“I didn’t take this position for the money,” he said looking at me somewhat smugly and for a very brief moment perhaps too honestly. “I did it for the power.”

I remember the conversation well. It was about 15 years ago. As a consultant then, I was, from time to time, in the offices of business leaders who I was lucky enough to do business with. Obviously this was a case of a young manager impressing me with his new-found power. I could see the glint in his eye as he relished the chance to exercise power. As I sat there, I began to wonder. Has he been telling everyone his motives behind the advancement? Probably not.

I grew up in a family business where I saw at a very young age there was little glory in power. While my Read more …

“You can lead an organization through persuasion or formal edict. I have never found the arbitrary use of authority to control an organization either effective or, for that matter, personally interesting. If you cannot persuade your colleagues of the correctness of your decision, it is probably worthwhile to rethink your own.”

– Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board

In order to build knowledge organizations that are both enduring and of the highest performance each employee has to be maximally connected to their passion and placed in the right role. Doing this requires expertise in eliciting and assessing employees’ passion for their work as well as being able to fully understand the complexities and challenges of the work at hand. Rather than leading through edict and the seduction of traditional power, RightPlacing and transformational leadership (both of Read more …