Answer the questions that arise when managers and workers
need to adjust to unfamiliar leadership roles and rules in flattened
organizational forms. Leading When Yoüre
Not the Boss provides a conceptual framework that you can apply when
assessing your own organizations and work. The book discusses the underlying
ideas necessary for a shift from a culture of hierarchies to one of
relationships and the establishment of intrapreneurial and holistic work
environments.

This book supports the trend in many corporations toward
flattening parts of their traditional top¿down hierarchical management systems
into more egalitarian, democratized, and distributed organizational forms. It
analyzes the weaknesses of "management" culture at a time of ever
more rapid change and complexity in the business world and illustrates how
flattened organizational units increase agility, innovation, and efficacy.
Moreover, it discusses how individuals can exercise effective leadership
despite lacking the command-and-control authority of conventional bosses and
ways for organizations to cultivate effective "post-management"
cultures.

Especially in the technology sector, large projects have
become too complex to be mastered by any single leader. Drawing on his
experience as a senior manager and executive consultant for a number of Fortune
Global 500 companies, Roger Strathausen analyzes the situations and benefits
that motivate companies to adopt flattened organizational forms. He shows that
empowering a multi-talented group to manage itself by horizontal cooperation
can deliver products with more speed, efficiency, innovation, and nimbleness
than a solo boss could, while yielding higher employee productivity and
retention rates.

With an entertaining mix of real-world examples and an
episodic HBR-style fictitious case study, the author illustrates throughout the
book how his leadership lessons can be serviceable only when intelligently
tailored to the dynamic complexities of specific situations, including the
personalities and competencies of the people involved.

What You'll Learn

How to tailor the techniques of shared leadership to specific
business situations rather than treating them as iron rules

How to flourish in nonhierarchical and
ambiguously-hierarchical organizational contexts that encourage individual
initiative for the joint benefit of the enterprise and personal professional
growth

How success and fulfillment at work are enhanced by
organizational forms in which participants assess the situational relevance of
their respective talents and actively apply them to group objectives in lateral
cooperation with peers, as opposed to passively receiving orders from appointed
bosses

Who This Book Is For

The primary readerships for this book are business
leaders and managers at all levels in corporations and non-managerial
professionals who work in self-directed teams.

The secondary readerships are practitioners,
consultants, and academics interested in the topics of human resources,
organizational design, and the future of work.