Manager 2.0 - Key Elements of Leadership Concepts in an Enterprise 2.0 #e20s

I'm at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Frankfurt! I'll be live tweeting through this summit. I'll also try to summarize the talks as they pass by.

The first talk is about "Manager 2.0" by prof. Richard Collin (Grenoble Ecole de Management) and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz (CEO Sony).

Collin wonders if 2.0 is a good extension in Enterprise 2.0. 'It's just a version number'. It doesn't stress enough the future enterprise will be totally different.

A new space is emerging. Not in the economy of good anymore, but in the economy of information. (Before the economy of good there was the economy of territory.) The north point is not north, Dow Jones, but 'you'.

Information is the new steam. The industrial age is passe. And it's moving fast. He tells about how long it took the book and the pc to move into our world. And relates that to the speed in which the Internet moved into our world. This has implications for leadership!

How should be define leadership in this new information era? Here's one: a leader can be defined by an ability to get others to be connected willingly.

Leader for the Enterprise 2.0 era:

• value bricolage strategically
• design tinkering
• etc.

He's the farmer of trust and a skills harvester.

Trust, walk the talk (is critical), you have to be what you see, be transparent, imagine, recognize and give (say merci!), to update and be update, to dare, focus on IT usage and not on the tools, to stimulate, to coach, solidarity and humility.

Now, Rolf Schmidt is up. What defines a great leader?

What defines a great leader? asks Rolf Schmidt, CEO Sony. They are good communicators, good colleagues.

Listening is important. The CEO don't know anything anymore. The distance between them and employees is too big.

You have the power, but don't have a knowledge, this goes for most CEO's. You have to be engaged, says Rolf Schmidt.

Great leaders rarely come out of big companies. Great innovations come from others, smaller companies usually, with constant dialogue.

Hardly any can come up with a great idea on their own. Points to the book and research by Steven Johnson, 'Where do good ideas come from?' Great ideas come to being by sharing.

Social networks (esp. Facebook) are key. The company is a social network. They developed an internal tool, Just Connect.

Discussion:

• Schmidt: Kill the old people... ;-) There's a fantastic young people coming up. Work hard, great marks at university, but they lack common sense. You need that to be a leader. You have to understand people. You have to be forgiving. Personality, you have to learn that at home, because you don't seem to learn that at university. People don't want to be impressed, but embraced.
• Schmidt stresses that we should stop spending time on email and instead spend time on thinking. Then communicate.
• Large companies will continue to exist. But for them to succeed they need to be authentic. Organize yourself in smaller, leaner cells. Decentralize. Give them daily decision power. But you need good people. That's what it comes down to.