People will be People - Organizational Leadership in the Social Age, Part V

People will be People

Have core leadership skills changed since the end of the last century? Do leadership skills that worked in 1909 still work in 2009, in what I call the Social Age?

Perhaps it seems strange to say, but I found part of the answer to these questions when I visited the Guggenheim Museum this weekend. Here in New York, it seems everyone is involved in some aspect of the art trade. Perhaps you love art. Or maybe you take great pride in hating it, but by some miracle you are moved by a particular artist. For example, I was admiring Vasily Kandinsky’s work (1866, Moscow - 1944, France), and I wondered how he was able to influence others and how others influenced him. In some ways the things I discovered about Kadinsky help to answer the question about leadership skills from one century to another.

Kandinsky dedicated his life to transforming the arts. His leadership created one of the most intriguing and precise works of art, which brought the concept of abstract art to new levels.  Kandisky’s abstract work, with its seemingly nonchalant composition, required an incredible effort and painstaking planning. The result was an alluring freedom of expression that even today fascinates its viewers.

However, leaders like Kandisky didn’t work in isolation. His friendship with Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) greatly influenced his work in surrealism.  But Miró also knew Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), who influenced current artists with the Cubism movement he started. But Picasso was also friends with Antonio Gaudí (1852–1926), who shared with Picasso his passion and joy for the Catalan way of life.  Gaudi’s leadership revolutionized architecture with new modern and individualistic designs.

Does this sound familiar?  Leadership is an organic process that grows from knowledge exchanges, relationships, and contact with other great leaders. Barcelona and Paris were hubs of great art inspiration in the early 20^th century. Artistic knowledge and ideas were freely exchanged. Today this process of tacit knowledge exchange is sometimes called “local knowledge spillovers.”

Kandisky’ leadership depended on a network of other leaders that shared his passion for art. This network, combined with an environment that facilitated knowledge transfer, were key to his success.

Today we find a lot of economic evidence about the power of social networks, and about which environments best facilitate knowledge transfers. For example, we see the way leadership around technology innovation seems to happen more frequently in Silicon Valley and in cities like New York and Boston. If venture capital investments are any gauge, money tends to be attracted to these knowledge centers, where a vast network of innovators shares their passion to build new companies.

Social networking is just as important in the 21^st century as it was at the turn of the 20^th century, when Kandisky was having coffee with Miró in Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Today, armed with a collection of electronic social networking and collaboration tools, we can become more effective than ever. Now we can use these tools to reach out to millions of people. Without leaving the comfort of our homes we can efficiently collect knowledge, and influence and touch others with our thoughts.

Perhaps most importantly we can organize communities that span the entire globe, allowing those communities to focus on problems affecting our wider society.   

Leadership today is measured by the extent to which we are able to utilize these new electronic networking channels.  Effective leadership in the social age is as dependent on people as ever. But now leaders need to embrace social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and many others to carefully brand themselves and their products.

Finally, always keep in mind that the social networking conversation goes both ways. People buy the goods and services that reflect their values and wants. Good leaders realize that to win they need to be responsive to what they’re hearing from their customers, and make changes based on feedback they receive from their communities.