Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

Chapter Eight

Leadership Makes It Happen

This chapter presents three case studies that illustrate how leadership, teaming, and execution-as-learning vary across contexts. The Process Knowledge Spectrum, outlined in Chapter One, differentiates between routine, complex, and innovation contexts (see Figure 1.2 and, in Chapter Seven, Table 7.2). In this chapter, we look at real-life situations to see how leaders assess uncertainty, mobilize people, and meet their goals in each of these three contexts. To be effective, learning and teaming must be tailored to the context, taking into consideration the level of process knowledge available.

The first case looks at a company in a setting that is undeniably routine—the manufacture, sales, and distribution ...