CONCLUSION

For most of us, life evolves around our job in an organization, so it is important to make that job meaningful, dignified, and joyful. Creating and designing organizations in a way that fosters creativity and cooperation should be everyone's top priority. In our most optimistic dreams, our job in an organization can be one where we say to our neighbor, "You are my peer. You are my equal." We can realize that the only boundaries and barriers that separate us are artificial. For our children and children's children, let this be the generation that transcends these artificial limits and creates joyful and just communities of peers. This is not just a hopeful ideal, but a necessity for those companies that want to have ongoing and long- term prosperity in the coming business environment.

Peer-based thinking builds better, more healthy and prosperous organizations than does rank-based thinking, which creates an organizational culture where people

• Withhold important information and valuable resources

• Try to control others

• Blame others

Organizations need to create a culture where everyone desires, and is able, to do their best to achieve outstanding results for the company. Of course, this would be a peer-based organization. This is a new concept for most people, and it seems so radically different from what most of us have ever experienced . Why should we even believe that an organization can be run effectively without rank-based leaders ? Responding to this legitimate concern requires, I believe, that we first examine how we have come to understand leadership. In chapters 2 and 3 we will see that our concept of leadership has been a function of our history, not an expression of our remarkable , yet mostly unexplored, human potential.