Small groups are leading change at the local level, in contrast to the traditional concept of leadership as a strong, select group of individuals. The search now is for grassroots leaders who can get people together and move them into the future. The leader of the future's job is to nurture collective thinking and to model the behavior they expect in others. After seven years as a member of IIDA, I can honestly say that leadership is distributed throughout our organization. The essence of leadership is the sharing of power in a collective effort to reach honorable goals.
Organizations have to work with less top-down control.
The only way to do that, without falling to pieces, is to build an organization that's made entirely of leaders. We have built leadership throughout IIDA and the opportunity exists to distribute leadership as quickly as our members are willing to accept it. This, I believe, is IIDA's competitive edge. Fast Company's June 1999 issue on leadership posed these questions. In a business environment where the clock is ticking faster than ever, it's not the job of leaders to have all the answers.