Mary Uhl-Bien's research and teaching interests are in leadership and ethics. Widely published, Dr. Uhl-Bien has been active in research, consulting and management development both nationally and internationally. She has consulted with Disney, British Petroleum, and the General Accounting Office, and she served as the executive consultant for State Farm Insurance."There is a sea change going on in leadership, involving a shift from a hierarchical way of thinking to a connectionist, networked view."
Connectionist buzzwords:
- Collaboration
- Innovation
- Integration
- Connectivity
- Adaptive Work
- Distributed Leadership
This doesn't work in the Knowledge Era (Network Age), because attempts to create "integrated" organizations actually results in more localism, and greater pushback.
"In the 1990s, when reorganizations happened en masse, there was a changing psychological contract between organizations and employees."
Organizational silos are an Industrial Age artifact. A representative of a major government contractor noted to Uhl-Bien "I wish that we could have a supply chain that goes across 'production' and 'sustainability.'" Right now, the two functions are in unconnected silos.
Historically, the "heroic" leader was connected to the idea of managerial leadership, where the leader was a "lone ranger, isolated from those being led and who often commanded his/her organization primaily through the use of top-down directives."
In the Knowledge Era, leadership is a behavior, not a role.
Question from the room: "Sarbanes-Oxley is forcing silo'd behavior...how do we get around it?"
A: "We need adaptive solutions that come from the people in the organization, not from the top. When we drive bureaucracy, we drive silos. We want to take a different approach and drive this from inside the organization."
There are two kinds of power: "positional" power and "personal' power." Millenials don't care for positional power, and prefer personal power.
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