[Through their new ideas,] managers can improve their company's competitive positioning. Fidelity Investments Inc. and The Charles Schwab Corporation are good examples of companies that are always pumping ideas into the financial services industry, inviting anyone who can to copy them. ... There is significant competitive advantage in having your ideas and approaches become the standard in an industry. After all, you will have gotten there first.

The second advantage of generating ideas is that customers and partners will reward companies that help them solve their most confounding problems. Frequently, collaboration among the company, its partners, and its customers, especially when the company teaches the others every-thing it knows about a problem, can be the most effective approach to solving it.

OLD TENET: Exercise authority to gain control.
NEW TENET: Gain control by relinquishing it.
Traditional managers may be daunted by the prospect of managing in a networked environment - one in which they have no direct authority over many of the people delivering their goods and services. It is often hard enough to motivate your own employees ... without taking on the employees of another company. ... As a first step in a collaborative venture, managers must recognize that they are not in control, and that whatever authority they do have may come only by giving it up. ...

X-engineered management pushes direct decision making down into an organization as well as out into other organizations. ... It's up to the leaders to challenge minds, capture hearts, and allow others to make decisions and reach their full potential. ... First, leaders should recognize that no individual can be well informed enough ... to make all of a company's decisions. The leader's job is to set the larger goals, then make information accessible to everyone involved in executing it.

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