methods – PSleader

September 24, 2011

Launching the Open Technology Foundation with Dr Terry Cutler

On Wednesday the 14th September, we launched the Open Technology Foundation with the organisation’s new Chair, Dr Terry Cutler.

The Open Technology Foundation has been a couple of years in the making, and is an initiative about supporting the use of open technologies, methods and standards across governments. They have participation at federal and state level in Australia, as well as interest from governments overseas.

I think the OTF could be a really useful resource for Australian Governments at a federal, state and local level, not only with their use of ICT, but for the sort of cross-jurisdictional collaboration that will be vital in implementing the Gov 2.0 and open government agenda.

December 18, 2010

The Merits of Leading from the Middle

One of the true advantages I have seen developing within organizations, which utilize Social Media as a true enabler and game changing method of hypercommunications for their people, is the emergence of the leadership philosophy of “Leading from the Middle”.

Through all actors within and around the entity, both internal and external, working in a connected fashion, the organization and it’s leaders benefit from the eyes, ears and thoughts of all of those involved. The below video from Cisco explains the concept, ramifications and benefits of this emerging technology facilitated leadership approach.

To be clear, “Leading from the Middle” is not in any sense abdicating leadership authority or responsibility, as in any case, the final decisions and outcomes are still made by and reflect upon the leader or leadership team.

However, instead of those who choose to just lead from the front or the top in relative isolation, those who choose to lead from the middle harness the combined benefit of all organizational insights, information, knowledge and collective intelligence available to assist in making better, perhaps even the best, decisions possible.

One of the most interesting historical examples of the need and benefits of exercising a more delegated and distributed leadership style was in the case of Henry Ford.