The Australian senior executive of 2020 will need very different skills to today's business leaders, according to a new study by The Boston Consulting Group for Innovation and Business Skills Australia (IBSA).  

The new report, entitled 2020 Vision, The Manager of the 21st Century, was released today by IBSA, a Federal Government-funded Industry Skills Council that sets the training agenda in innovation industries such as information and communication technology, financial services and business services.  

The report identifies major changes in the business environment up to 2020.

• There will be three very different generations in the workplace for the first time.
• The needs and aspirations of Generation X and Generation Y are likely to prove very different from those of the baby boomers, which have dominated the workplace for the last 20 years. 
• The services economy is likely to globalise (possibly following the path of manufacturing during the 1980s), creating a major change task and a much more complex management environment; and
• A likely long term structural labour shortage will lead to much more flexible working environments, more organised to suit employee needs and desires. Flexibility will become the key to attracting and retaining high calibre staff.  

The obsession with short-term shareholder value, which dominated the last decade, will be replaced by a much broader perspective on the obligations of a company to a wider range of stakeholders.

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