Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results

12.4. Repositioning Management

Take a look at the web depicted in Figure 12.3. Where does management come in? Where do you put it? Think about this for a minute.

Putting management on top would be silly, disconnecting it from the rich activity of the web. Putting management in the middle would not make much more sense, for that would just draw all the communication to one central point, diminishing the free flow of ideas. There is only one obvious answer. Management of the web has to be everywhere. In a literal sense, it has to be out of the office, down from the suite, on the floor, in the studio, with the customers, and wherever else real things are happening. It has to move around, literally and figuratively, in order to facilitate collaboration ...