5. Open Environment and Open Leadership
In the previous chapter, we explored what it means to have an open culture and how we can enable teams to build this into their way of working from the ground up.
When we talk about having empowered, self-organizing, self-directing teams, many enthusiasts will say that management is supposed to just get out of the way and disappear! Some will say if teams have true empowerment, surely they don't need to be managed and they don't need managers.
Differentiating between leadership and management is important here. We want teams to manage the organization themselves from the bottom up and for leaders to set direction and intent that enables that behavior throughout the organization. This is how open organizations such as Red Hat are led.
Jim Whitehurst, former CEO of Red Hat, defines an open organization as an organization that engages participative communities both inside and out – responds to opportunities more quickly...