Communications of the ACM
Social Media, Sustainability Mark Future It Manager
Based on the results of a new IBM global study of today's university and graduate students, the IT manager of the future will likely have a leadership strategy that is based around an affinity for social networking and a global approach to innovation. The Global Youth Study, conducted from September 2009 to January 2010, reveals that the leadership style of members of Generation Y is marked by an inclination toward social networking, multi-tasking, globalization, creativity and sustainability. As a result, future IT mangers will espouse new and creative ways to connect and collaborate using social networking.
Although members of Gen Y are identifying new leadership traits for the future, that doesn't mean hard skills like data center management will be of less importance. Interestingly, Gen Y students were twice more likely than CEOs to focus on globalization. They also voiced strong thoughts about the best ways to run a decentralized organization and the importance of keeping environmental concerns front-of-mind. While sustainability is in its early stages in most of today's business strategies, that definitely won't be the case when Gen Y leaders start running operations.
Future leaders will look to leverage social networking for business advantage. This will only become more important as technology moves out of the back office and into the front office. There has to be a re-invention of how companies work and how groups work to take advantage of the fact that social networking can be a very productive and effective way to share knowledge and work today. Leaders who fail to recognize the affinity that tomorrow's workers have for social networking will be out of touch. Young students also have developed a much more global outlook on business, compared to just five years ago.
From CIO.com
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