Leading When You're Not the Boss

Answer the questions that arise when managers and workersneed to adjust to unfamiliar leadership roles and rules in flattenedorganizational forms. Leading When You'reNot the Boss provides a conceptual framework that you can apply whenassessing your own organizations and work. The book discusses the underlyingideas necessary for a shift from a culture of hierarchies to one ofrelationships and the establishment of intrapreneurial and holistic workenvironments. This book supports the trend in many corporations towardflattening parts of their traditional top-down hierarchical management systemsinto more egalitarian, democratized, and distributed organizational forms. Itanalyzes the weaknesses of "management" culture at a time of evermore rapid change and complexity in the business world and illustrates howflattened organizational units increase agility, innovation, and efficacy.Moreover, it discusses how individuals can exercise effective leadershipdespite lacking the command-and-control authority of conventional bosses andways for organizations to cultivate effective "post-management"cultures. 



Especially in the technology sector, large projects havebecome too complex to be mastered by any single leader. Drawing on hisexperience as a senior manager and executive consultant for a number of FortuneGlobal 500 companies, Roger Strathausen analyzes the situations and benefitsthat motivate companies to adopt flattened organizational forms. He shows thatempowering a multi-talented group to manage itself by horizontal cooperationcan deliver products with more speed, efficiency, innovation, and nimblenessthan a solo boss could, while yielding higher employee productivity andretention rates.With an entertaining mix of real-world examples and anepisodic HBR-style fictitious case study, the author illustrates throughout thebook how his leadership lessons can be serviceable only when intelligentlytailored to the dynamic complexities of specific