From Command and Control to Collaboration and Teamwork – Preparing Business Leaders for the Knowledge Economy

Remember the blog post I put together a few days back highlighting a superb video interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, talking about The Power of Collaborating Innovation? Well, I am back again with plenty more! This time around wanting to point out to you folks a wonderful, and very thoughtful and relevant, too!, article by my good friend Oliver Marks (Over at Collaboration 2.0; by the way, really worth while subscribing to his blog, in case you haven’t done so just yet!) where he describes, in depth, the shift the corporate world needs to do to move away from the traditional command and control attitude towards a much more open, transparent, collaborative and teamwork-like environment where social computing can flourish the way we are all anticipating and really looking forward to.

Yes, indeed, have a look into From Command & Control to Collaboration & Teamwork. It is a rather insightful, perhaps a little bit too long ;-), article, but in it you would find precious gems like this one:

"Stepping down from command and control formal authority and instead overseeing a web of relationships and inter dependencies requires you to be able to build an inclusive collaborative approach, more of a leading from behind perspective, to be an effective leader. To allow leadership as collective genius requires you to subjugate your own ego in order to allow others to thrive"

And after you have read through the blog post, check out the video that triggered the whole thing. Once again, it is John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, talking about Teamwork and Collaboration, where he admits to having made a couple of mistakes, learned from them, changed the company’s business strategy to transition from that command and control structure into one much more collaborative and teamwork related and start seeing the benefits right away!

The interview lasts for a little bit over six minutes, and John gets to describe social networking at work with business networks, including some good business cases and success stories, including my favourite quote from the overall interview:

"Many people forget: It’s about collaboration teamwork and then periodic command and control"

I am not going to spoil the rest of the video interview with John, since there are a couple of other hidden gems which I would consider priceless to embrace as skills for that new wave of leaders within the Enterprise. But one thing for sure, if you would want to become the business thought leader of the corporate world of the knowledge economy of the 21st century, start here:

Now, wouldn’t that be quite something? Who wouldn’t want to work with business leaders like those described on the interview, who certainly understand and live the dynamics of social networking within the Enterprise? I would!

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Collaborative Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Communication, John Chambers, CEO, Cisco, Cisco Systems, Management, Managers, Command and Control, Society, Knowledge Workers, Oliver Marks, ZDNet, Collaboration 2.0, Teamwork, Group Work, Team Work, Business Leaders, Business Networks, Leadership, Leaders, Knowledge Economy