CEO, Where will you be in the 21st Century? (Rethinking Leadership)

It will almost be a reflex reaction (answer) with an affirmative "yes", if a question is asked : "Does an organisation needs a head, a captain, a leader, whatever name?". Rather it would seem a stupid question to ask. An entity without a zenith represented by a single person does not seem complete.

Organisation, large or small, is always headed by a person, with a variety of names given to that position : President, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, General Manager etc. It is a logical extension from early history of mankind till today : a tribe has a head, an empire an emperor, a community a leader, a province a representative, a school a principal, a country a prime minister. Surely a business corporation / organisation needs a leader.

In the sea of management literature, exhortation and importance of leadership (usually refer to as a single leadership) abounds. There are bombastic description of heroic or visionary leader. There are good case studies of leader, singled handedly, moves an organisation forward or destroys the entire business.

This unquestionable position of the head of an organisation is a paradigm firmly anchored in everybody mind, much like pre-Galileo era that the world was flat. Examination of the behaviour of the head of any organisation from any perspective gives further conclusion that the very person takes on the position as the world expects him or her to. This results in the following types of role assumed by the person, or expected of that person. Roles like "captain" "leader" "commander" "controller" "decision maker" "strategist" "steerer" "mover" "motivator" etc. This position and its associate role-play is held at the peak of a hierarchical organisation.

With great sincerity and determination, this person tries very hard to meet his / her own expectation and / or that of the world. There are many success stories of such great leadership. But success stories gradually become horrible stories over time especially organisation that grows larger and larger, more complicated and sophisticated.

But the determined CEO strives even harder. A typical speech of a CEO of a corporation with 30,000 employee sounds as follow : ".... I wish I could go to every one of you, in your workplace, to say hello to you face to face, to shake hand with you.... but I could only say hello to you in this welcoming letter...." This could only reflect the underlying assumption of the person that "he is King, a kind King nevertheless, wanting to get close to all his subjects". The ancient king could have done a better job in view of limited and confined territory. But it is indeed an impossible task for a CEO of a multi-national corporation.

As 21st century approaches, there are obvious signs of turbulent dynamic going on in every phase and sphere of business operation : the incredible speed brought about by the Information Technology, the competitiveness of the market, the ever changing requirement and needs of customers, the higher intelligence and education level of the workforce, the borderlessness of society, the indisgustible mode of operation of organisations, competitors, countries, international trading mechanisms, the entanglement of successful products and associated environmental issues or repercussion, the inter-connectedness of action and reaction, the inter-dependence of doing or not doing, etc. etc. In the face of all these, what can a single person do? What single leadership is of any real significance? How could a single person's vision be merged with the vision of the entire corporation, the inter-connected, the inter-dependent parties outside the corporation. Parties like suppliers, customers, host governments, environmentalists?

Against the backdrop of the above described scenario, there are more and more evidence of out of control of the very existence of the business. The instability of the organisation is manifested by take over, merger, bankruptcy, or gradual decline and death. A whole vicious cycle will then begin with a new entity, with frantic search for a superman, the single leadership, the saviour!

Army of management consultants come marching to the CEO, armed with piles of state of the art machinery weapons, warheads and missiles with branded name like "reengineering" "benchmarking" "x-factors" etc. and opiumed slogan "top management must be committed" (meaning CEO who has to pay them fees).

But in reality, that single person, the CEO, does not and could not possibly handle the complexity of the business single-handedly, in spite of all the high technology and management tools and consultants and supporting hierarchy.

In the same old paradigm, it will be argued that the single leadership has group of advisors or senior managers with delegated executive power (management guru like to use the term "empowerment") to share the burden or challenge. But the very tenet of the hierarchical structure is having the ultimate executive power in the hand of a single person, the CEO. Each of the member of the CEO management team is operating under a compartmentalised specialist function (marketing, technology, human resources, operation, finance, legal, etc.). Each of them is totally sunk in the "I am my position" syndrome. It is a syndrome generated by structured position titles "Senior Manager, Operation, or Marketing, or Strategist Planning etc." It is a syndrome that automatically impose a limitation, a caveat, a ceiling to the mindset of the "positioned" managers, enclosed them a the titled "boxes", slashing their vision below that of the CEO. The CEO is then expected to knit, combine, integrate, align all aspects of the business operation like a puppeteer.

That single person, the superman, is behaving like a personal computer with capacity of a large mainframe computer, directing, controlling, managing all the bit and bytes. But the real testimony of Internet technology proves that it is not the single and central mainframe computer that gives the Internet power, but the synergy is created by and from millions of networked computers and servers. There is not a single super computer in Internet.

Organisation moving into the 21st century must seriously rethink the present take for granted concept of leadership in a single person. The very term "Chief Executive Officer (singular)" must be questioned and reworded. The very structure and role for the organisation zenith must be radically changed to make way for collective leadership and not a single leadership.

Collective leadership should be following a model like the collective computers in the Internet. A structure for the collective leadership network must be creatively designed for implementation. Creativity and synergy are the key focus of each and every leader of the collective leadership team, based on uniqueness and strength of every member. Each member is also networked with his or her associated staff to draw upon them the infinite creativity and synergy, much like intranet.

21st century organisation will then no more model after a ship with a captain, but an internet with many intelligent cell connected and networked. Today leadership must have the vision, the courage, the determination and creativity to phase out the single leadership of himself or herself, to make way for collective leadership.

End.