In today’s world of business where organizational boundaries are blurry, intense competition dictates rapid change, and complex issues and relationships cut across departments, business units, and even companies, the old hierarchical command-and-control management approach is no longer sufficient. Distributed leadership approaches are necessary and no one individual can do it all. In fact, an enterprise is more than just the traditional organization. Value today is often created not just within a company, but also across a network of companies. Being able to connect the various components and to work collaboratively within the network is essential to maintaining competitive advantage. Leaders today must be capable of identifying potential partners, initiating and maintaining relationships, resolving conflicts, and reconfiguring their relationships. Cross-Enterprise Leadership is a new model for success in today’s world of complexity and ambiguity. Leaders who adopt this approach will be more comfortable dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity and time pressures, and with creating value through networks of relationships. Small, domestic, entrepreneurial companies are, by their very nature, cross-enterprise focused. Entrepreneurs will tell you that they live in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity and that they constantly need to adjust on the fly. Equally, large multi-national companies like Wal-Mart, Nestle, or Coca-Cola are inherently complex and issues and relationships cut across functions, levels, geographies, and companies. Cross-Enterprise Leadership goes beyond a functional perspective to understanding the complexity of business issues from all angles and how they can be integrated, how leaders can rely almost entirely on influence when they may be operating without power or authority, and how they can develop the capacity to make decisions and implement them in an environment filled with uncertainty and complexity. Most managers operate like the traditional orchestra-waiting to do their written part. But there is no tidy score for business today. CEL enables today’s leaders to be more like a jazz band, improvising and building off of one another, creating music in real time and in relationship to one another.
Book Details:
- Author: Carol Richard Ivey School of Business, The
- ISBN: 9780470679401
- Year Published: 2010
- Pages: 320
- BISAC: BUS071000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Leadership
About the Book and Topic:
In today’s world of business where organizational boundaries are blurry, intense competition dictates rapid change, and complex issues and relationships cut across departments, business units, and even companies, the old hierarchical command-and-control management approach is no longer sufficient. Distributed leadership approaches are necessary and no one individual can do it all. In fact, an enterprise is more than just the traditional organization. Value today is often created not just within a company, but also across a network of companies. Being able to connect the various components and to work collaboratively within the network is essential to maintaining competitive advantage. Leaders today must be capable of identifying potential partners, initiating and maintaining relationships, resolving conflicts, and reconfiguring their relationships. Cross-Enterprise Leadership is a new model for success in today’s world of complexity and ambiguity. Leaders who adopt this approach will be more comfortable dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity and time pressures, and with creating value through networks of relationships. Small, domestic, entrepreneurial companies are, by their very nature, cross-enterprise focused. Entrepreneurs will tell you that they live in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity and that they constantly need to adjust on the fly. Equally, large multi-national companies like Wal-Mart, Nestle, or Coca-Cola are inherently complex and issues and relationships cut across functions, levels, geographies, and companies. Cross-Enterprise Leadership goes beyond a functional perspective to understanding the complexity of business issues from all angles and how they can be integrated, how leaders can rely almost entirely on influence when they may be operating without power or authority, and how they can develop the capacity to make decisions and implement them in an environment filled with uncertainty and complexity. Most managers operate like the traditional orchestra-waiting to do their written part. But there is no tidy score for business today. CEL enables today’s leaders to be more like a jazz band, improvising and building off of one another, creating music in real time and in relationship to one another.
Core Concept to Ivey: Cross-Enterprise Leadership is a core concept at Ivey, their unique selling proposition in the competitive business school marketplace, and their key positioning and philosophy on leadership. Support from Ivey: This book is central to their central philosophy and they will be incorporating it into their day-to-day activities and marketing efforts, including: e-mail blasts to HBA, MBA, Exec MBA applicants (20,000); ads in the In Touch alumni magazine and e-mail blasts to alumni (15,000); excerpt and promotion in Ivey Business Journal (25,000); prominent promotion on Ivey’s website, at leadership forums and other events; media and publicity support; promotion by faculty and by spokesperson Dean Carol Stephenson. Ivey’s Standing Among Business Schools: Ivey has been ranked as Canada’s top business school in rankings of international B-schools by publications including The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Ivey is the second-largest publisher of cases in the world, after the Harvard Business School. International Presence: Of its approximately 18,000 alumni, about 13,000 are in Canada, with the remainder primarily in the U.S., China and the UK. Ivey has campuses in London, Ontario, and Toronto, and Hong Kong. A New Leadership Model for a Complex World: CEL is a fundamental shift from turf-protecting silos and departments to a distributed leadership model for a world in which management issues now cut across functional boundaries, departments, business units, and even across companies, geography and culture. Example: Wal-Mart’s workforce of 1.8 million is larger than many countries. If it were a country, Wal-Mart would be China’s 8th largest trading partner. Silos don’t work for Wal-Mart, and being able to manage in a global context requires skilful cross-enterprise leadership that extends well beyond the boundaries of the organization.
About the Author
The Richard Ivey School of Business is one of Canada’s top business schools, and is consistently ranked as a leading international business school by Financial Times, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. Affiliated with the University of Western Ontario, Ivey’s main campus is in London, Ontario. Ivey also has executive teaching facilities in London, Toronto and Hong Kong. Renowned for its case study method, Ivey is the second largest producer of business cases in the world (after Harvard Business School) and the world’s leading producer of Asian case studies.