In hierarchical organizations, leadership moves primarily from the top down. That’s its sole direction. In this model, the CEO is automatically the leader in every scene that doesn’t involve the Board of Directors. The people who report to the CEO are the leaders in every scene that does not involve the CEO or the Board etc. etc. etc. until you get to the janitor, who is the leader of the broom. Every scene has a pecking order, and the pecking order has been decided before the scene begins.
In a business environment that changes at the speed of thought, there are lots of issues with this leadership model. Specifically, it’s too slow. it does not let an organization act quickly enough on opportunities or adapt cost-effectively to changing market conditions.
In networked organizations, by contrast, leadership is organic, it grows out of the structure of the scene and its problem-solving process, and not from a presumed hierarchy.
Visibly good leadership is essential to attract employees and customers to a brand and keep them engaged in its narrative, but that visibility can come from anywhere. Sure, it can and should still come from the ‘top.’ It can also come through the side door, from behind, the center, the edge, from out of left field, up from the ashes, or out from the shadows. It can be bombastic, it can be imperceptible, or any dynamic in between.
In networked organizations, leadership is everyone’s responsibility, and there is no single context for it, or one accepted style of leading. It is the scene that determines what leadership looks like, and what purpose it serves.
Further, being a leader is no bigger or lesser a deal than being a follower (i.e. team player). Just as everyone in a networked organization ix expected to be a leader, everyone is also expected to be a follower. A player’s leadership (or followship) status is a condition of the scene and the game, not necessarily a condition of his or her rank in the organization.
Among the questions addressed, on a scene-by-scene basis, in a gamechanging leadership model:
-Whose subject matter expertise, perspective, or professional experience is most important to the scene?
-How well-articulated and shareable is the vision?
-Is your scene’s narrative (and its possible outcomes) scripted ahead of time, or co-created by your team as a result of its problem-solving process?
-Are your team’s roles complementary and supportive, lacking expertise to solve the problem, or overlapping and in conflict?
-What is the balance, and who does the balancing, between listening and speaking? Between information and intuition? Deconstruction and construction? Postmortem and Premortem? Questions and declarations?
-How does a team stay focused on the problem at hand, while at the same time honoring historical and future organizational narratives?
-Who decides? How?
-What’s the game? When is it time to change the game or edit the scene?
And while there’s no one style or way of behaving that defines effective leadership, two things are true of all gamechanging leaders:
1) They listen first. 2) They do not script outcomes.
They understand that there are many ways to solve a problem, and that most of those ways will not be their own. This leadership model is the only way to act quickly enough on market opportunities and adapt cost-effectively enough to changes in the environment to stay competitive in the networked world.
NEXT: How we define Roles
This is a demonstration of how connections are made in the Networked World. And some observations about how Creativity and Destruction go hand-in-hand.
Because GameChangers followed and contributed (seven blog posts) to the narrative of the Chilean Miners…because we were curious about how the 33 miners happened to be wearing Oakley sunglasses when they emerged from the mine after their 69-day ordeal…because we made a connection with Jonathan Franklin, the correspondent for The Guardian, who was the only print journalist with complete access to the rescue site in Copiapo, and was responsible for the Oakley connection…because Penguin Press has just published 
Traditional news reporting and the internet made us aware of ‘Los 33.’ Social media–Facebook, Twitter, this blog, etc.–helped us track and participate in their story. Skype, email and telephone made personal conversations and collaboration between us and Jonathan Franklin possible. The Applied Improvisation Network helped us extend the program to Europe. Geo-locating apps–I can’t even tell you what they were– helped us locate and provide directions to our rehearsal studio in NYC. I used a virtual concierge to book my travel. And of course personal relationships made things possible that no technology or platform could.
