Liberating Leadership: How to Build a Radical Freedom-of-Initiative Organization

Isaac Getz - Professor, ESCP Europe Business School

Wednesday, 14 October 2009 - 7:30 AM Breakfast, 8:00 – 9:00 AM session

Session description

Freedom Form Organizations are so successful and so unusual that to the thousands of people who flock there, these companies look like the realization of a utopia. They rise from disheartening beginnings or decades of bureaucratic stifling to unheard levels of success.

Yet despite phenomenal business results of initiative-freeing organizational environments in such companies as Gore, Ideo, and USAA, attempts to imitate them often fail.

In this session, Professor Isaac Getz unlocks the keys to the radical transformational leadership required to build such "Freedom Incs" - how (and why) the liberating leaders set their employees free to achieve the unprecedented results, and how their lessons can be applied to firms in every industry, of any size, anywhere in the world.

Presenting the results of research involving several dozen companies and their leaders, Professor Getz shows that, though radical, such initiative-freeing environments can and do succeed when leaders adopt a radically transformational, liberating style of leadership.  

This session outlines the key aspects of transformational liberating leadership:


•    How to create intrinsic equality among your employees
•    How to get your employees to own the world-class vision
•    How to build an environment where your employees self-motivate
•    and finally, how to become the freedom culture keeper.
 

Isaac Getz is a professor at the top-ranked ESCP Europe Business School (Paris•London•Berlin•Madrid•Torino) French campus, and was Visiting Professor at Cornell and Stanford Universities and at the University of Massachusetts.  He graduated in Computer Science, and then obtained a M.Sc. in Management Science, and Ph.D's in Psychology and in Management. Before becoming a professor, he worked for several years in the area of Information Systems.


Dr. Getz conducted and published research on diverse topics related to innovation, creativity, corporate excellence, vision, and growth that brought him to around 200 companies.  In 2000, the leading French business review l'Expansion named him among the best 8 professors of Management in Europe. His most recent article “Liberating Leadership” appeared in California Management Review.


Dr. Getz is an active speaker on the topics of organizing for the freedom of initiative, of idea and innovation management, and of corporate excellence and change, and has given numerous executive conferences, keynote speeches, and training seminars on four continents.


Dr. Getz’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Il Sole 24 Ore, Het Financieele Dagblad, Le Figaro, RAI, TV5, TV MBC and other media.
In 2009, he co-authored a new book Freedom, Inc.: Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Profits, and Growth (Crown Business/Random House).

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Isaac Getz, Professor, ESCP Europe Business School

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