The conclusion that Pasternack has been coming to is that leadership is an institutional trait and not an individual one . Rather than focus on the individual where strategic leadership is concerned, a more holistic approach is needed which examines what leaders do and how followers behave . The new style of leadership will have to harness both of those energies. As Pasternack noted in Davos, The challenge is to strike a balance and get the right business model for your own organisation. 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 had a triangle round it. That diluted the message, he said. Similarly, when he headed up Oracle s reorganisation 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. You can t go above list prices in Korea or below list prices in Australia, he said.