Page 29 - leadership-experience-2008

CikguOnline
CikguOnline
10 PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO LEADERSHIP
developed countries has also steadily increased over the past several decades, and
many people are no longer satisfi ed working in an organization that doesn’t give
them opportunities to participate and learn.
When all the organization needed was workers to run machines eight hours
a day, traditional command-and-control systems generally worked quite well, but
the organization received no benefi t from employees’ minds. Today, success de-
pends on the intellectual capacity of all employees, and leaders have to face a hard
fact: Buildings and machines can be owned; people cannot. One of the leader’s
most challenging jobs is to guide workers by using their power effectively to creat
and develop a climate of respect and development for employees. 16
From Competition to Collaboration
The move to empowerment also ties directly into new ways of working that
emphasize collaboration over competition and confl ict. Although some compa-
nies still encourage internal competition and aggressiveness, most of today’s orga-
nizations stress teamwork and cooperation. Self-directed teams and other forms
of horizontal collaboration are breaking down boundaries between departments
and helping to spread knowledge and information throughout the organization.
Compromise and sharing are recognized as signs of strength, not weakness.
Some competition can be healthy for an organization, but many leaders are
resisting the idea of competition as a struggle to win while someone else loses.
Instead, they direct everyone’s competitive energy toward being the best that they
can be. There is a growing trend toward increasing collaboration with other orga-
nizations so that companies think of themselves as teams that create value jointly
17
rather than as autonomous entities in competition with all others. A new form
of global business is made up of networks of independent companies that share
s and leadership talents and provide access to one another’s tech-
nologies and markets. 18
Action Memo
The move to collaboration presents greater challenges to
leaders than did the old concept of competition. It is often more
Go to Leader’s Self-Insight 1.1 to learn
diffi cult to create an environment of teamwork and community
hat fosters collaboration and mutual support. The call for empow-
about your own “intelligence” for dealing
rment, combined with an understanding of organizations as part
with collaboration and with the other new
realities facing organizations.
a fl uid, dynamic, interactive system, makes the use of intimida-
on and manipulation obsolete as a means of driving the competitive
rit.
From Uniformity to Diversity
Many of today’s organizations were built on assumptions of uniformity, separa-
tion, and specialization. People who think alike, act alike, and have similar job
skills are grouped into a department, such as accounting or manufacturing, sepa-
rate from other departments. Homogenous groups fi nd it easy to get along, com-
municate, and understand one another. The uniform thinking that arises, however,
can be a disaster in a world becoming more multinational and diverse.
Two business school graduates in their twenties discovered the importance
of diversity when they started a specialized advertising fi rm. They worked hard,
and as the fi rm grew, they hired more people just like themselves—bright, young,
intense college graduates who were committed and hard working. The fi rm
grew to about 20 employees over two and a half years, but the expected profi ts
never materialized. The two entrepreneurs could never get a handle on what was
wrong, and the fi rm slid into bankruptcy. Convinced the idea was still valid, they
started over, but with a new philosophy. They sought employees with different