In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart.
Interpretation
Natural leaders are not always those who hold official titles, but rather those who inspire and guide others through their actions.
In his quote, Gary Hamel highlights the distinction between formal leadership positions defined by organizational charts and the concept of natural leaders who possess intrinsic qualities that inspire others to follow them. These leaders may not have official authority, yet they significantly influence their peers and can often drive change within a company more effectively than those in traditional managerial roles.
In practice
In a leadership seminar to emphasize the value of soft skills over titles.
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value.
The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.
When we're trying to decide whether a leader is a good leader or a bad one, the question to ask is: 'Is he with the Ten Commandments or is he against them?' Then you can determine if the leader is a true messiah or another Stalin.
I believe that every leader has a right to implement his own policy. But when I see things that are done that are not right - abuse of power, wrong approaches, wrong strategies, making use of foreign consultants, including those discarded by other countries - I feel that I have to have my say.
Leadership experts and the public alike extol the virtues of transformational leaders - those who set out bold objectives and take risks to change the world. We tend to downplay 'transactional' leaders, whose goals are more modest, as mere managers.
I want to be represented by people who are thoughtful, self-aware and collaborative. What would a system that elevated such people look like?
When you're at the lower levels in the organization, you need to win and be right. But as you move up, you need to let other people win and be right, and become a manager and delegate responsibility.
Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise and humility. Almost none manages to do so.
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