Tune Into Global Conversations

It may seem odd to refer to the daily torrent of emails, tweets and posts as conversations, but in reality they are. Collaboration software and mobile apps make it possible for these conversations to connect practically everyone in the organization — and to distribute information and authority much more widely than ever before.

Smart leaders listen ahead — anticipating and shaping the way conversations move next — by inserting questions that stimulate or re-direct the conversation. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff actively participates in conversation threads in order to stir the pot and keep current on the ways programmers and customers test the limits of his company’s products. His goal, like many of the leaders we interviewed, is to establish a presence that reliably represents who he is and what he stands for so that in the decentralized world of autonomous teams — that his company’s software has helped create — people can formulate strategy, make decisions and deal with ambiguity.