The End of Leadership as We Know It

2It's Not About You

Ivan Berg, vice president of Verizon's Business Group, now makes a point of staying in touch with colleagues. But when he joined the company in 2002, he didn't think about relationships. Initially he kept his head down, focused on developing his expertise, and relied on his supervisors to serve as his advocates. Fortunately for him, he got the wake‐up call early. His manager and that manager's manager suddenly left the company, one on the heels of the other.

“Looking around,” he remembers, “it was the most alone I've felt. My support structure just disappeared. It was really humbling. I realized I hadn't built any relationships outside my chain of command.”¹ At the time, he worked in service delivery as the customer interface for new enterprise customers.

Berg knew he had to rebuild his network. He started by mapping out all the internal teams involved in activating a new enterprise account. He met with colleagues in orders, engineering, site survey, construction, provisioning, and field tech. All of them were relevant to his work in shepherding companies as they started up with Verizon service, but he hadn't spent any real time with them.

“I was humble and nosey because that's how you learn,” says Berg. “I asked how they did what they did.” After building a new set of internal relationships, he applied the same approach with customers, suppliers, and even competitors. Berg started to treat staying in touch with people as part of his job.

That relationship‐oriented ...