For the past couple of decades, companies have focused on creating strong leaders of business units and influential heads of functions — men and women responsible for achieving results in one corner of an organization. But they have not paid as much attention to a more important challenge: developing leaders who see the enterprise as a whole and act for its greater good. And that perspective has become increasingly necessary as companies seek to provide not just products but broad-based customer solutions.
It is easy to understand why companies emphasized the development of strong unit and functional leaders. Since the 1980s, the dominant view has been that effective organizations are highly decentralized and therefore, in theory, able to respond more quickly to customers. As business units became increasingly autonomous, the leaders who reaped the most praise and attention were bold, independent business builders. The challenge for those in the corporate center was to manage, not to lead, and to be as hands-off as possible in their dealings with those running the businesses or the regions.
But left unchecked, such autonomy can produce an organizational culture defined by a take-it-or-leave-it, product-push mentality. The demise of companies that were icons of their industries, such as Digital Equipment Corp. or Polaroid Corp., is evidence of this danger. These companies were once technology leaders with great products, but the spirit... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Get a premium subscription today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Upgrade to premium
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
