How a leader manages collective emotions can create or destroy enormous market value. It can also have a huge bearing on what large groups of stakeholders think of you.
One of the reasons Nokia lost the smartphone battle, despite holding a strong position before the iPhone came along, was its lack of speed and inability to react to changing circumstances. As I argued in a previous article, the reason for Nokia’s sluggish reaction was a collective fear among the company’s middle managers, not of the competition, but of losing status and resources within the organization. Continue reading