Driving Results Through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth

Part I. ALIGNMENT: How to Ensure That Networks Support Strategic Objectives

In a 2006 article published in the Financial Times, business school professor Henry Mintzberg railed against the obsessive focus on individual leaders as the fulcrum of organizational effectiveness: "By focusing on the single person ... leadership becomes part of the syndrome of individuality that is undermining organizations."^[6] We agree, of course, but to be fair, the fixation on leaders as individual actors results from the lack of an alternative framework. We simply haven't had a different lens through which we could connect individual efforts and organizational action. Some have turned to elaborate formal structures as a means of connecting individual and organizational ...