Leadership in the Fourth Industrial Age

Each industrial revolution has been sparked into being by a technological breakthrough. In the case of the (first) industrial revolution, it was the steam engine. In the second, it was electricity and mass production. The third was prompted by computers and digitisation. The fourth has been the result of the simultaneous emergence of artificial intelligence, genome editing, augmented reality, robotics and 3-D printing. We are emerging into a world of bewildering change, choices and possibilities: the conditions that call for leadership. The shackles that have held the status quo in place have been weakened or shattered enabling change on a broad front. We deploy the Primary Colours Approach to Leadership (Pendleton et al., Leadership: no more heroes. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) to focus on what leaders have to do in the shorter and longer terms. The leadership tasks contained within its three domains, strategic, operational and interpersonal, are described while concentrating on the implications for leaders of organisations who want to create the conditions for sustained success, including the implications for introducing job crafting in a fast-changing context.