In This Issue

Feature
New Leadership in a Web 2.0 World
by Grady McGonagill and Tina Dörffer

Since the emergence of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, an array of technologies and tools has evolved at an exponentially increasing pace. These tools have radically expanded the possibilities for communication and interaction at all levels of society. This shift requires organizations, and those who exercise leadership within them, to understand the new conditions and make appropriate accommodations. The same technologies that threaten to make traditional ways of leading obsolete offer powerful new vehicles for innovation and change, erode boundaries around and between organizations, and foster networks that mitigate risk and facilitate creative adaptation. This article explores the basic features of Web 2.0 as a first step toward understanding the implications these revolutionary new technologies have for leadership.
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Toolbox
Why Lean Works: A Three-Loop View of the Firm
by Michael Ballé

In a 2008 survey, less than a quarter of companies reported achieving significant results from their lean efforts. Why is it that many try lean and fail, but those who succeed do so spectacularly? In this article, Michael Ballé describes how the lean challenge is not to apply lean tools to every process, but to develop the kaizen spirit in every person. He proposes a three-loop framework that explains why a relentless focus on individual development leads to overall performance improvement. Firms that do well in lean are those where the CEO gets engineers to do their utmost to understand customer preferences, engineering and manufacturing work together to come up with workable solutions to technical problems, and win-win relationships are developed with suppliers.
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Pegasus Classics
The Next Great Frontier: Designing Managerial and Social Systems (Part 1)
by Jay W. Forrester

The continued search for better understanding of social and economic systems represents the next great frontier in human development. Frontiers of the past have included creating the written literatures, exploring the geographical limits of earth and space, and penetrating the mysteries of physical science. Those are no longer frontiers; they have become a part of everyday activity. By contrast, insights into behavior of social systems have not advanced in step with our understanding of the natural world. In the first part of this classic 1993 article, Jay Forrester looks at our reluctance to see our social institutions as dynamics systems that have a strong influence over individual human behavior—and that we can influence, once we understand how they operate.
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