To ensure its curriculum remains relevant, Telfer School of Management’s executive MBA programme conducts annual surveys with business leaders to identify the most crucial competencies for senior roles. Here, Gregory Richards elaborates on how the latest results challenged long-held assumptions about what skills are truly valued in the modern workplace COMPETENCY conundrum The
L iving in an era defined by constant change and uncertainty, it’s easy to feel like we’re always in a state of flux. Rapid advances in AI, social evolution related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environment, social and governance (ESG), the growth of ecosystems, faster product lifecycles and, more recently, political disruption from the US have all generated significant uncertainty and volatility. The Telfer executive MBA programme continually updates its curriculum to meet the requirements of the business community, carrying out annual interviews and surveys to define the competencies needed of senior leaders. The last survey was completed in 2024, meaning that the recent US market shocks were not taken into consideration, but other kinds of organisational shifts have been going on for some time. Our intention was to examine what competencies we should integrate into our curriculum based on these trends. We were especially interested in DEI and ESG given that resistance to these initiatives had begun three to four years previously. The results of the survey were surprising to say
the least: competencies related to DEI and ESG were not highly ranked. Despite the recent pushback on these initiatives, we had expected that organisations would still consider them important. Identifying key competencies The interviewees highlighted 20 competencies, of which collaboration with partners and stakeholders was identified as the most important. This result is consistent with current trends in organisations looking to carefully manage their ecosystems. A recent research report by Deloitte entitled Leading in a Boundaryless World suggests that leadership is no longer strictly based on authority, but on the ability of individuals, no matter where they are in the organisation, to mobilise effort. A report in MIT Sloan Management Review echoes a similar idea: ecosystem orchestration is a key role for leaders in these boundaryless organisations in which hierarchies become less important. The interviewees did not go as far as to renounce hierarchies entirely, but collaboration with external partners that can help improve time to market and
28 Ambition • ISSUE 4 • 2025
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