Nadim Habib: "We need to build more adaptive, agile, and resilient organizations"

Given the fickleness of the world, we need leaders who can build resilient and adaptive organizations to deal with major changes. Nadim Habib, Professor at Nova SBE and international consultant in the areas of strategy, innovation and creativity, is the one who says it. But can good leaders create "future-proof" companies?

"The question is not whether it is possible, the question is that there is no other option. The reality is that today change is the main challenge of any organization, so we have to realize that we need to build more adaptive, more agile, and more resilient organizations. These are organizations capable of adapting autonomously to changes", the professor explained.

The role of the leader has also changed with the fickleness of the world, and if "20 years ago we talked about leaders as team builders", now "they are organization builders".

"We often call a company an organization and think it's the same thing, but I like to separate the two. The company part is the easy part: business, price, product, etc. The hard part is building an organization capable of delivering the business potential. And here comes the role of the leader," he said, adding that the leader must turn his "attention to building teams capable of winning in any future. Instead of preparing and planning, you have to build the organization, so that it is able to deal with all the challenges."

For Nadim Habib, the leader today has to be a "visionary" and define the next two or three years. Therefore, "a leader today has to have greater capacity for strategic thinking and, at the same time, be able to motivate the organization to get there. Their role is to inspire and support in this process, taking responsibility for delivering results".

Nova School of Business & Economics has created the Leadership, Agility and Adaptability program, "to help team, project, and organizational leaders to better manage talent so that companies become more adaptive, more agile and, in a way, to improve productivity and results in times of change".