Leading When You're Not the Boss

Answer the questions that arise when managers and workersneed to adjust to unfamiliar leadership roles and rules in flattenedorganizational forms. Leading When You’reNot the Boss provides a conceptual framework that you can apply whenassessing your own organizations and work. The book discusses the underlyingideas necessary for a shift from a culture of hierarchies to one ofrelationships and the establishment of intrapreneurial and holistic workenvironments. 

This book supports the trend in many corporations towardflattening parts of their traditional top–down hierarchical management systemsinto more egalitarian, democratized, and distributed organizational forms. Itanalyzes the weaknesses of "management" culture at a time of evermore rapid change and complexity in the business world and illustrates howflattened organizational units increase agility, innovation, and efficacy.Moreover, it discusses how individuals can exercise effective leadershipdespite lacking the command-and-control authority of conventional bosses andways for organizations to cultivate effective "post-management"cultures. Especially in the technology sector, large projects havebecome too complex to be mastered by any single leader. Drawing on hisexperience as a senior manager and executive consultant for a number of FortuneGlobal 500 companies, Roger Strathausen analyzes the situations and benefitsthat motivate companies to adopt flattened organizational forms. He shows thatempowering a multi-talented group to manage itself by horizontal cooperationcan deliver products with more speed, efficiency, innovation, and nimblenessthan a solo boss could, while yielding higher employee productivity andretention rates.

With an entertaining mix of real-world examples and anepisodic HBR-style fictitious case study, the author illustrates throughout thebook how his leadership lessons can be serviceable only when intelligentlytailored to the dynamic complexities of specific situations, including thepersonalities and competencies of the people involved. What You'll Learn

How to tailor the techniques of shared leadership to specificbusiness situations rather than treating them as iron rules

How to flourish in nonhierarchical andambiguously-hierarchical organizational contexts that encourage individualinitiative for the joint benefit of the enterprise and personal professionalgrowth

How success and fulfillment at work are enhanced byorganizational forms in which participants assess the situational relevance oftheir respective talents and actively apply them to group objectives in lateralcooperation with peers, as opposed to passively receiving orders from appointedbosses



 

Who This Book Is For

The primary readerships for this book are businessleaders and managers at all levels in corporations and non-managerialprofessionals who work in self-directed teams.

The secondary readerships are practitioners,consultants, and academics interested in the topics of human resources,organizational design, and the future of work.