Preface

This book is the result of an extraordinary event celebrating the distinguished life and career of Warren Bennis. Called a festschrift, a German term for a volume of essays contributed by colleagues as a tribute to a scholar, this event was hosted by the Department of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. The festschrift took place in May 2000 and started with a day-long conference attended by over two hundred of Bennis's friends and colleagues; it concluded with a banquet with almost twice that number attending. The conference honored Bennis's many contributions to the management field and also looked ahead to address his current passion about the future of leadership.

In organizing the conference, we asked Bennis to reveal the important questions that keep him awake at night and challenge his intellect and curiosity. He responded with a series of thought-provoking issues that tomorrow's leaders will need to understand and resolve if they are to succeed. These are presented in Chapter One. We used these questions to frame the conference and to choose presenters who could provide key insights for future leaders. Many of the presenters are Bennis's longtime colleagues; others are more recent friends. Together, they form a remarkable group of scholars and practitioners including many of the leading thinkers in management today and some of the newest crop of young leaders. We asked them to address particular issues in their presentations; we encouraged them to push the envelope and to address the really important challenges for tomorrow's leaders. The chapters in this volume represent their collective wisdom and keen speculations about the future of leadership.

Audience

This book presents valuable insights about the challenges leaders are likely to face as the new millennium unfolds. It identifies the emerging environmental and organizational conditions that tomorrow's leaders are likely to face, and shows what they need to do to succeed in those situations. Executives and administrators, whether in the public or private sector, whether new or experienced, will find this book stimulating and useful for their own understanding and development. The book also offers important knowledge and ideas for human resources professionals, organizational consultants, and organization development practitioners who seek to understand the future and help leaders adapt to it. Academics and researchers who study organizations and leadership will also find the book a rich source of issues for future inquiry and a confirmation or challenge to their own speculations about the future of leadership.

Overview of the Contents

Part One of this book sets the stage for the future that leaders are likely to encounter. In Chapter One, Warren Bennis provides a general introduction to the future of leadership. He identifies twelve challenging issues that leaders will need to understand and learn how to resolve if they are to succeed in tomorrow's organizations. Chapter Two, by Edward E. Lawler III, identifies key technological, political, and economic changes that have combined to make human capital a critical and universally acknowledged element in the effectiveness of most organizations. It shows how human capital can be a source of competitive advantage, and what leaders can do to promote the acquisition, development, and retention of human capital.

Part Two describes the organization of the future that tomorrow's leaders will probably inhabit. In Chapter Three, Charles Handy characterizes this organizational landscape as consisting of large, efficiency-driven firms (called elephants) and small, innovative start-ups and professional firms (called fleas). He argues that flea organizations will proliferate and grow in importance; they will provide new challenges for leadership at all levels in society. He describes the characteristics of successful flea organizations, the kind of leadership they require, and how those skills can be developed.

Chapter Four, by Thomas H. Davenport, suggests that tomorrow's organizations will increasingly be populated with knowledge workers who require a different kind of organization and leadership from what works for traditional industrial workers. It outlines the characteristics of knowledge work and shows how leadership will need to change to support and develop it. This includes building knowledge-work communities and supportive cultures where knowledge workers can thrive and grow.

In Chapter Five, Steven Kerr argues that organizations of the future will increasingly face problems of differentiation among their employees, customers, products, and competitive environments. He describes how boundaryless organizations can help to organize this diversity by moving money, people, and information across internal and external boundaries. He uses his own experience in General Electric to illustrate how boundaryless organizations work and the challenges they provide for leadership.

Chapter Six, by Thomas A. Stewart, suggests that future organizations will be more like networks than like hierarchies. They will rely less on formal mechanisms for coordination, direction, and control and more on trust among members. It shows that networked organizations need specific supports to create and reinforce trust, and presents tools that leaders can apply to facilitate trust among members.

Part Three describes the leader of the future. It shows what leaders will need to know and do if they are to succeed in the organizations and environments characterized in Parts One and Two of this book.

In Chapter Seven, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner make a strong case that certain leadership lessons from the past will continue to guide successful leaders in the future. They present four enduring principles of leadership and apply them to leading tomorrow's organizations.

Chapter Eight, by Karl E. Weick, argues that because the future will be more unpredictable and unknowable than the past, sensemaking rather than decision making will become the central issue for twenty-first-century leaders. It shows how leaders can help organization members make sense out of their world. This provides members with a common sense of direction and helps them stay in touch with a constantly changing and evolving context.

In Chapter Nine, Philip Slater suggests that in tomorrow's flatter, more fluid organizations, leaders will need to function more flexibly and democratically. This will require a deep knowledge of self and an ability to manage one's personality so that it does not unwittingly thwart effective leadership behavior.

Chapter Ten, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, suggests that for an organization to survive in a competitive environment that requires constant adjustments to changing conditions, leaders must create a context for creativity. They do not necessarily have to be creative themselves but must choose the best people, provide the best information, and recognize and support the best ideas.

In Chapter Eleven, Jean Lipman-Blumen argues that in an age of uncertainty and change, organization members are especially vulnerable to bad leaders who provide them a false sense of security. She describes how members can be freed from this external dependence by discovering their more heroic selves, the leader within, thus providing more leadership talent throughout the organization.

Chapter Twelve, by Cathy L. Greenberg-Walt and Alastair G. Robertson, summarizes the work of the Executive Leadership Research Team at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change. The team's long-term study of the evolving role of leadership shows that future leaders will need to share leadership with others, to lead across different generations of employees, and to meet the demands of a global environment.

In Chapter Thirteen, James O'Toole suggests that leadership can be an institutional capacity, not solely an individual trait. Based on a multicompany study of leadership and organization effectiveness, he shows how organizations can build leadership tasks and responsibilities into their systems, practices, and cultures. This greatly expands leadership capabilities in the organization and makes it less dependent on a single great leader.

Part Four addresses how leaders stay on top of their game; how they continue to renew, energize, and develop themselves. Chapter Fourteen, by Tom Peters, provides a highly personal account of what keeps him fresh, motivated, and curious. It identifies a number of personal traits and motives that drive him forward and account for his remarkable staying power in the leadership field.

In Chapter Fifteen, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argues that the sustaining power of leaders should be measured by how they respond to adversity and not simply by how they handle success. He describes how leaders can be resilient in the face of adversity—how they can turn tragedy into triumph and grow and develop from such experiences.

Part Five provides insights about the future of leadership from young leaders who will be our next generation of top executives. Chapter Sixteen, by Tara Church, recommends that the best way to secure a healthy future for our rapidly changing business, political, and social institutions is to engage youth directly in the dialogue and practice of leadership. It draws on her experience in creating the Tree Musketeers to show how to support young community activists and, in turn, to empower them as leaders of social and environmental change.

In Chapter Seventeen, Edward W. Headington argues that leadership must be considered from a generational perspective. He shows how Generation Xers are developing a servant model of leadership that emphasizes involvement and change at the community level.

Part Six presents closing thoughts on leadership. Chapter Eighteen, by Gretchen M. Spreitzer and Thomas G. Cummings, examines the contributions in this book and the implications of their insights for the future of leadership. In the closing Postlude, Warren Bennis presents a personal memoir of his career, recounting the experiences that shaped his life and fueled his passion for understanding and practicing leadership.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation for all of those who made this book possible. Arvind Bhambri, Judith Blumenthal, and Larry Greiner helped us in designing the conference part of the festschrift and in recruiting the remarkable presenters whose contributions appear in this book. Laura Bristow, Marie Christian, Kimberly Hopkins Perttula, and Luminita Voinescu provided excellent administrative support for the festschrift, while Barbara Myers guided our fundraising and Kim Jaussi administered the process of editing this book. We are particularly grateful to the staff at Jossey-Bass, especially Cedric Crocker and Susan William, who provided generous financial support for the festschrift and helped us to conceive and bring this book to life.