IBM recently conducted interviews with 1,500 leaders from all over the globe across 60 countries representing 33 industries. Their conclusions about what it takes to be successful in today's complex environment:

Embody creative leadership
Facing a world becoming dramatically more complex, it is interesting that CEOs selected creativity as the most important leadership attribute. Creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.

Reinvent customer relationships
In a massively interconnected world, CEOs prioritize customer intimacy as never before. Globalization, combined with dramatic increases in the availability of information, has exponentially expanded customers' options. CEOs said that ongoing engagement and co-creation with customers produce differentiation. They consider the information explosion to be their greatest opportunity in developing deep customer insights.

Build operating dexterity
CEOs are revamping their operations to stay ready to act when opportunities or challenges arise. They simplify and sometimes mask complexity that is within their control and help customers do the same. Flexible cost structures and partnering capabilities allow them to rapidly scale up or down.

Capitalizing on Complexity: The full report