Guru tells corporates jazz is the way

RUNNING a business no longer resembles conducting a symphony orchestra -- it's more like improvising in a jazz group.

Guru tells corporates jazz is the way

RUNNING a business no longer resembles conducting a symphony orchestra -- it's more like improvising in a jazz group, according to Boston Consulting Group's new global chief executive Rich Lesser.

This metaphor, he said, came from a far-sighted predecessor, John Clarkeson, but has never been more appropriate.

"The corporate world is moving from a leader telling everyone in the orchestra how to play their parts, to a team of strong individual performers guided by an overall vision, but playing off each other," Mr Lesser said.

Google, he said in Melbourne yesterday, was the best example of this way of working.

Mr Lesser, who comes from Pittsburgh and is now based in New York and Beijing, has worked with Boston -- which turns 50 this year -- since 1988, about as long as the Australian partnership in Boston.

He said the group's turnover had grown more than 40 times since the year he joined -- from $US80 million to $US3.7 billion ($3.94bn), with 70 per cent now generated outside the US.

Thirty years ago, he said, BCG was focused on advising its clients with insightful strategy and how to win. Twenty years ago, it was about how to develop that strategy and make sure the recommended changes happened.

Ten years ago, it was additionally about how to drive change across functional and geographic boundaries -- requiring different skills, and a deeper involvement than making recommendations.

In today's world, Mr Lesser said, all the above were still required. "But we are also about building capabilities in organisations and leaving behind organisations that are resilient and adaptive and very strong.

"Our clients need leadership that can keep their companies moving forward in a very challenging environment" in which there is more volatility and uncertainty -- and greater diversity of fields, both technological and geographic, in which they are expected to succeed."

Australia, he said, was well placed for success. "It will thrive even more in the decades ahead."

Its demographics are better than those of most developed markets. "There is debt here, but it is not a severe issue. You have a highly educated population, very digitally oriented, a strong resource base -- and you're in the right part of the world, the most dynamic region," he said, referring especially to China and Southeast Asia, but added that challenges remained in spheres such as trade integration.

There was now more pressure in businesses to be adaptive than was historically required, he said. "Twenty years ago you set up a strategy and ran really hard with it for the next five years. For some businesses, that can still work. But the fraction is reducing."

It is also no longer enough to have a great leadership team sending messages all the way down. "Now you need adaptive leadership at multiple layers and geographies."

This might sound intimidating, Mr Lesser said, "but actually it's exciting. There are more markets that are open, new technology enables firms to serve more customers, and there is no longer a complete correlation between size and returns.

"There's a world of opportunity for those who are bold, and who leverage all the talents of an organisation -- in the way a leader of a jazz group may do."

This has been the way Boston has been able to keep building its revenues, through the global crisis and beyond -- through "a very customised approach, less template based. It's very important for us to figure out what's distinctive about a company."

When he began with Boston, Mr Lesser said, the team would visit the client once or twice and then return to devise its recommendations. "Now we roll up our sleeves and sit alongside the client, who assigns their very best people so we can create something distinctive and advantageous together."