The recession is showing signs of recovery and it is imperative business leaders and managers adopt a new mind set to prevent a reoccurrence of the problems that started the recession of 2008-2009. The adage “what got us here, won’t get us there” is not only true but good strategic advice.  Business leaders and managers need to be willing to shift their ideas, their beliefs, and their processes from a mindset of commanding to committing in order to shift their organizational structures to stay competitive and thrive.

 

As the business world evolved through the industrial revolution and manufacturing processes dominated the development and production of products and services, it was easy to create very specific, measureable, and accountable leadership styles to fit the respective business model of supply and demand. As the world demands newer, faster and better, having an economy based on predictable and measurable manufacturing was yesterday; today technology is changing how we operate our companies, and driving the pace of change to a record breaking speed.  This century is being defined by technology with advancements so rapidly created and implemented that some technologies will be considered outdated in less than a year. With this dizzying pace of change, company leaders are going to have to shift everything they have thought about business and their organization into a new operating model and they are going to have to shift fast or risk falling to far behind to ever catch up.

 

If you look up commandment in the dictionary it is defined as:  an order, to dominate by position or order, to mandate.   There are organization’s who function best and most efficiently in the command style including the military and most government agencies (like the post office), where strict order and discipline is required to coordinate the hundreds of thousands of people and products they are responsible for. The greater the number of people involved, the more complicated the processes and the more compliant the required outcomes, the better match for a commandment style of leadership. In today’s world, if your organization is not mobilizing millions of people (in and out of combat zones where people are risking their lives daily), you are not required to manage millions of pieces of mail accurately and ethically, then your organization should be shifting to a commitment style of leadership to complement the new technology-based economy.

 

The “old” way of operating most businesses was with the typical hierarchal structure where employees chose (or were chosen) to join one specific career path usually either the management ladder of the technical ladder. Each ladder had a defined process or career path of moving up to the next level, but rarely were you given the opportunity to “cross over” from one ladder to the next. This type of organizational structure created a commandment style of leadership where plans and strategies, were all created at the top and implemented down the rungs of employees. Companies were organized into vertical silos, each with its own profit goals and products/services.   This type of rigid organization has often created competition with the same organization and forced employees to develop very specific skills within their defined career ladder. Typically organizations that are structured in a silo format offer little communication or teamwork between groups and some groups’ even end up competing against each other.