..The Shepherd and His Flock

“Born of the merger in 1996, … (Novartis) has become a $24 billion corporation. … How can (Novartis) marshal its dispersed, compartmentalized intellectual resources? … Novartis addresses it with a three-pronged strategy: using Web-based technology to foster collaboration within its worldwide workforce; creating a system of development grants (think of in-house Fulbrights) for projects that will make different business units work together; and hosting periodic knowledge fairs to spark ideas.” Wiring the Corporate Brain[2]

In the previous section, I presented my observation about how individuals can connect and lead across organizational hierarchies in the global organization. In this section, we will examine how the enterprise can develop connective leadership. I will again use Dr. Joerg Staeheli and our informally connected effort to illustrate.

In the summer of 1996, Sandoz merged with Ciba-Geigy to form Novartis. By then, I was already convinced that there existed something I named the “knowledge network[6]” which was a term I had coined from an IT term as part of the concept of the “Organizational Mind[7].” I had evangelized in the academic newsgroups for epistemology discussions about the different focus of this terminology to that of the more popular "knowledge management" and I introduced it formally during the merger by reaching out to our Ciba-Geigy colleagues to form the Novartis Knowledge Network of specialists, technologists, and executives. We invited Joerg to join as one of our earliest members.

By November of 1998, Joerg had taken the knowledge networking concept (I realized at the start of this course that it is actually a form of connected leadership.) to new heights. He had formalized it and had started to use the Knowledge MarketPlace as the means in the Connected Era to mentor new connective leaders and had invited me to be one of those leaders. As Gary Abramson wrote in the CIO Magazine, Wiring the Corporate Brain[2]:

“(Staeheli) prefers to see himself as a shepherd rather than a director. The wording is more than symbolic. Novartis's president, Dan Vasella, asserts that knowledge transfer and creation will determine the company's future competitiveness. ‘Knowledge networking’ shows that Novartis understands that making the most of an organization's intellectual assets is more of a cultural than a technological challenge.

(A) few dozen of Novartis's younger scientists and managers (were selected) to become the company's first ‘technology scouts’ in each of its business units worldwide. Their mission is to lead the charge at their home offices in search of promising, cutting-edge technologies and bring colleagues into worldwide, online brainstorming groups that will, hopefully, lead to the development and sharing of those technologies across business units.

To convince the scouts to devote time to the new knowledge-sharing project despite pressures the merger has brought, Staeheli brings his boss, Hans Kindler, head of group technology and a member of the Novartis eight-member executive committee, to rub elbows with the scientists the night before their first meeting and emphasize his sponsorship of the project.”

Today, Novartis is recognized as one of the best run companies in the World, a rare success from the slew of pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions, and its value to its stockholders had increased while the fortunes of many other pharmaceutical companies had declined. It is my sincere belief that part of that success must have resulted from its formalization of connective leadership throughout the enterprise.

For the aspiring connective leaders, please note the authenticity traits that Joerg exhibited. I included and highlighted his view of himself as a shepherd because of the term’s Biblical implications related to nurturing and serving and to working towards the health and the growth of the flock. And his flock was the connective leaders, the technology scouts.

In this section I presented one enterprise’s strategy for developing its connective leaders. Perhaps you could draw inspiration from this section to explore possibilities of your own?

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  • Introduction
  • Table of Contents
  • Methodology
  • Elements of Effective Leadership
  • Strategies for Individuals
  • Muslim Women Leadership Status in the Connective Era>
  • Connective Leadership in the Global Environment
  • Conclusion