Ideas Made to Matter
Why distributed leadership is the future of management
Managing the future of work requires a nimble mindset focusing on small, short-term wins, and a ‘cultivate and coordinate’ approach to leadership.
Apr 19, 2022
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Deborah L. Ancona
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Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, a Professor of Organization Studies, and the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Her pioneering research into how successful teams operate has highlighted the critical importance of managing outside, as well as inside, the team’s boundary. This research directly led to the concept of X-Teams as a vehicle for driving innovation within large organizations. Ancona’s work also focuses on the concept of distributed leadership and on the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organizations to foster creative leadership at every level.
She is the author of the book, X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed (Harvard Business School Press) and the related article, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” (Harvard Business Review). In addition to X-Teams, her studies of team performance have also been published in the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. Her previous book, Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes (South-Western College Publishing), centers on the skills and processes needed in today’s diverse and changing organization. Ancona has served as a consultant on leadership and innovation to companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bose, Takeda, Li & Fung, OCP, Accenture, ASA, and has served on the Board of the Penn Graduate School of Education and the working group of the Canadian Council of Academies.
Ancona holds a BA and an MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in management from Columbia University.
Honors
Ancona wins Jamieson Prize
Publications
"Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite."
Ancona, Deborah, and Dennis N.T. Perkins. Harvard Business Review, January 2022.
"Shifting Team Research after COVID-19: Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change."
Ancona, Deborah L., Henrik Bresman, and Mark Mortensen. Journal of Management Studies Vol. 58, No. 1 (2021): 287-291.
"The Overlooked Key to Leading Through Chaos."
Ancona, Deborah L., Michele Williams, and Gisela Gerlach. MIT Sloan Management Review, September 8, 2020.
"Five Rules for Leading in a Digital World."
Ancona, Deborah. MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2020.
"Walking the Line Between Creativity and Chaos."
Ancona, Deborah, and Kate Isaacs. Latin Trade,, October 20, 2019.
"How to Give Your Team the Right Amount of Autonomy."
Ancona, Deborah, and Kate Isaacs. Harvard Business Review, July 11, 2019.
Recent Insights
Ideas Made to Matter
The 3 leadership types in a nimble organization
Entrepreneurial, enabling, and architecting leaders work together to power idea-driven organizations.
Nov 1, 2021
Media Highlights
Press
Source:
Harvard Business Review | HBR IdeaCast (Podcast)
How understanding your family dynamics can improve work
By applying a concept known as family systems theory, managers and leaders can understand how their past influences their behavior.
Press
Source:
Harvard Business Review (Opinion Piece)
Family ghosts in the executive suite
"Professional growth can get stymied for all sorts of reasons. But one of the most important is rarely discussed: ... ghosts from your past."
Press
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The Economic Times (India)
A nimble organisation adapts quickly to an exponentially changing world....
"The pace of change is accelerating swiftly. A nimble organisation adapts quickly by having three types of leaders."
Press
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Inside Higher Ed | Leadership & StratEDgy Blog
Teaching leadership
"...any kind of leadership...in today's fast-paced, complex world really needs 'distributed leadership'–leadership at all levels."
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Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how technology, people, and processes combine to create and deliver value. This exciting new digital transformation education course introduces the concept of Algorithmic Business Thinking as a toolkit, mindset and digital language for uniting and augmenting your human and digital capabilities that helps you discover and uncover new opportunities throughout your digital transformation journey.
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The Founder to Family program helps founders, or first generation families-in-business, build a bridge to the next generation. Founders and their family members learn to position their companies and families for ongoing success amid a fast-changing business landscape and increasing family complexity. Structure the planning of your transition to the second generation—no matter how distant or close that transition may be. Keep your family business on a path that builds upon the founder’s groundwork and grows value for another generation or more. Accelerate crucial conversations among the founder and his/her family members to resolve issues and set plans for sustaining family and business success.
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