It used to be that leaders in business emerged from the organization and moved to the forefront by having a better idea. Or having a compelling vision. Or solving a significant problem. Or dealing with a difficult situation. Or a combination of several of these traits. They moved to the front and led by changing things for the better. But that does not seem to be the case anymore. In these days of process driven organizations, it appears that leaders are selected according to their ability to follow or implement the existing process. It appears that the leaders of the future are not being recognized as the one who can do things the best or most innovative way, but rather the ones that are the best at doing things the current way.

In the past most leaders did not always follow a preset process. Sometimes it’s hard to follow a process when you are out front leading. Leaders would have a flash of insight, or belief in a new idea and risk doing something that was outside the then status quo to achieve it. They would recognize that whatever was currently being done was not going to generate a new result or get the organization to new ground. They were looking for a solution and didn’t mind defining a new way to get there. If they deemed it necessary, they would take a new path.

It was then up to those that would follow them, to try to emulate that success. Followers would then try to create a process to follow that would enable them to hopefully achieve the same result. They would follow in the leader’s footsteps, and hopefully codify each step so that everyone else would be able to understand and follow. They would try to minimize any of the potential risks that the leader had taken in order to succeed.

As the new process evolved, each step was assigned to a specific individual or team to complete. No one ended up owning the entire process, or even the final result. They owned steps. There would be hand-offs at each step. In time the process would become an ingrained smooth running feature of the organization.

This would be good, until such time as something changed. It could be anything, a customer preference, a competitor’s strategy or product, the market or economic environment, but the ripple effect within the process would be significant. Because now the process must change, and based on its codification, structure, and stakeholders, it is now being asked to change itself.

Under a process driven structure, only the current leader can have the end to end insight to change the process. Since each specific piece of the process is usually owned by a specific individual or group, any other type of change would require all the pieces of the process to come together to implement any change. And since the process was originally created to remove variation and risk from the organization, there will usually be a fair amount of self-induced risk avoiding resistance to change. Something that was put in place to reduce unwanted change must now somehow become a catalyst for its own change, and must continue to do so into the future.

Performance now is based on how well each individual or group performs their individual step in the process. This might not be the most conducive environment to developing leadership.

I think this might be what Henry Ford had in mind when he created the first automotive production line that was capable of producing Model T’s in any color…as long as it was black.

He was a leader in this area. It was great as long as he could dictate what the market wanted or would get. When others caught on and started to provide customers with options and variety, he too had to change and follow.

The point here is that those that were part of the production line process were not asked to get together and change the process. There was an acknowledged leader and owner, and he made the call. Now he got to do that because he owned the company and it was his name on the car, but I think you get my point.

Leaders see a big picture and have final responsibility. Today’s process driven organizational structures drive dis-aggregated pictures and responsibility for only specific steps in the acknowledged process that is supposed to generate the final result.

In essence, today’s organizations are not asking leaders, or future leaders to be focused on the overall car that is metaphorically being produced, but rather just the few pieces, screws and bolts that they are responsible for in the production process. They are responsible only to perform their specific work product.

It is possible that this organizational structure has also given rise to the requirement for a Quality group. There have been too many instances everyone was performing their assigned task in the process, and yet a low-quality car was being produced. Defects and recalls soon became almost the norm for the process.

A great deal has already been written about the millennial generation. Some of it even by me. There is no doubt that they have already joined the workforce in large numbers. It has been well documented that they are the products of the current social and political environments. Their effects in these realms are already being felt to significant levels.

While there is obviously variation across individuals within any group, “Mainstream media has drawn a picture of Millennials as lazy, narcissistic and entitled selfie-lovers.” (http://luckyattitude.co.uk/millennial-characteristics/# ). And while this may be interesting from a media point of view, there are a few other characteristics of millennials that this article provides which could open a few eyes and possibly answer a few leadership questions.

Millennials are also categorized here as “Impatient, Entrepreneurial, and technologically the most savvy generation to come along”. They are viewed as the children of the entrepreneurial generation and to date have been credited with creating twice as many new businesses worldwide as the baby boomers did.

So, what does that mean for the future of business leadership?

For me it means that businesses are going to have to walk a fine line, as well as possibly have to draw a new line when it comes to process and business leadership. The new generation may in fact feel entitled, but they are also well educated and impatient. If they cannot lead, or at least quickly change the process that has evolved there is a very good chance that they will leave and look for other opportunities, possibly their own start-up where they can utilize their own ideas.

Process oriented business structures have evolved to reduce business risks and variation. In doing this they also slow down the response time and ability of an organization to change and react to new conditions and markets. As the business organization continues to evolve, these somewhat change resistant process environments will be populated by more and more impatient millennials that will feel entitled to change things for the better as they see fit, and will be increasingly more frustrated with the systems built in resistance.

This change resistant, process oriented organizational structure, when coupled with impatience, risk receptivity and the willingness to go their own way for fulfillment of the millennials could in fact be the perfect storm for future leadership within business organizations. It is usually the best and the brightest that get frustrated first.

They want to believe in and be involved in a merit based system, not a seniority based one. They will want to change and move as opposed to evolve. They will not be as patient as previous generations because of their feeling of entitlement. In short they will be up against a business system that currently represents just about everything that they don’t want.

Both will have to change. Millennials will have to experience first hand how organizations work and change. As Randy Pausch said in The Last Lecture: “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” Just because they will feel entitled does mean the will be entitled. This could be an unpleasant lesson.

Organizations will have to change in that as the millennials become an ever greater proportion of their work-forces, they will have to take steps to retain their frustrated best and brightest. If they don’t they risk having to compete with those organizations that have solved the millennial-organizational conundrum, or even the millennial-led entrepreneurial start-up. Competition for the best resources will drive them this way.

Either way, it does not seem that the organizational structures and processes that have so successfully moved business forward to this point, will be sufficient to continue to move business forward from this point. It will be interesting to see not only where, but how the next generation of leaders comes about.