Leaders: Yammer On!

The January 16th New York Times had a great interview about leadership with Cristóbal Conde, president and C.E.O. of SunGard, a software and I.T. services company. It’s worth reading for all of you who are leaders, who think you are leaders, or want to be leaders. A few highlights from the interview:

PowerPoint doesn’t cut it. It often covers up sloppy thinking. My take: PowerPoint is also boring. I stopped using it in presentations years ago, because I realized how much I dislike being in an audience where the speaker read to me. I already know how to read, and I immediately disengage. Death By PowerPoint just isn’t pretty.

A cool new technology (at least, new to me) is on the market: Yammer. It’s sort of like Twitter, but better for use inside an organization. The way SunGard uses it – particularly to get employees talking to each other about customer issues – is one of the best adaptations of technology I’ve read about recently.

Leadership is changing. Instead of command-and-control, leadership is about enabling and enhancing collaboration at all levels. Information is accessible to everyone all the time, and it’s the great equalizer in today’s workplace. So leaders have to figure out how to motivate and mobilize and recognize employees in a much flatter organization. It’s a whole different way of thinking, and it’s going to change how companies operate.