leadership and the Power of Doubt, published by global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles and Said Business School at Oxford University.

It conducted extensive interviews with 152 CEOs from around the world, many of whom have operated and run businesses in China.

One of the most comprehensive pieces of research into the role of the CEO, those interviewed employed 5.8 million and generated revenues of $1.7 trillion.

Some 75 percent said the role had changed significantly in recent years and of those who said the role had not changed, a further 14 percent said the way they did the job had.

It concluded the modern CEO had to have a range of skill sets that bosses even five or 10 years ago did not need to possess.

The modern boss also has to have "ripple intelligence" and see before anyone else the ripples or trends that might disrupt his or her business or market.

In addition, the CEO has to have the capability of not only choosing between right and wrong options but between alternative choices that might each be right for a particular stakeholder, though only one can be chosen.

The successful modern boss will also not succeed by just making clear-cut easy decisions. He or she will also have to harness what the report calls "the power of doubt" and make the right call in the many gray areas of the modern business world where it is not immediately clear what the right decision is.

Whereas the CEO in the past would be mainly the link between the organization and the shareholders and the board, his or her role is now much more messy, sitting in the middle of the intersection of the pyramid of the organization and that of various stakeholders. This is because so many stakeholders now have a direct role within an organization.

Michael Smets, associate professor in management and organizational studies at Said Business School and one of the authors of the report, says the role of the modern CEO is increasingly lonely and one you cannot really prepare for.

"Most CEOs will only have been second or third in line before, which is very different to being in the seat yourself. You cannot really practice before coming a CEO," he said.

Smets also says the modern CEO is a very different animal to the CEOs of the 1970s and 1980s, who might have been more of an alpha male and who may have liked doing much of his business networking on the golf course.

"I think most modern CEOs think the old command and control structures of the past are something of an illusion because of the multiple stakeholder groups he or she has to respond to," he said.

"The CEO can no longer be the unassailable hero but actually is likely to be a more authentic human, prepared to share vulnerabilities and have softer capabilities like listening and empathy while having far fewer of the alpha male power habits."