The Myth of Leadership

When we join an organization, we're immediately slotted into a hierarchy based on a rank-based system of "leaders" and "followers." We then make false assumptions about our place in these hierarchies that divide our efforts, limit our growth opportunities, and rob us of meaningful, dignified work. These assumptions are what Jeffrey Nielsen calls the "myth of leadership." In this unconventional book, Nielsen calls for an end to "rank-based" organizational structures, which foster secrecy and miscommunciation, and steal the joy from work, while breeding corruption and abuse of power. Nielsen's new model is the "peer-based" organization, which uses rotating peer leadership councils and cross-functional task forces to manage the organization's work. These new entities are better suited to making decisions based on the organization's competencies and customer needs, rather than on static functional groups or other artificial divisions.