In a chat with Forbes India, Scott Anthony, president of innovation consultancy Innosight , shares his insights of what the new generation leaders can learn from outgoing CEO, A G Lafley’s legacy
Q. What did A.G. Lafley have in him that made him such a powerful champion of innovation?
A. The thing that you see about A.G. is that he really has the rare ability to hold two opposing ideas in his mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. Because, if you really look at what he has done at P&G over the last ten years, a lot of it is about efficiency, a lot of it is about optimisation, a lot of it is about operations. Focus on big brands and big countries to big retail customers. Getting people to think differently, getting people to experiment and getting people to fumble and I have personally seen him make that switch almost instantaneously: From getting into the real nitty-gritty details to being able to think strategically of pioneering a new market. And most people can’t do that. And Lafley can really inspire people to follow him and most people again don’t have that skill.
As I have talked about in The Silver Lining (Anthony’s book), this is really the hidden crisis of all that we have talked about in the last year. Because till the 2000s, you could succeed by exploiting, you could succeed by overseeing efficiency and make a career out of that and that’s not enough anymore. The era of optimisation is over, it really is now the era of innovation and those require different skill sets and different mind sets. An entire generation of leaders is just unprepared for what lies ahead.
(This story appears in the 03 July, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)