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King of the Mountain

Executives perform many balancing acts, but one of the trickiest is figuring out how
much time to spend on the nuts and bolts of the business and how much to devote to
the big picture. Each has its dangers, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth
Moss Kanter wrote in a perceptive 1979 article. Too great a focus on the details can
render executives powerless, but too little can result in a destructive form of isolation.

As powerlessness in lower levels of organizations can manifest itself in overly
routinized jobs, so it can at upper levels as well. Routine work drives out nonroutine
work. Accomplishment becomes a question of nailing down details. Short-term results
provide immediate gratifications and satisfy shareholders or other constituencies with
limited interests.

People at the top need to insulate themselves from the routine operations of the
organization in order to develop and exercise power. But this very insulation can lead
to another source of powerlessness – lack of information. Leaders who are cut out of
an organization’s information networks understand neither what is going on at lower
levels nor that their own isolation may be having negative effects. All too often top
executives declare a new humanitarian policy (e.g., “Participatory management is now
our style”) only to find the policy ignored or mistrusted because it is perceived as
coming from uncaring bosses.

The temptation for them then is to pull in every shred of power they can and to
decrease the power available to other people to act. Innovation loses out in favor of
control. Dictatorial statements come down from the top, spreading the mentality of
powerlessness until the whole organization becomes sluggish and people concentrate
on protecting what they have rather than on producing what they can. When everyone
is playing “king of the mountain,” guarding his or her turf jealously, then king of the
mountain becomes the only game in town.

Copyright © 2003 Harvard Business School Publishing.
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Harvard Business Review Online | King of the Mountain

01-Mar-03

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/hbr/hbrsa/current/0303/article...