RESOURCES

Other voices gives the business community an opportunity to speak directly to Atlanta Journal-
Constitution readers. Robert L. Turknett, president of Turknett Associates Leadership Group, is an executive leadership consultant and licensed psychologist.


Last in Series: The New Economy Requires Leadership from Everyone

The new economy, with it's flattened hierarchy, dismantled bureaucracy, and need for speed, constant innovation, and customer responsiveness, will require vastly different behaviors from organizational leaders.

Less recognized, perhaps, is the fact that i t will require different behavior from all of us. Much writing has been focused on the fact that managers, whose ranks continue to dwindle, will have to give up much of their traditional control and decision making authority. In a sense, however, management and leadership will increase in the new economy - in the organization of the future, it will be required of everyone. We'll all be expected to act like owners, to lead one day and follow the next, to constantly learn and teach, and, most importa ntly, to give up blame.

A 1993 article in Inc. magazine termed the successful company of the future, "A Company of Businesspeople." That's a good term for what we'll all need to be. Whether you're sales or human resources, you'll need to know what your company sells, wh at the key drivers of profitability in your industry are, and how your behavior affects the bottom line. You'll be making more decisions, and you'll need to know how to make those decisions in the best interest of the company. Everyone will need to think like an owner of the business and will have to take a systemic view, looking at how what they do affects every other part of the business.

Thinking like an owner also requires taking more risk. That means trying new ideas and taking responsibility if they fail; it also means being willing to honestly confront others' ideas when you think they are faulty. "Constructive differing" will be n ecessary for innovation and for success.

The new workplace will often require leading one day and following the next. New forms of organizational structure will be more fluid and lines of authority will be vague, especially in high tech companies. Project-based structures will become common, and are already found in some Atlanta companies. For example, at Computer Generation, Inc., each individual works on several project teams simutaneously, and may be a leader on one team, in an important auxiliary role on another, and in a minor position on another.

In the company of the future influencing skills that have previously been needed only by top level leaders will be required of all of us. We will have to take responsibility for activities over which we have limited control, and will be required to get th ings done, not through formal lines of authority, but through influencing and persuading others.

Coaching and teaching skills will also be required of everyone. The knowledge-based organization will consist of people with specific high level skills who will need to collaborate, and who, as Peter Drucker says, will have to make themselves understood by people who do not have the same knowledge base. Companies will have to be true learning organizations - educational institutions where everyone is both teacher and student.

There will be a downside to the expanded role. In the bureaucracy of the past, no one had to take responsibility. When things went wrong, those at the top could blame unmotivated workers, functional areas could blame other functional areas, and everyone except those at the very top could blame "the leaders" for their faulty planning, poor management, and lack of direction. Such blame is a luxury of the past. Organizations that waste energy on territoriality, self-interest, and defensiveness will lose.

We must trust the motives and expertise of others, assume that everyone has the best interest of the organization at heart, and assertively accept the responsibility and leadership the new economy demands of each of us.