It’s wonderful—perhaps because it’s so rare—to reread something that you started using thirty years ago and discover that it’s still highly relevant. Desktops were just beginning to show up and technology organizations were starting to use organizational networks. Organizations began to flatten and the need for leading started to surface. The talk was all about leading, not managing.
The Pillsbury CIO had a lot of money but little leadership talent on his team. So he tracked me down and asked me to work with a number of his new managers. I had done some coaching in R&D--as an experiment--and on a fluke, he brought me in.
I’d first encountered leadership material in grad school in the 1960s. I understood the distinction between managing and leading and could observe the differences. I was also quite certain leadership could be learned—a minority position at the time...