What Does Post-Bureaucratic Leadership Look Like?

Remember that classic New Yorker cartoon with Rover sitting in front of a computer? The caption read, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Well, on the web, no one knows you're a senior vice president either. That's why every leader is going to have to learn how to get things done in a world where authority is the reciprocal of followership.

As traditional hierarchies get supplanted by networked, or "social" organizations, leadership will become less a function of "where you sit," than of "what you can do." Any company that strives to build a leadership advantage will need more than a celebrity CEO and a corporate university that serves up tasty educational morsels to the "high potentials." It will need an organizational model that gives everyone the chance to lead if they're capable; and a talent development model that helps everyone to become capable.

What does it take to dramatically enlarge the leadership capacity of an organization — and equip all of its people to lead without formal authority?

Those are the questions behind the Leaders Everywhere Challenge, the second leg of the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation. And today we're proud to announce the eighteen finalists. This is a robust collection of real-world case studies and courageous experiments in rethinking the work of leadership, redistributing power, and unleashing 21st century leadership skills. Here they are in alphabetical order:

Biggest-Ever Day of Collective Action to Improve Healthcare That Started With a Tweet

Story by Helen Bevan, Damian Roland, Jackie Lynton, Pollyanna Jones

Using Micro-Learning to Boost Influence Skills in Emergent Leaders

Story by Mark Clare

Reweaving Corporate DNA: Building a Culture of Design Thinking at Citrix

Story by Catherine Courage

Teaming at GE Aviation

Story by Rasheedah Jones

The System of Leadership

Hack by Monique Jordan

Total Volunteer Force for the U.S. Military

Hack by Timothy Kane

A Tale of Two Captains: Making the Case for the Universal Applicability of Leaders Everywhere

Story by Charlie Kim and David Marquet

Don't Remove Their Igloos!

Story by Peter King

Co-Presidents: Distributed Leadership at The Nerdery

Story by Mark Malmberg

The Power of Employees to Overcome the Bank Crisis

Story by Valerie Martens

The 4-Hat Hack: How a Micro Change in Your Employee Portal Can Yield Mega Results in Leadership

Hack by Joel Modestus

Rap a Tap, Tap Tap, Join TITAN and You Are the Leader

Story by Lalgudi Ramanathan Natarajan and Sumant Sood

What Goes Into Building a CEO Factory?

Story by Stephen Remedios

Empowering Intrapreneurs within the Federal Government at NASA

Story by Kevin Rosenquist

Integrity, Rationality and Collegiality: Ingredients for Greatness

Story by Marcus Ryu

Who Do People Report to Here?

Story by Richard Sheridan

Project 10X: Growing the DNA for 21st Century Leadership in Organizations

Hack by Max Shkud and Bill Veltrop

Quit Email and Start Leading

Hack by Kim Spinder

Please explore the finalist stories and hacks and add your comments and ratings — they'll make a difference as finalists update and build on their entries for final judging. We'll announce the winners of the Leaders Everywhere Challenge the week of August 19th.