28 MAGAZINE As societies undergo constant changes in their economies, resources, priorities and purposes, becoming increasingly dynamic and digital, we’ve started to look at leadership and the profile of a leader with brand new eyes. We are now searching for leaders who master the new ways of doing things. Even better: we are now aiming for leaders who may not master all the specificities, but have the energy and the ability to learn, unlearn and re-learn their entire life. Before embracing my most recent adventure in Portugal, I spent 9 years in India leading IT, operations and transformation in a large multi-national bank, where I had the chance to meet Jay, a 25-year old developer from our teams. Back in 2014, we were facing a lot of challenges with a reconciliation process between accoun-ting and back-office repositories, which ended up in a lot of discrepancies among platforms and departments. Jay suggested the use of Big Data and Machine Learning, two concepts that, at the time, were far from being mastered and implemented on the business. Late 2014 was even the first time I heard about the concept of Big Data. When I’ve mentioned this idea to my peers in other teams and in the headquarters, everybody said it was too futuristic, in one word: impossible. Anyway, I was so amazed with Jay’s confidence and passion, that we de-cided to try it! In his own garage, just like Steve Jobs, he started a pilot on a language called “R”. After 5 months of prototyping, we were able to implement the first sample in the production database and realized that the reconciliation patterns were finally matching. And at a much faster pace than the manual task! We ended up saving time, and resources, while increasing the accuracy of the process. Jay showed me what leadership is all about, because he embodies the full set of skills and characteristics I find absolutely key in a “future leader”. His first quality is also the most important: the ability of continuous learning. Future leaders are the ones who don’t stick to their curriculum vitae, to an academic degree. They look for learning every day, from everything and every-body. Understanding the world around them is key. They have a broad scope and want to master different skills, going beyond their own expertise area. Jay wasn’t an expert in Machine Learning – still - and he was a bit out of the banking reconciliation process, but nothing stopped him of acquiring all the knowledge he could in order to prove his concept. This takes me to the second characteristic of “future leaders”: to embody diversity and inclu-sion in all ways. While always looking for new Etienne Huret Managing Director da Natixis em Portugal / Francia We are now aiming for leaders who may not master all the specificities, but have the energy and the ability to learn, unlearn and re-learn their entire life