The evolving Web lately seems to spur some new understanding of leadership. A number of authors refer to a shift in culture, from one-way, hierarchical, organization-centric relationsips toward two-way, network-centric culture, participative and collaborative relationships (Shirky, 2008, Tapscott 2010, Hagel 2010, Li 2010, McGonagill/Doerffer, 2010).
The cluetrain manifesto was the book that heralded of the game-changing nature of Web 2.0 (Levine/Locke/Weinberger, 2009). Proposing the „end of business as usual“ in its book sub-title, the authors advocated that companies could no longer exert control over markets and delivering messages. Instead, they needed to figue out how to enter the global conversation, accepting „openness, decentralization, fallibility, messy context-rich information and sound of the authentic voices of individuals“(Levine/Locke/Weinberger, 2009).
In Here comes everybody Clay Shirky calls the developments of the Web a revolution and compares it to the invention of the Gutenberg press. He makes the argument that „we are shifting from closed and hierarchic workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaborative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from inside and outside the firm.” He highlights that the collapse of transaction costs in the Web enables the new social tools to spur actions which had been impossible before (Shirky, 2008).
Supporting that patterns point to a new paradigm, Don Tapscott speaks of “age of collaboration”(Tapscott 2008a). In their bestseller Wikinomics Tapscott & Williams (Tapscott/Williams, 2006) see emerge new models of production in light of profound changes in technology, demographics and global economic powerful which are built on community, collaboration and self-organization, much less than hierarchy and control. Followingly in MacroWikinomics (Tapscott/Williams, 2010) they challenge to rethink fundamentals about education, media, industry and rebooting the public square. They argue that industrial age institutions brought mass production of goods, which functioned “on a centralized, one-way, one-size-fits-all mass model controlled by powerful owners of production and society”. A new force of “mass collaboration” is underway where social networking changes forever not only the way products and services, but also become a more encompassing societal shift. In core they advocate for 5 new principles to succeed in the new environment of rapid change by embracing collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence (Tapscott/Williams, 2010).
While Charlene Li (2010) encourages leaders how to be “open” while maintaining control to tap into new resources and transform their organizations with the power of social technology, John Hagel advocates for a Power of Pull (Hagel/Brown/Davidson, 2010) to draw out the best in people and institutions by connecting people through three levels of pull- access, attract and achieve.
McGonagill/Doerffer (2010) observe the emergence of a new paradigm for leadership as more and more apparent in the two decades of rising Web impact, having analyzed a vast number of pioneer examples. The authors name seven indicators of the paradigm shift: The new leadership paradigm defines leadership rather as an activity and collective process, pointing to shifts from organization-centric to network-centric leadership and recognizing organizations as “organisms” where learning and adaptation call for new levels of leadership capacity. This requires most of all a mind-shift as well as new skills, knowledge and “Fehler-kultur”.
Buhse & Stamer as well as Reinhard identify the shift of mindset as most critical in Web 2.0 leadership. While inviting leaders to cultivate „the art of letting go“ (Buhse & Stamer, 2008), the authors recognize that the new challenge of leadership is to foster the best efforts of individual contributors and nurture the emergence of the highest possibilities from the collective. Reinhard underlines as key element in all Web 2.0 change the importance of authenticity and „walking the talk“ (Reinhard, n.d.).
German network guru Peter Kruse identifies the complexity as the greatest challenge in the Web-world. In order to successfully cope with complex dynamics of the internet and overload of information, he advocates that it is most important to recognize higher-level patterns (Kruse n.d.). He identifies this as a vital element to highl-level collective intelligence..Kruse concludes that „the more people are interested in the dynamics of society and the more they are able to detect underlying pattern-formation processes, the greater becomes the amount of distributed knowledge needed to gain collective intelligence“(Kruse, n.d).
What do YOU think?
for more information see "reader leadership: approaches-development-trends, part V:
www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/leadership or /fuehrung
