HR SPECIAL........................ WHAT’S IN A TITLE?

 WHAT’S IN A TITLE? 

Companies are not only growing physically, but also increasingly empowering young, self-made leaders within the organisation to ‘lead without a title’

    W. L. Gore, an American manufacturing company famous for its unique organisational style has more than 10,000 employees with only three levels in their organisational hierarchy. There is the CEO (elected democratically), a few functional heads, and everyone else. All the decision-making is done through self-managed teams of eight-12 people each. In another remarkable example, Valve a gaming software company and the maker of the Half-Life & Counter strike series, boasts of a completely bossless organisation since its inception in 1996. Their hierarchy is flat, pay is often determined by peers, and the workday is directed by employees themselves. “In today’s age where the workplace is evolving and has great generational diversity, it is imperative that we move away from the outmoded attitude towards hierarchy, position and leadership,” says Preethi Madappa, director, HR, Intel South Asia. She states that whether the employees are working on cuttingedge technology, marketing, sales or manufacturing, each of them should have an opportunity to contribute to the vision by leading in their own areas of expertise. Dave Anderson, president of Anderson Leadership Solutions responds by saying that “A team with leaders at every level will always beat a team with leadership only at the top.”
    Talking about companies growing, 20 per cent of the world’s websites are now on the WordPress platform – making it one of the most important Internet companies. And still, Automattic, the company behind Word-Press, employs only a few hundred people, who all work remotely, with an autonomous flat management structure.
    Age-old hierarchies that rely on leaders at the top, followers at the bottom, and managers in the middle are slowly disintegrating to decentralise
the concentration of power to empower people at every level. Talking about this, Jaco Le Roux, GM at Grand Hyatt Goa says, “In the current scenario, it is extremely important for each member of a team to take ownership for all their actions.”
    “An organisation today needs to play like a champion football team. A defender may well spot an opportunity and decide to break through and play forward and a forward may sense danger and fall back well into his half. In both cases, having a real-time pulse and sense of the game is critical. It is all about having sight of the larger picture,” advises Joseph George, CEO, Lowe Lintas and Partners.
    Jaco Le Roux says, “The simple act of empowerment will show your employees that you respect them, their decision-making abilities and their work, which in turn, will directly affect their attitude and ultimately the end client.”
    Intel India has programmes like job shadowing or ‘Leader for a Day’, where employees can shadow a leader, and watch and learn from their interactions to ensure that proactive individuals get opportunities and avenues to pilot their ideas by leading small, loosely knit temporary teams.
    Madappa adds, “If you inculcate the concept of leading without a title, it will help you approach your role and yourself with a new enthusiasm. Your work will slowly evolve into a more strategic one where your inventive solution orientation will help you become a valuable and critical team member.” So, the next time you feel demotivated about that promotion you were waiting for, just try leading without a title, as that’s where true leadership begins from!
Yashovardhan Bhatia TAS140414