Nobody really recommends command-and-control leadership anymore. But no fully formed alternative has emerged. So mature companies often struggle to balance the need for innovation with the need for discipline. The authors studied two exceptions: the new-product-development stars PARC and W.L. Gore. Both companies, they learned, have three distinct types of leaders. "Entrepreneurial leaders," found at lower levels, create new products and services and move their firms into unexplored territory. "Enabling leaders," in the middle, make sure the entrepreneurs have the resources they need. And "architecting leaders," near the top, monitor culture, high-level strategy, and structure. This system allows both companies to be self-managing to a surprising degree. Employees choose their work assignments and dream up new projects, whose success rests on colleagues' volunteering to join in--making the companies collective prediction markets. And the mechanisms that enable self-management also balance freedom and control: The companies function efficiently and exploit new opportunities even as they minimize rules.
In February 1995, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in the United States, was in the midst of a crisis. The executive director had been fired due to financial improprieties amid charges of sexual harassment. Immediately thereafter the board chairman came under fire as well. In a very close vote, Myrlie Evers-Williams, a long-standing board member, was elected the new board chair. She found herself leading an organization with severely diminished credibility and support, precarious finances, and a fractured board of directors. The case raises issues regarding board oversight, governance structure, and crisis leadership in a nonprofit setting.
Outlines the dynamic shifts in the external environment surrounding Planned Parenthood's operations in 1994. Health care reform was threatening some of its core customer base. The organization had to come up with a strategy and a process for adapting to the new environment.
Outlines the process of strategy reinvention adopted by Planned Parenthood. It lays out the new strategic proposals, and the reactions of the various constituencies to those proposals.