Raymond Lane, President and Chief Operating Officer of Oracle, believes that this is core to the issue. It is essential to divorce an organization's development from a focus on a charismatic leader, he says, if for no other reason than succession planning. But, at the same time, there remains the question of why some leaders can succeed in one environment and not in another. The new style of leadership that is needed will have to harness both of those energies. You have to look at what it is that you need to manage tightly and what needs to be managed loosely.
Some issues require alignment.
Lane spoke of visiting Oracle's French headquarters and seeing that the firm's logo was not only in a different colour, but it had a triangle around it. Similarly, when he headed up Oracle's reorganization a few years ago, he found that country managers were used to negotiating pricing with their customers on an individual basis. Now all prices are uniform and posted on the Internet. But there are also battles that are not worth fighting. It is not bureaucratic alignment.