The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity

Fast Company posted a really interesting study from IBM today.

“For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking, according to a new study by IBM.”

“Steven Tomasco, a manager at IBM Global Business Services, expressed surprise at this key finding, saying that it is ‘very interesting that coming off the worst economic conditions they’d ever seen, [CEOs] didn’t fall back on management discipline, existing best practices, rigor, or operations. In fact, they [did] just the opposite.’”

“About 60% of CEOs polled cited creativity as the most important leadership quality, compared with 52% for integrity and 35% for global thinking. Creative leaders are also more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise and revenue models, and they are 81% more likely to rate innovation as a ‘crucial capability.’”

Almost seems too good to be true, right?

But if you think about the significant changes of the past decade, and those coming in the next, a pattern emerges—one that Gavin Potter, a retired management consultant and remarkably astute competitor in the Netflix Prize, described in Wired:

“The 20th century was about sorting out supply,” Potter says. “The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

Figuring out demand, figuring out how people think and react, figuring out what they want—is a task best addressed with creativity.

We’ve polished, codified and documented business practices. We’ve spent the past few decades regulating and certifying “how” to work. Now it’s time to focus on “why” we work.