Managing Leadership^®

I was asked recently what I thought the workplace of tomorrow would look like. Of course, attempting to predict things like this is a low-margin enterprise, but it’s fun, and sometimes thought-provoking, so I took a shot at it. Here’s a little of what we talked about:

The key changes in the workplace of tomorrow won’t necessarily be direct reflections of the information-processing and communications technologies permeating business today, but they will be given irresistable momentum by these technologies.

I’m not referring to the technical capabilities these technologies enable, such as virtual or networked workplaces. Those are valuable and will become increasingly sophisticated and useful. In so doing, they will help give expression to the deeper organizational design changes that I am talking about. These are regarding:

1. Leadership. The technologies mentioned are seen by many to be liberating, freeing people at all levels to express themselves, but they can also be a vehicle for the more effective infiltration of control from the top. This has often happened when we’ve crossed communication technology thresholds in the past, in business and in government.

But not this time. Leadership will come to be understood as an environment that arises from a group of people collaboratively pursuing a joint goal who are possessed of the necessary information and communication technologies. The leadership functions will arise naturally from this group, and be managed – not imposed – from the top.

My position has long been that this is already the case in well-managed modern organizations to an extent we have a difficult time perceiving. Acknowledging it will become increasingly unavoidable.

2. Organization. Or, self-organization. There has been much talk of emergence theory, lately; this is the idea that complex systems can spontaneously organize themselves into even more complex structures, taking on new tasks or adapting to new challenges presented, or suggested, by the environment. Unfortunately, a lot of the talk of how this does, or can, correspond to human groups is insubstantial.

But it is not all entirely off the mark. After all, Mary Parker Follett was talking about this decades ago. When managers are forced to finally pick it up they will begin to use it to help their organizations do the same. The effect will be just as breathtaking as its spontaneous occurence in nature, but it will also be a disciplined, hard-nosed process that managers use to make their organizations more effective. Managers will learn to guide such an organization in desired directions by presenting it with stimulae, or to detect and evaluate potentially rewarding directions for the organization by gathering and assessing organizational response to natural environmental stimulae.

Obviously, the one (take your pick) is an outgrowth of the other, and that inter-relationship is also a fundamental element of what I mean when I write about the need to manage – not exhibit – leadership.

Just as obviously, there are legions of those who still have faith in the persistent and pervasive concept of individual leadership in modern organizations. If you are among them, how do you see it developing this century? What effect will that have on the evolving collaborative organization?

What do you think the workplace of tomorrow will look like?

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