and more experienced colleagues will become mentors for younger employees:
networks can smooth workers’ career paths, open doors and provide opportunities.
They reveal and support expertise. Networks mean membership and an identifica-
tion with the whole, and fulfill the desire for social integration.
Good leaders are the knots or nodes of the network, collecting and delivering
information and bringing together the right people. From the vantage point of these
positions they can detect trends in departments, the company and beyond early and
react to them. One such example is Jorma Ollila, the head of Nokia, who sees
himself as a person who understands how to connect people. “Connecting people”
is not only an advertising slogan for his cell phones but also his maxim of
leadership.
“Leaders are bridgeheads between the individual areas of an organization and
they should ensure that the departments are able to learn from each other. (...)
Leaders have the responsibility to distribute knowledge throughout the company
and should act accordingly” (de Vries 2002, pp. 68–69). Successful CEOs see
themselves as politicians who open up their plans to the representatives of the
company for approval. Their offices have open doors and are accessible to the
company and to society at large.
Team Players Instead of Lone Warriors
The main tasks of leaders include seeking internal synergy effects, developing
strategic alliances, promoting new endeavors and bringing together effective
teams. A successful manager has to have supply, information and support chains;
he or she has to have the means to create conducive conditions within the company.
Raymond Smith, the CEO of Atlantic Bell put it like this: “The efficiency of the
innumerable daily interpersonal interactions is the most important determinant for
the success of a major company” (Kanter 1998, p. 90).
To a great extent, leading today means dealing with positive dependencies. And
this is even more the case in situations of change. Leaders have to master the
classical tasks of management such as creating plans and budgets and acting within
hierarchies. Hence, at the same time they have to be able to use social networks to
pursue the goals of the company and to introduce inspiration and vision to it: “(...)
because leaders work in a complex network of interdependent relationships, this
work is increasingly coming to mean an interplay of informal dependencies, instead
of just exerting formal power over others” (Kotter 1999b, p. 20).
Connections are flexible assets. Thus, some rethinking has to take place among
leaders: their duties are now more related to networks, dependencies and leader-
ship, instead of the formal authority, hierarchies and management of the old school.
To me these two patterns of management and leadership are not opposites, but
should complement one another: management focuses on business-related duties,
while leadership focuses on people, visions and emotions. In this regard John
P. Kotter has noted that many of today’s companies are “overmanaged” and
3.2 Leading with Your Head and Heart 147