Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders: Investing in People

Today, the Davos 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) begins with the overarching theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” This theme reflects the idea that new technologies are rapidly reshaping the world. The programme comprises five themes: Reimagining Growth, Industries in the Intelligent Age, Investing in People, Safeguarding the Planet, and Rebuilding Trust.

Last week, Amanda Pitt listened to a 30-minute session titled ‘A Preview of Davos 2025. As someone passionate about nurturing and developing talent, her key interest was in the theme of Investing in People for 21st Century Leadership and how to create tomorrow’s leaders today.

At the heart of this is building brilliant, resilient high performers who can be part of a succession plan, but the world is moving so fast that times are uncertain. Many of the skills or experience needed for navigating outperformance might not exist in the business – and you can’t just go on a leadership programme or course to learn this. The key takeaways are leaders should be focussed on these three areas:

1. Think about developing Leadership factories – although they were created at McKinsey & Company four decades ago, they are still used there today, and considering they were ranked first in best companies for future leaders in 2024, this is something to adopt. The principle is based on colleagues investing in each other, learning in situ, giving regular feedback, and sharing insights to produce great leaders.

2. The CEO needs to become the CTO (Chief Talent Officer) to actively identify and connect with high-potential leaders – by making personal connections and investing their time and energy in the leaders of tomorrow – and those in any position in the business.

3. Leadership Performance Management: Ensure there is a process for revisiting the leadership performance management system to ensure feedback mechanisms are active, incentives are in place, and the core value proposition exists to attract, support, and retain the people you want for the 21st Century.

Leadership must be agile to perform in this unpredictable world. As McKinsey & Company noted, “Building agile organisations” must start at the top. Agility is as much about tools and processes as change management.

Forbes number one leadership trend is “adaptive leadership,” in which executives must determine what agile can do for their organisations.

This resonated with TheZoo.London Executive Searchteam as we have the beauty of not being caught up with bureaucracy like some firms. Thus, we have adapted the search model, ensuring we run a very agile search process and can adapt quickly in this fast-paced environment—a clear benefit for both clients and candidates.
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