Fired without notice >> The news that a 58-year-old, experienced specialist has been fired makes the rounds among his friends. He had to clean out his office under supervision and fight for the benefits that had been guaranteed in his contract. He had never done anything wrong at all. 

Even though such situations may be “merely” the “regrettable” isolated cases, the effects on a company’s reputation are enormous. The power exercised by the employees in our world, now that it has become transparent, is not fully appreciated. 

Do these examples of “superiors” and our preconceptions demonstrate that nothing is changing in the transparent everyday routine of management? That is not the case. Technology-driven ­transparency in combination with the parallel global social developments has a major effect on management work. The constant flood of information makes it more difficult to make decisions, and short time ­frames demand the ability to adapt rapidly. Electronic transactions of every kind are changing the way we cooperate and allow enterprises to maintain leaner corporate headquarters, which also carry out their duties more and more independently of location. In such an environment, the business units of a company which are working independently are held together solely by their products and the most important goals and values according to corporate policy. The proportion of knowledge experts among the staff rises, making great demands on management work because the issues here are highly complex, in no small part owing to the greater demands concerning environmental protection and legal disclosures. Conventional knowledge is more and more frequently of little consequence, even misleading, which is why managers must be open to new ideas and to rethinking of former positions as never before. The essential core of effect-oriented corporate management in this transparent world is the management capability – at every workplace.  

Leaders and followers are becoming closer than ever before. The latter are just as significant as ­leadership: what counts is the performance of the staff as a whole. As everyone grows closer together, the ability to think for others is becoming a pronounced feature for the quality of good management work. Whenever this cooperation breaks down, the causes can often be found in a lack of empathy and understanding or simply in poor communication. In this world characterized by transparency, cooperation becomes the decisive basic approach and supplants the attitude of competition.