New Zealand’s retail CEOs are not doing enough to drive disruption in their industry, according to research firm Isentia’s quarterly 2019 Leadership Index.
The report found that Kiwi leadership tends to be more conservative, and innovation in the market has largely been driven by international disruption.
According to Isentia’s head of insights Ngaire Crawford, modern leadership is defined by this disruptive style, pointing to figures such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
The report notes a distinct lack of such disruptive leaders in New Zealand and Australia. Instead, businesses here are being disrupted.
“In the current business climate, every single industry is seeing disruption, whether from technology developments or heightened customer and staff expectations,” Crawford said.
“Assessing disruptive personalities adds another layer of insight into leadership. What we’re noticing is that disruptive leaders are positioned quite differently to more traditional CEOs.”
While conservative chief executives are typically required to be risk averse due to having to answer to shareholders and board members, disruptive leaders, on the other hand, are able to be agile and creative, Crawford said.
Some of the traits common to disruptive leaders in the Asia-Pacific region are: placing customer needs at the core of their business, aligning company products and services with society benefits and tenacity in the face of initial hurdles and challenges.
Conservative leaders, however, are largely defined by their relationship with disruption. Key traits include the ability to lead through a disruptive period, being able to make long-term friends with disruption to drive their business and the ongoing adoption of new technology.
The report also found that only 10 of the top 150 chief executives analysed were female, and they were less likely to receive media coverage than their male counterparts.
Female chief executives were also less likely to be labelled as “disruptors” by media, instead being labelled “innovative” or “entrepreneurial.”
