Download presenation: New Models for Leading Organizations

Dr. Richard Reilly
Emeritus Professor, Howe School of Technology Management, Stevens Institute

What do a world renowned astrophysicist, a Buddhist scholar and corporate executives from companies like Hewlett Packard, Alcatel-Lucent and IBM have in common?  Each of them has something important to tell us about how to lead in the 21st century.  This presentation will discuss how today’s leaders organize communities, engender trust, and span cultural, organizational and generational boundaries through a combination of technological savvy and personal authenticity. 

Reilly and Karen Sobel Lojeski, in their 2008 book  Uniting the Virtual Workforce,  showed how a combination of geographic, cultural, relationship and operational factors can create what they called “virtual distance” between people, teams and organizations -- wreaking havoc with innovation, leader effectiveness, trust, and financial performance.  None of the existing leadership models address how leaders can transcend these challenges to inspire, motivate and sustain vision in the wired world.  Now, based on a series of never-before-published interviews with leaders from Hewlett Packard, Merck, IBM, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T and many others, the authors detail what great leaders do differently to reduce virtual distance and improve performance.  The lessons learned, based on real-life data from the world’s best, provide guidance on how to transform institutions and individuals in the Digital Age.

Richard R. Reilly is Emeritus Professor in the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology.  Before joining Stevens, Dr. Reilly was a research psychologist for Bell Laboratories, the Educational Testing Service and AT&T.  He has been a consultant to Fortune 500 and governmental organizations on issues related to organizational performance.  He serves on the advisory board of the Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity and is a Technical Advisor to the Office of Naval Research ManTech Center of Excellence. 

Reilly has co-authored four books including Blockbusters: Developing Award Winning New Products (2002), The Human Side of Project Leadership (2007) and Uniting the Virtual Workforce (2008), and over 70 publications related to organizational behavior and project and team performance.  He is on the Editorial Board of Personnel Psychology and the International Journal of e-Collaboration, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.  His current research interests center on aspects of virtual work including leadership and trust.  

Reilly holds the Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Tennessee.  He can be reached at richard.reilly@stevens.edu.