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In the groundbreaking The Female Advantage,
Sally Helgesen examined how women's leadership styles transform
organizations. In The Web of Inclusion, Helgesen
takes a quantum leap forward, presenting a broad, revolutionary
approach to management for the postindustrial economy.
The twenty-first-century economy is fluid,
technology-driven, based on creativity and relationships.
Yet most businesses and organizations are still structured
like nineteenth-century factories, forcing workers into
cookie-cutter roles. The model Sally Helgesen puts forth
in The Web of Inclusion represents a fully realized
vision of the information-age organization: the web of inclusion.
A web is natural, organic, not modeled on a machine. Like
a spider's web, a web of inclusion is both a structure and
an ever-evolving process, constantly changing to meet the
demands of the business environment.
Building a web of inclusion means that ideas
come from all employees, not just from the top down; that
what individuals do in the workplace depends on their talents,
not on their titles; that a premium is placed on flexibility;
that the edges of the web of inclusion connect with people
outside the organization: customers, suppliers, joint-venture
partners, the mass media.
Helgesen lays out the theory behind her
provocative vision of a new style of management, then profiles
five organizations that have achieved extraordinary success
by adopting webs of inclusion: the hi-tech Intel in silicon
Valley; the Miami Herald, a traditional media company; Beth
Israel Hospital in Boston; Nickelodeon in New York; and
Anixter Inc., a cable-and-wire vendor based in Chicago.
Each profile vividly demonstrates a different advantage
of the web of inclusion.
Sally Helgesen is the author of the bestselling
The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership,
hailed as "the classic" book on women managers,
and Wildcatters: A Story of Texans, Oil and Money.
A national speaker on issues of social and economic change,
she began her career as a journalist, and later wrote and
consulted for a number of Fortune 500 clients. Ms. Helgesen
grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and lives in New York City.
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