Customer Reviews

E-Leadership

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The title is a bit misleading, with the focus of the book more on Harvard MBA management techniques than Internet insight. But true to its mission, the book contains a number of useful ideas about management strategies for the 21st Century. In particular, the book challenges the notion of the traditional hierachical organization chart in favor of relationship networks enabled by the Internet. The book is well written and is an easy read. The stock option compensation idea is out-dated in light of the NASDAQ crash, but many other ideas are intriguing applications of Internet technology.

E-leadership represents Mills' attempt to re-invent himself for the New Economy. He does not succeed.

While Mills has done a fairly good job of gathering a series of individual profiles, he fails to provide a philosophical framework for understanding the central question:

"What qualities are required for leadership in the newly wired world?"

In addition, like many Web-centric management books of this vintage, many of the protagonists and their lessons seem outdated in the era of the post-crash NASDAQ.

While Mills, a former leader in the field of labor relations, brings a great deal of experience to his subject, he fails to bring new insights or disciplined inquiry.

The book begins with wonderful promise, identifying the four key elements of the new economy: business arrays, lattice organizations, global mindsets and speed. These are indeed the key elements, but Mills does not push hard or deep enought to really mine the context he has well described. For example, how do arrays relate to electronic marketplaces and portals? What are the values really needed for the new culture? And with speed, this means our firm needs to connect electronically with other firms to seize the opportunity, what of XML for example in helping this to happen. Then the book throws in a couple of unrelated chapters with no tie into the rest, and it finished with a weak ending. We certainly expect more and Mills is more than able to give us more depth and wisdom. Keep at it!