In the future the success of a company will therefore depend on factors asso-
ciated with people and not with organizational structures or capital developments.
Such factors include commitment, creativity, entrepreneurship, courage, visionary
thinking and emotional intelligence. Leadership can less and less be exercised by
pressure and coercion. It has to offer the employees more freedom, more personal
development and opportunities to participate. As such, the management of com-
panies will increasingly resemble the leadership of volunteer organizations such as
clubs or charities.
The traditional organizational structures and management lessons, however, are
proving to be extremely resistant to change and prevent the systematic, compre-
hensive support of individual expertise. Since the 1950s they have shown little or no
development and cannot cope with the radical and rapid changes of the Twenty-first
century. The individual encounters standardized functions and procedures and
outdated management practices in many companies that are still tailored to the
authoritarian leadership of collectives. Individual leaders, on the other hand, know
about the differences and use them. They utilize and promote the differences,
instead of making their employees fit a mold.
Yet there is also great resentment, stubbornness, and fear directed at self-
determination and personal responsibility among employees. Most of us have been
raised and socialized in a European country where the state has taken the respon-
sibility for the personal development and protection of its citizens. We feel it is
perfectly fair to heap the consequences of our actions or inaction onto the commu-
nity and make others responsible for our own happiness, starting with kindergarten,
school and training, health insurance and unemployment, up to retirement. We are
accustomed to being motivated by our superiors through material incentives or
more leisure time.
“It’s the many small disenfranchisements that come along in the guise of
protection and welfare against which we must defend ourselves. In reality they
destroy everything unique and valuable in the individual,” criticizes Reinhard
K. Sprenger. The executive can no longer think of his or her company and look
for the “right” people for a given job, but must begin to consider the individual. He
or she has to offer tailored roles that promote and put to best use individual needs
and talents. Therefore it is essential to build the organization and its structures
around the people. These flexible structures are not kept together by control from
above, but by self-confidence and motivation (see Sprenger 2001, pp. 82–83).
1.1.5.3 No Off-the-Shelf Leadership
In the Twenty-first century, individualism also affects leadership in a third way. We
must say goodbye to the marvelously simple conception of the clearly definable
standard type of “successful manager.” “Individual leadership permits itself to
develop in its own way – and does the same for employees.” (see Sprenger 2001,
pp. 82–83). A manager should not lead in one strict style, but rather approach
leadership as a process in which he or she is allowed to be human.
1.1 The Only Constant Is Change 9