Leaderless Organizations?

Leaderless Organizations? Maybe a little less 'leadership' may not be such a bad thing after all. Here is why.


Lee Wei Lian wrote in the The Edge (20th October 2008) that he is amazed at how countries like Japan and Switzerland seem to continue developing and breaking new grounds in all aspects of human endeavors despite their politicians and their politics.

It got me thinking.

Japan has experienced numerous leadership changes at the highest levels and not all through the ballot box. The Americans too outwardly seem to be obsessed with their Presidents. Malaysians probably can identify with the drama of American presidential elections as we too are a nation of people obsessed with politics and its players. But, we are not going to talk about politics today but rather about the world of business.

Are we too preoccupied with business leaders rather than getting on with the business of business? Can a successful business be run like the way Japanese society seems to govern it self? Despite constant leadership changes and scandals the Japanese society, as pointed out by Lee Wei Lian, is a highly developed and evolved society. So are the Americans and western Europeans to a large extent. Can an organization too be like that? Can the employees of an organization make strong central CEO leadership irrelevant and grow and prosper without C-level 'worship'? Is that good?

Organizations need strategic directions and these may change as dictated by market conditions and technological shifts. Not all in an organization are gifted or skilled to provide these strategic directions. So, lets give this one to the CEO.

But, what after that? Do we still need the CEO to drive the business or do we need a group of employees who now take the cue and go on with the business. Take for example, the American’s space technology and their dominance in planetary exploration. JFK gave them a dream and a target. That's it. The rest was all about the American people : The scientists, the researches, the thinkers, the teachers, the man on the street. They made it happen. They made it happen despite the assassinations , the defeats, the changes, the scandals, the downfalls, the successes, the failures of their presidents and politicians. They only needed a direction from their politicians and then they hit the ground running and as no president had ever since indicated that they should stop this adventure, at any given time there is probably 5 or more American ‘eyes’ flying past or are exploring the most distant celestial bodies in the galaxy.

Why can’t an organization be the same? Why do we need constant CEO interventions? Why is this one position so critical to organization’s success? Is that the way it is supposed to be or is it as Lee Wei Lian says of our society, “ We in Malaysia have somehow been brought up to believe that politics is the be-all and end-all of our country’s success”.

So, lets assume that an organization can indeed be like the self governing and self-directed societies that I have used as comparisons above. What shape should the organization be and what type of employees should it have? Firstly, I think the way forward for future organizations is to become ‘Remote-Networked’ Organizations. I am going to call these as RMOs (no pun intended and remember I am the first to use it!).


Can this happen? I wonder...