McKinsey’s Cheryl Lim on Asia’s New Leadership Model, AI and Talent

Corner Office Conversation

Cheryl Lim of McKinsey discusses the distinct leadership models emerging from Asia, specifically focusing on the success of owner-CEOs. The

Key takeaways

Only 10% of Asia's top companies produce 60% of all value created, with a majority being founder-led.
Successful Asian leaders utilize a 'telescope and microscope' approach, balancing mega-trends with operational milestones.

Main topics

Asian Leadership Models
Founder-led vs. Professional CEOs

Notable quotes

A telescope in one eye, a microscope in the other.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while AI will automate tasks, human-centric

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) About 76 % of Speaker 1 (0:01) jobs are going to need to be fundamentally redesigned. One Speaker 2 (0:04) brokerage gave it a value of zero. But at that time, Mukesh Ambani basically told the board, even if we don't make money, even if this fails, it will be the best thing we've done for India. Is Speaker 1 (0:15) there a different brand of leadership that is emerging from this region that is very different from what we see in the West? Speaker 2 (0:22) 10 % of Asia's top companies produce 60 % of all value created. A telescope in one eye, a microscope in the other. Everyone has the capacity, in Aditya Puri's words, to be Speaker 1 (0:33) extraordinary if given the right support. Asia is producing some of the world's most ambitious companies. But is it also creating a different kind of leader? Cheryl Lim of McKinsey studies the people behind these businesses and what the next generation of leaders will need to succeed. We have her with us on the sidelines of the Economic Times World Leaders Forum. on this very special edition of the podcast. It's Monday, the 28th of September. I'm Anirban Chowdhury. This is Corner Office Conversation. Speaker 1 (1:26) Cheryl, warm welcome. Speaker 2 (1:28) Thank you, Anand Bhat, for having me. Speaker 1 (1:30) Glad to have you. Okay, you've studied 30 of Asia's most successful owner-CEOs. Now, my first question is, is there a different brand of leadership that is emerging from this region that is very different from what we see in the West? Speaker 2 (1:48) Yeah, that's a great question. So when we started this research, fundamentally the starting premise was that When we look at value creation over the past two decades, 10 % of Asia's top companies produce 60 % of all value created. And within that top decile, the majority of them were founder-led companies. And these span, I would say, first-generation type owner-CEO companies like your Uday Kotak, right, from India, to eighth generation, the Ayala family, right, in Philippines. And what we found is that despite the spectrum, the massive range of sectors, as I said, multi-generations, that we saw, there were six behaviors and 18 mindsets that we found quite consistent across all of them. We won't have time to go into all of it. So I'll just highlight a few that I thought were particularly powerful. The first major theme was the idea of being driven by mission. If I think about a specific example from India, think of the Reliance Jio sort of like venture. Speaker 1 (2:50) When Speaker 2 (2:50) that first came up, everyone kind of thought, what are you doing, right? You have no experience in telecommunications. It's a multi-billion dollar effort. I believe one brokerage analyst's firm, when they were first sort of valuing the new enterprise, gave it a value of zero. But at that time, Mokishambani basically told the board, even if we don't make money, even if this fails, it will be the best thing we've done for India. We know how Jio has turned out. We know the impact it has had. And this for us is an example of the kind of mission we see where these guys are driven by something much bigger than just making profits. So I would say that's one theme that resonated, came out very strongly. The second is also one of my favorites.