Leadership roles are changing. Deborah Ancona, director of MIT’s Leadership Centre explains who will lead the change
Your work at the MIT Leadership Center has given you some fascinating insights into the nature of organizational change. What are the key challenges faced by today’s leaders?
The number one question we are seeing at the Leadership Center is, ‘how should we approach going global?’ Leaders want to know how to set up operations around the world and get them up and running quickly, while keeping them coordinated with the rest of the organization. The challenge is to be innovative, to be entrepreneurial, to meet customer needs and to build on emerging technologies and trends, but maintain alignment across those efforts.
Recently at MIT, we had a ‘visioning’ session where leaders went through the process of honing in on what was important to them by talking about their ideas through stories, analogies and metaphors, and then linking their ideas back to key values in the culture of the organization. By framing their vision in a compelling way, they were able to paint a picture of what the organization could accomplish in the future.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]