Just Enough Leadership

Here is an extract from a recent article by Professor Henry Mintzberg in the Harvard Business Review (http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/07/rebuilding-companies-as-communities/ar/1 ) - it is certainly thought provoking:

'Beneath the current economic crisis lies another crisis of far greater proportions: the depreciation in companies of community -- people's sense of belonging to and caring for something larger than themselves. Decades of short-term management, in the United States especially, have inflated the importance of CEOs and reduced others in the corporation to fungible commodities -- human resources to be "downsized" at the drop of a share price. The result: mindless, reckless behavior that has brought the global economy to its knees.


Government stimulus programs and the rescue of the biggest and sickest corporations will not alone resolve the problem. Companies need to re-engage their people. The practice of both management and leadership needs to be rethought.

Community means caring about our work, our colleagues and our place in the world, geographic and otherwise, and in turn being inspired by this caring. Young, successful companies usually have this sense of community. They are growing, energized, committed to their people, almost a family. But sustaining it can be another matter. In our hectic, individualist world, the sense of community has been lost in too many companies and other organizations. In the United States in particular, many great enterprises, along with the country's legendary sense of enterprise, have been collapsing as a consequence.

"Communityship" is not a word in the English language. But it should be -- to stand between individual leadership on one side and collective citizenship on the other. In fact, I believe that we should never use the word "leadership" without also discussing communityship. Sure, leaders can engage and involve others. But the concept remains focused on the individual -- on personal initiative.

We make a great fuss these days about the evils of micromanaging -- managers' meddling in the affairs of their subordinates. Far more serious is "macroleading": the exercise of top-down authority by out-of-touch leaders. Communityship requires a more modest form of leadership that might be called engaged and distributed management. A community leader is personally engaged in order to engage others, so that anyone and everyone can exercise initiative. If you doubt this can happen, take a look at how Wikipedia, Linux and other open-source operations work.

So maybe it's time to wean ourselves from the heroic leader and recognize that usually we need just enough leadership -- leadership that intervenes when appropriate while encouraging people in the organization to get on with things.

In large, hierarchical organizations, certain conditions help to facilitate a transformation to communityship:

• the remnants of community....
• an atmosphere that promotes trust.....
• a robust culture......
• leadership at the center......

This does not mean that we have to put communityship on a pedestal, in place of leadership. We would do well to see both these forces as working together in a socially responsible way to get past the insularity that exists in many organizations. A healthy society balances leadership, communityship and citizenship.'

Just Enough Leadership