New Forms of Leadership
in decentralised organisations
Lee Bryant, E20 Summit, Frankfurt, Nov 2009

it is a myth that leadership
is less important in the
devolved (E2.0) organisation

E2.0, network-centric approaches
can assist & support both old
& new forms of leadership

In biological systems, the
brain and body are equals
- it is not a one-way street

Obama’s election demonstrated
a powerful combination: the
‘power of we’ enhanced by
strong vision and leadership

Leadership does not disappear in flat organisations:
“The Tyranny of Structurelessness” (1970)

Even wikipedia has
leadership ... and
leadership issues

E20 and business social networking
opens up new opportunities for
traditional leadership strengths

the social web show us how to
build new structures that have both
intimacy & scale, using trusted
networks to reduce friction
& co-ordination costs

Leading from the
front: 1.5m followers

Being human in
public creates trust

Intimacy at scale

IBM BlogCentral: 67k users, 16K blogs
IBM Beehive: 53K members, 63K photos
WikiCentral: 150k users, 1m views per day
Media Library: 8m downloads
(source: Adam Christensen, IBM January 22, 2009)

E2.0 requires new leadership
skills and management
competencies in addition
to the old ones

Adhocracy: anyone
can organise today

Affinity vs Structure

Trust vs Control

Management vs Co-ordination

Collective intelligence:
sometimes leadership is
shared within a group

We need network-centric management

“Blatant integrity is present when
people and organisations are
comfortable with being held up to
scrutiny ... [&] welcome the opportunity
to cushion and overcome objections
because they’re more interested in
creating a moment of truth with you
than making an expedient sale.”
(Anne McCrossan)

three ways E20 impacts on
leadership in companies today

1: identify & nurture future leaders...

Graduate onboarding,
leadership programmes,
business social networking

Leaders can break out
of silos and hierarchies
to encourage talent

2: enable leaders to have
presence & intimacy at scale

Social business tools enable
leaders to communicate
directly, in a human voice

Leaders want real-time,
unmediated info about
business performance

3: give everybody a chance to
demonstrate community leadership

Leadership as supporting other people,
synthesising, making links, making sense

showing vulnerability and being human:
how much trust do you have in your network?

What does this mean for
organisational design and the
‘business operating system’ ?
© 2009 Dac

Social Business Design
connections
archetypes (lenses)
content
collaboration
culture
[social business design]

What is the role of
connections
network-centric
leadership in this model?
management
Helping
filter for
content
relevance
focus on data
collaboration
creating a
& signals for
performance sharing culture
culture
improvement
[social business design]

Thank you for listening
Lee@headshift.com
http://www.headshift.com

I am lee@headshift.com and live at
http://www.headshift.com
Except where otherwise stated, photos courtesy of Flickr using Creative Commons license.
Thanks to the following photographers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dplanet/94442623/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djbrady/2304740173/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/305410323/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_irish/2379958609/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/503637906/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/euan/2342134129/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thayer18/2473764858/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public/
interactive_blogosphere_map
http://paperbackdreams.com/images/uploads/Future_Shock_1971.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/migrainechick/3185150010/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/2628869994/
http://michaelreeve.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/braveheart-1-1024.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanatm/2081065914/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosimoes7/1301014184/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianboulos/36957265/
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_uYeCdeWUudM/RquSSy_X2oI/AAAAAAAAADU/OuYTkaNKa3w/
flyover.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/52581560/sizes/l/
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/1141/is5vb.jpg
http://waitingfornow.wordpress.com/2009/04/
http://www.motherjones.com/files/legacy/mojoblog/barack-obama-pointing-250x200.jpg