Empower the followers

WSJ: Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers (subscription may be required)

I suppose it is encouraging to see a Harvard lecturer and the Wall Street Journal focusing attention on what many (most?) of us in the KM space have known for ever....that it's is the little guy, the masses, the worker bees in an organization that make or break that organization. Can the 'C' level staff make an organization successful. No. It's really the lower-ranking employees in an organization that make it successful or kill it off. Keeping the rank-and-file informed can make a company successful, not keeping them informed can kill.

This is true for every aspect of an organization; from sales, to customer service. If organizational change is to happen the lower ranking staff need to be informed and enabled so that change can be made. Without staff buy-in organizations will not be successful. Sure, the sheer inertia of large organizations keep them going but eventually things become so tangled, the staff so demoralized that a wall is hit and success becomes failure.