Chapter 10: Why Knowledge-Driven Corporations Should Invest in Developing Emergent Response Leadership for both Face-to-Face and Far-Flung Teams

Experts have used the term “leadership” to describe many different phenomena. This is confusing to corporate executives who must prepare for the rapidly approaching knowledge era. Most corporate managers have used this term to mean apples, oranges, and fruit salad. The question is, Can we discover something unique in this basket of different definitions that is not merely romantic or great sounding? Our answer is that we have found only one that is more than an empty compliment. Others may also be found later to have some utility for corporations. We call it emergent response leadership, or ER-L. We have worked for 40 years to distinguish it from the other 61 definitions of leadership as found by Stogdill. We have witnessed it in operation many times and understand through research how top management can develop it for use at proper times. It was beautifully described in The Soul of a New Machine, but unfortunately, although the corporation was a knowledge-driven one, top management failed and figuratively killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Clearly, it does happen and it needs to be understood at least to the extent that top managers can nourish and properly care for said goose. We see ER-L as playing a more fundamental role in the new knowledge-driven corporation because it taps into underemployed human potential to reach promotional goals beyond their pay grades. For those new executives from Generation X (30–40 years old), the challenge is to persuade themselves and their Generation Y (14–29 years old) employees that new knowledge must be found and implemented successfully for the corporation to survive in the knowledge era, and ER-L will be required.