Supercorp by Moss Kanter Rosabeth

Author:Moss Kanter, Rosabeth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 1999-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The restructurings of companies such as Omron and P&G in the past decade have been aimed at not only reducing layers but empowering the people at the interface with customers. For IBM, a solutions orientation means those dealing with customers should be the ones to integrate IBM with customers, taking innovation from any part of the company to apply to customer needs with a minimum of organizational or operational barriers, by requesting and negotiating for resources directly, without going up one hierarchy and down another.

Letting go of control begins at the top. Banco Real CEO Fabio Barbosa says that he succeeded at implementing the bank’s strategy of differentiation by social and environmental responsibility only when he lost control of the effort. In the beginning, projects started with top managers identifying priorities. But a few years after the new direction was established, middle managers started contacting one another to create and execute initiatives that he knew nothing about. That’s when Barbosa felt good—when he was least involved. Similarly, in P&G’s open innovation approach, leaders find they must permit people more autonomy and encourage them to talk directly to colleagues in any part of the company, even if their ostensible bosses are not yet informed.

That shift is not easy when people still think in linear, vertical ways and when career systems still stress management rank over professional accomplishment, paying accordingly. IBMers traditionally saw opportunities as involving moves upward, and people measured themselves by distance from the top, with the top meaning regional and global headquarters. Although facing resistance to locating decision making lower in the organization, CEO Sam Palmisano has made some radical symbolic changes. In Europe, hemoved about five thousand people and two hundred executives above the country level out of European headquarters and back into country organizations. He also elevated the role of account manager to high status, signaling its importance, by asking a few key executives to move from top positions to become executives for big accounts. The example he gave me is a division president whose team had won the technology side of the 2008 Olympics for IBM: “I said to him that this is the biggest job for you: running an account with four thousand IBMers worth $1 billion a year. I said I need you as an example of what I’m tying to do, to demonstrate that this is every bit as important for the highest level below me, to show that we are serious about our strategy.” Good citizen that he was, the president became a former president, and his role became account manager.

Other managers get it. Marcelo Spain, VP for the financial services sector in Latin America, applauds Palmisano’s vision from his office in São Paulo. He manages the relationship between IBM and customers— presales, postsales, and continuing customer satisfaction. “It’s difficult, but I like it because I believe that this is the most important position inside the company. We have to integrate the other organizations and put the customer interest in front.” For

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