Leadership at a Crossroads

Miller, W.H., (1996)  Leadership at a Crossroads.  Industry Week, Aug. 19, 42-56.

Five powerful forces are converging to profoundly alter the traditional model of an industrial leader - and how successful companies are led.

Industry Week identified five powerful forces that are converging to profoundly alter the traditional model of an industrial leader.  They also discuss how successful companies are led.  This article discusses the need to adapt to the 21st century.  Below are listed the five areas where Industry Week suggests changes need to be made.

Employee empowerment is the first area covered.  The switch is being made from top down management to having employees responsible for their own actions.  Next comes Corporate restructuring.  Downsizing is the major feature of change and restructuring.  Middle management is being done away with as are numbers of jobs.  This has great impacts on employee loyalty to a single corporation.  Job security is a thing of the past.  The information explosion is the third area covered.  The use of computers and the internet allows communication and information dissemination at an alarming rate.  To organize this information is to take advantage of a powerful tool.  Globalization is the fourth area discussed.  A look past domestic borders is taking place.  There are growing opportunities in other lands.  Along with this, however, comes the fact that "managers will now have to know and understand Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Szechwan."  Lastly, the pace of change is addressed.  The basic idea here is that the pace has never been so rapid, and managers must keep up with the pace for their organizations to survive.

Managers will need to become less arbitrary, more directly involved with what's going on at lower levels, more personal to employees, and more action oriented than ever before.  With these changes, do leaders still need to keep the past qualities and characteristics that they have learned as leaders?  Some say no.  The vice president at the Center for Creative Leadership states that a leader doesn't need to have vision to be effective.  This is because decision making is left up to the lower levels as well as the potential for faulty vision by the leader.  Action is the key to success.  Where the leader takes the organization means more that a vision about where to go.

This article brings up some common ideas that have been tossed around for a while on leadership such as empowerment and globalization.  These concepts are not very new to many managers today.  However, some ideas in this piece such as the elimination of vision in leaders are some off-beat ideas.

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