Sharing Network Leadership

In this book, we elaborate on the dynamic process of leadership sharing in creative project networks by pointing out that the boundaries and relationships of the networks change over time. As the project requirements evolve, new leaders emerge, make their contribution, and move into support positions. This leadership sharing dynamic is a necessary condition for mature LMX and member-member exchange (MMX). This insight about the sharing of leadership within networks directs us to the process of microbehavior being transformed to meso-options and being converted to macrostrategies. This sequence of micro to macro directs us to a marriage of the formal with the informal organization. At this stage we are post Simon, March, and Weick.

This book is about putting authentic people back into the social creations we call productive organizations—warts and all. The design of these organizations is as old as human civilization. It helped construct ancient Greece, Egypt, and China. It was improved in the West by the Romans and in the East by the Chinese. During more recent times it was improved by the British Empire whose command and control models gradually gave way to the knowledge models of today. This book is about how we can discover the alternative processes by which fallible humans use sense making to continuously improve organizations at the macrostrategy level.