Leadership: Control to Empowerment

  • Control-based leadership inherited from military models and the industrial age has limitations
  • In order to respond in an agile way, teams and employees must have room to improvise
  • Modern leadership focuses on empowering teams to be creative and fast
  • Creation of ‘doctrine’—guidelines for acceptable improvisation, is necessary for success of employees—in addition to a bare minimum of processes and rules

Examples:

  • Whole Foods customer service
  • Google
  • Agile development