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PwC chairman Bob Moritz on the importance of being an agile leader

Caroline Hroncich,Shana Lebowitz,Marguerite Ward   

PwC chairman Bob Moritz on the importance of being an agile leader

  • PwC Chairman Bob Moritz thinks agility is an important skill for young people to cultivate.
  • Young leaders should learn to adapt to new jobs and challenges.
  • It's an important leadership skill that many well-known executives have touted.

The most important skill Bob Moritz thinks young leaders should develop is agility. According to Moritz, the chairman of professional services firm PwC, they should be able to adjust to any challenge thrown their way with both speed and confidence.

"There are certain competencies they're going to need. I'd need them to be agile enough to learn, to lean into the learning opportunities and then take them and do something with them so they can redefine themselves," he told Insider. In 2019, PwC announced a $3 billion investment in job training for its employees. Anyone who participated was guaranteed a job at the firm, even if their original job was eliminated.

Being agile is even more important now, as the world adjusts to a post-pandemic society. New policies and challenges are afoot, and agility could be the key to successful leadership, experts say.

PwC is actively looking to hire workers with such soft skills as the ability to take risks, learn, and be agile. The company announced a $12 billion plan on Tuesday to hire an extra 100,000 people thorough 2026. About 10,000 of those hires will be Black and Latin students.

"Today's person that gets hired for moving into a tax role, then our tax business, or a legal role, or an audit role or a consulting role," Moritz said. "I can't guarantee that specific job is going to be there three years from now."

Companies like Microsoft and Amazon have used agile frameworks to grow their businesses and improve productivity for years. But this mindset isn't exclusive to executives at big companies. It's something any individual can cultivate with practice, Darrell Rigby, a partner and the global innovation lead at Bain & Co., previously told Insider.

Rigby said leaders should look for opportunities for employees to work on projects that make them feel fulfilled and grow their skills. Capitalizing on specific employees' strengths will create a more well-rounded and agile team, he added.

"Understand that [agility] is both a mindset and a method," Rigby said. "Just having a mindset and good intentions isn't enough. Going through effective methods and practices without believing in them wouldn't work either. You need both to succeed."

During job interviews at PwC , Moritz said prospective employees can demonstrate their agility by talking about an example of a time where they took a new opportunity or learned a new skill. For example, a university student might want to show how they took on a leadership role in a club or adjusted to virtual learning on campus.

"That's a good predictor of their future agility, mobility, and advancement going forward," he said.

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