Soft Ownership and Smart Influence
by
Charlie Bess
I was reading a Irving Wladawsy-Berger blog talking about Soft Power, Smart Leadership. In the blog, he stated he was thinking about the:
style of business leadership that is most appropriate in our increasingly flat, globally integrated world, a world in which we are now able to tackle problems of an incredible complexity, in markets that are fiercely competitive and constantly changing, with organizations that reflect the complexity of the systems and markets with which we are dealing. It is pretty clear that the classic hierarchical style of management that served us well in the Industrial Age is not up to the task.”
I was thinking about the parallels to some of the current issues in the Information Technology space. People are focused on intellectual property of software, patents, copyrights and not internalizing the change that open source causes. I’ve mentioned before that open source is essentially a transfer of responsibility (legal, investment and support) from vendors to the operator. I’ll reuse some of Irving’s blog entry to describe the change in thinking that organizations that used to own software will need to go though:
In the IT world, smart executives know that strategic position is not just a matter of patents and copyright, but also involves influencing others by example and attracting others to do what you want. Similarly, contemporary practices of community-based open-source activities rely on making the efforts sufficiently friendly and attractive that a community wants to help them achieve shared objectives.
This is the IT version of soft power – exercising control of the organizations position in the market.
The Long War is perhaps as much about winning the hearts and minds of people and nations as it is about defeating, or at least containing, an enemy that is often hard to find. We thus must focus on the soft aspects of the conflict, because these are the ones that over time could undermine the democratic principles, free markets and standard of living that we cherish. This is why the effective practice of soft power is so critical.”
In this case, “The Long War” is the economic viability of an organization. So, I’ve taken these great thoughts about a nation’s responsibility and the changes in the economic landscape and repurposed them to the more mundane corporate world of IT, but it just seemed to resonate with me.
