2. Abstract
This research paper offers AON Academy's perspective on the growing
imperative for the IT sector to develop sophisticated cognitive, cultural and
collaborative skills in their leaders. As technical expertise alone is proving
insufficient amidst mounting business complexity, management professionals in
the IT sector urgently need capability uplift across domains like learning agility,
networking savviness, creative thinking, and digital fluency. Anchored in AON's
extensive leadership development experience and data-driven insights, this
paper analyzes current skills gaps, offers tailored recommendations, and
provides practical frameworks for Chief Learning Officers to equip their leaders
with the holistic capabilities needed to navigate uncertainty and drive enterprise
success. This paper aims to serve as a comprehensive guide for leadership and
HR teams seeking to build a resilient and competitive management ready to
lead with excellence in the BANI world ahead.
The traditional paradigms of organizational leadership are being fundamentally
challenged today. For decades, the dominant model was that of the hierarchical,
command-driven leader who derived authority from their position within a stable
organizational structure. However, with increasing volatility and complexity of
business ecosystems, this approach is proving sorely inadequate.
Leaders across the technology sector can no longer rely on linear process
expertise, structured team oversight, and positional power to deliver results.
The situation is best summarized by the BANI model conceptualized by
sociologist Rodrigo Araya Dujisin – an operating context characterized by
brittleness, anxiety, non-linearity, and incomprehensibility (Araya, 2021). In this
environment, merely doubling down on past leadership styles leads to
frustration and failure. A completely new palette of leadership capabilities is
needed. This growing imperative is strongly backed up by data.
Introduction
Over 5,000 technology managers globally, found that
approx. 19% felt fully equipped with the capabilities
needed to navigate this uncertainty.
The survey data showed particular gaps in areas like
leading virtually, cross-cultural teaming, and driving
innovation pipelines – skills vital for the BANI
environment that leaders must now operate within.
Source: Aon’s 2021 Global IT Leadership Survey
19%
3. However, capability uplift requires moving beyond dated paradigms of
leadership as individual heroic acts or purely knowledge-based competence. As
AON thought-leader Annette Franz highlights, becoming a BANI-ready leader
involves elevating social and collaborative muscles like empathy, vulnerability,
and networking.
This research paper offers AON's perspective on the specific cognitive, cultural
and digital capabilities technology leaders need in volatile business areas, along
with tailored recommendations for how academies and learning functions can
systematically develop these skills across their cohorts leveraging AON’s
extensive, proven expertise in this arena.
To thrive in complex, rapidly evolving contexts, IT leaders need cognitive
flexibility – the ability to challenge assumptions and mental models and adapt
thinking in response to change. As AON’s research shows, when leaders cling to
rigid mindsets despite shifting conditions, it severely compromises decision
quality and team performance.
Cognitively flexible leaders are more receptive to feedback, more willing to
update their perspectives, and more able to change course when needed. They
spot shifts in the external landscape faster. AON client data reveals that leaders
who drive strong organizational growth exhibit almost twice the level of
cognitive flexibility than average peers.
Essential Capability 1: Cognitive Flexibility & Creative
Thinking
4. 4
However, current IT management cohorts demonstrate significant rigidity. A
“Cognitive Flexibility Inventory”, completed by over 1,500 IT leaders globally,
found that only 34% were able to rapidly update their thinking when confronted
with disconfirming data in simulation exercises. The figure was even lower for
leaders with over 15 years of experience at 20%, indicating increasing mental
ossification over time without proper development.
Along with cognitive flexibility, creative thinking and the ability to drive
innovation is growing critical as margin for error declines. Yet merely 16% of
technology leaders surveyed by AON displayed consistent creative behaviors
like intelligent risk-taking, collaboration and experimentation according to
assessment data. This underscores an urgent need to build cognitive muscle
and spark innovative thinking.
Recommendations for Development
1. Foster awareness of mental blindspots through cognitive bias training -
Highlight areas like confirmation bias and sunk cost fallacy that distort
thinking.
2. Offer simulations exposing leaders to volatile scenarios requiring mental agility.
Then run debriefs and AARs to cement capability.
3. Launch advanced design thinking programs focused on tackling complex
customer problems through creative approaches.
4. Expose rising leaders to startups pursuing bold ideas with creative cultures.
Rotations here build new mental models.
5. Assess current cognitive flexibility levels through tools like the AON Cognitive
Flexibility Inventory to inform development priorities.
5. Essential Capability 2: Learning Agility & Growth
Mindset
With rapid digital disruption, the half-life of technical skills has shrunk to just 2-3 years
in many IT domains. This demands learning agility - the ability to rapidly absorb
complex information and apply learnings successfully in first-time, novel situations.
Agile leaders display strong growth mindsets and insatiable curiosity. They invest
heavily in continuous capability building. According to Aon data, their teams deliver
projects 23% faster with 54% higher quality, highlighting the competitive advantage
learning agility creates.
34%
However, current IT
management cohorts lack
learning agility fundamentals.
Aon’s assessment data
involving over 800 IT leaders
globally showed 34%
demonstrating key agile
learning behaviors like
experimentation, knowledge-
seeking, and mastery-focus.
Source: Aon
6. 6
Recommendations for Development
1. Deploy microlearning platforms enabling leaders to refresh capabilities
continually via mobile and social learning.
2. Develop mentorship circles and peer coaching that encourage knowledge
sharing across IT sub-domains to drive enterprise thinking.
3. Conduct AARs after every major project to extract lessons and embed learning
habits in managers.
4. Provide stretch assignments involving unfamiliar technologies and methods to
build capability through on-the-job learning.
5. Assess learning agility through tools like Aon's Choices Inventory to inform
development priorities across cohorts.
The data revealed a particular aversion to risk-taking, with 7% of IT leaders displaying
consistent intelligent failure behaviors that drive rapid learning in fast-changing
environments. With technical disruption accelerating, this gap in self-driven learning
presents a massive exposure.
7. 7
Essential Capability 3: Cultural Intelligence & Global
Teaming
As digital models enable complex global interactions, developing cultural
intelligence has become imperative for IT leaders. With software delivery
frequently spanning international hubs, empathy, adaptability and situational
sensitivity are vital for cross-border teaming.
19%
4%
However, Aon's client data indicates massive deficits in
this area currently, with only 19% of IT leaders
demonstrating culturally dexterous skills like flexing to
multinational environments.
Worryingly, only 4% were rated highly by their global
peers when it came to driving inclusion and cohesion in
multicultural teams.
Source: Aon's client data
8. 8
Recommendations for Development
1. Provide international assignment opportunities to give first-hand global
immersion to high-potentials lacking experience.
2. Make virtual global team exposure systematic for all new managers to build
cultural skills inclusively.
3. Leverage cultural simulation modules and AARs focused on enhancing behaviors
like active listening, situational adapting and mitigating bias.
4. Train emerging leaders on cultural models like Hofstede’s Dimensions to expand
cognitive global thinking.
5. Deploy tools like Ao’s Culture Sensitization Programs to assess and address
capability gaps in cultural dexterity.
As Aon’s Director Anustup Chattopadhyay highlights, the parochial mindsets
leftover from tech's history as a monocultural industry severely constrain
global effectiveness even today. With over 80% of organizations now
operating multi-country delivery models, this represents a massive exposure
without urgent capability uplift.
9. 9
Traditional leadership archetypes of the dominant, controlling decision-maker leading
through formal authority are outdated for the fluid BANI environment. In matrixed digital
models, influence skills like empathy, vulnerability, and networking enable impact.
Yet many IT leaders struggle with the softer skills of emotional intelligence, stakeholder
management, and inspirational communication. They rely excessively on technical
knowledge versus collaborative leadership. Aon's behavioral skills mapping reveals only
24% of technology managers score highly on critical areas like conflict management,
driving engagement, and strategic persuasion.
With companies investing heavily in flat agile models, this gap in ‘leading without authority’
presents a serious bottleneck without capability advancement.
Essential Capability 4: Matrix Collaboration & Influence
Skills
Recommendations for Development
1. Deploy personalized coaching focused on elevating emotional intelligence
for technology leaders. Assess EQ gaps through validated tools first.
2. Offer immersive leadership communication programs boosting skills like
impactful storytelling and adjusting messaging to diverse audiences.
3. Build facilitation skills leveraging techniques like design thinking that
enable leading without demanding.
4. Encourage job rotations into roles requiring heavy matrix collaboration like
Strategy or Business Partnering. These build first-hand empathy.
5. Create mechanisms like peer feedback loops and networking lunches to
help leaders obtain continual feedback on their collaborative skills and
leadership presence.
10. 10
Essential Capability 5: Digital Dexterity & Tech
Fluency
Technology is no longer the exclusive domain of the IT function. To guide digital
adoption enterprise-wide, IT leaders themselves need digital dexterity spanning
tech acumen, data literacy, and marrying emerging technologies to business
priorities.
However, only 19% of IT managers rating highly on dimensions like active
digital experimentation, data-driven decision-making, and synthesizing tech
trends into solutions. With every leader now needing technology savviness, lack
of digital role models in IT presents a huge lost opportunity.
As AON Chief Executive Officer Nitin Sethi, emphasizes, IT leaders must invest
as aggressively in expanding their own digital skills as they do in upskilling
technical teams. Without this personal commitment, they risk losing relevance
and credibility.
11. 11
Recommendations for Development
1. Sponsor IT leaders to attend immersive digital programs at institutes of global
repute to expand thinking on exponential technologies.
2. Provide hands-on development through internal digital labs and Maker spaces to
build technology fluency through experimentation at all levels.
3. Enable global peer exchange and learning through digital platforms, groups like
Technology Leaders Cortex and leader-led seminars on digital topics.
4. Assess digital dexterity using tools in the repository of Aon Assessments to
inform development priorities and track advancement.
5. Cultivate internal digital evangelists and fluency mentors who can serve as role
models for technology leaders seeking to build their own tech acumen.
12. 12
The Path Forward for Learning Academies in the
Technology industry
Equipping IT leaders with sophisticated cognitive, collaborative and digital skills
provides a potent competitive edge in turbulent times. However, actualizing this
requires reimagining leadership development!
Traditional knowledge-focused classroom programs must give way to capability-
centric experiential learning enabled by technology.
For HR Teams seeking to elevate IT leadership
bench strength, Aon recommends:
1. Deploy agile, personalized development models blending microlearning,
mentoring, peer coaching and project-based learning. These build capabilities
while delivering, not detached through outdated classroom courses.
2. Assess current behavioral skills rigorously using validated tools to tailor
initiatives to priority gaps, not assumptions.
3. Enable global collaboration, knowledge sharing and role modelling through
digital platforms.
4. Prioritize diversity in leadership development and succession planning to
obtain multiply cognitive perspectives vital for the BANI context.
5. Continually refresh program portfolio based on behavioral trends, not legacy
content. Adopt start-up like agility in learning design.
The scale of capability uplift required is massive. But as Aon Partner, Anirban
Gupta notes, companies who make their technology leaders' skills and
leadership presence competitive differentiators will gain advantage in turbulent
times.The perspectives and recommendations in this paper offer a blueprint for
Chief Learning Officers to start this journey in a targeted, data-driven way.
