As government leaders do you believe the world is getting more complex? More volatile? If so, you’re not alone - - Sixty percent of the CEOs surveyed by IBM in our 2010 CEO Study thought the world was getting more complex, and even more, 69%, felt the world was getting more volatile.
For the first time, we also posed a similar set of questions to college students. These future leaders viewed the world as even more complex than the CEOs we surveyed. But they saw less volatility, and significantly less uncertainty than the CEOs (65% of the CEOs, but only 48% of the students). Could it be that the students are more acclimated to economic boom/bust cycles and feel more comfortable with the uncertainty of today’s world?
Or could it be that in the instrumented, interconnected,
collaborative world that they are used to (most of the students never knew a
world without web browsing and many don’t remember the pre-Facebook era), they
feel more comfortable dealing with this complex world? As a student in
We found that students who had the greatest sense of
complexity put much more emphasis on the analytics and predictive capabilities
of information. They were 50% more
likely to expect significant impact from increased information than peers who
did not have the same sense of complexity.
And they were 22% more likely to believe that organizations should focus
on insight and intelligence to enable their strategies. Also,
interestingly, students in
With the baby boom heading towards retirement in the coming years, does this mean the government workers who replace them will be more comfortable using information and analytical techniques to handle the world’s problems? Or could it be that complexity will always rise to be just beyond our ability to manage it with our current level of technology?
Click here to see the IBM Report: “Inheriting a complex world”
Click here to see the IBM Report: “2010 Global CEO Study”
More on Analytics for Government here: www.ibm.com/ASCdc
Do you think our future leaders are inheriting a more complex world? And do you feel they are more prepared to manage it?
Comment on this blog or write to me at ASCdc@us.ibm.com
Good Analytics,
Frank Stein, Director of IBM’s