Gary Hamel: If this is true, what happens to traditional hierarchy in companies that really get serious about open leadership?

Charlene Li: There's always going to be room for the hierarchy because work needs to get done in a fairly systematic way. But there's also room for a new type of leader, and I'll give you a very poignant example. I wish I could have included this in the book, but it came after it published.

Salesforce has this product called Chatter. Inside the company, and they make it available to companies too. And it's sort of an internal way of using Twitter. So when Marc Benioff had his strategic offsite with the top 300 leaders inside the organization, he invited the top 25 Chatter users, based on their followers and their usage. And so he had those people sprinkled, and they were a part of the leadership.

And I asked him afterwards, where do you take this? If your chatterati and your SVPs are sitting here creating the same amount of value to your organization, where do you take it? He said, we may have to rethink the way that we think about leadership, the definition of it. We may have to pay the chatterati as much as the SVPs because they have as much value.

Gary Hamel: You know, I think that's really what's gonna be amazing about all this because you take this and then you start to do the kind of sociodemographic research across an organization, you understand with different age groups, different constituents, who really has the influence, who is shaping opinions in the outside world.

You start to have a different kind of a hierarchy, but one that's emerged naturally. And that's what Marc is saying. You go onto Amazon and you see the top reviewers. Jeff Bezos didn't say, you're gonna be the top reviewer at Amazon. That person is there because they reviewed a lot of things, and other customers said those are great reviews, they're very informative. Does this ultimately start to shape not only who's involved in decisions but how we compensate people?

Charlene Li: Absolutely. And I think it goes back to, if you get things done not because of authority but because of influence, then you've got to pay the people who have influence. And you develop your learning and development systems based on influence, in addition to authority. I mean, authority has to still be there because there needs to be some sort of chain of command to help things. I mean, companies like [W.L.] Gore, they don't have any hierarchies, right? It's completely done by consensus. And yet they naturally come in, based on the natural work that needs to get done. So it's work-centered hierarchies that naturally fall out based on who is doing it. But it can happen much faster now because of these technologies.

And the beautiful thing is can you marry the two together of having hierarchies that are there to get work done in a very systematic way, but also marry them across divisions and silos through these natural connectors. I look at Cisco and what they're doing with their counselors and warriors, and it's a fascinating social experience. Two-person heading of these things, and it looks like matrix hell. But they are getting so many things done across the organization. It's an example of open leadership, with all of its messiness as well.

Gary Hamel: So can you share with us a few examples of a leader that you think has really understood how to use the new technologies and has done it with great effect? Who would be a benchmark for us there?

Charlene Li: I think that the one person and organization I would think of is Dell, Michael Dell in particular. They started out in this whole space, really being very behind the eight ball with Dell hell back in 2005. But Jeff Jarvis was just going to town about their poor customer service. And they took that to heart and started doing a lot of listening in the blogosphere, started a blog, and one of their first blog posts had to deal with the fact that their laptops were just blowing up spontaneously. And they put up a post that said "flaming notebook" and they linked to a picture of that laptop blowing up. I mean, that's gutsy.

I see Barry Judge and the entire Best Buy management team going through an 18-month open strategy process to say, how do we open up the organization, transform the organization from the inside out? And they started with an internal social network to establish the mindset in the right place. And the most fascinating thing they did was this thing called Twelpforce on Twitter that any employee can sign up for and answer questions from consumers. They have 2,500 of their employees interacting directly with people. Scary for some people, for many people thinking about that, inspirational for other people. And I think that is a key point. If you're inspired by the thought of all of your employees interacting with everyone, or you're absolutely terrified by that thought, that gives you a starting point to say, Where's your mindset in terms of open leadership?

Gary Hamel: I mean, clearly, the technologies-- and you've outlined this point very well in the book -- are just gonna dramatically change how we think about the role of a leader. I mean, when you talk about creating strategy in a more open way, historically, strategy was what was owned by the CEO and a few deputies. And you sat and you created the strategy. And you talked about rolling it out, which means, well, nobody else has been part of this process now, here it is. And typically the rest of the organization may have wondered, how did you get to that particular answer?

But I think for me, this is not simply about how do we be open and how do we communicate. It's, how do you exploit all of the collective intelligence of the organization around the toughest questions you face, like where do we go next and how do we deal with this new competitor? And have you seen organizations-- and maybe Best Buy is an example that has been good, not just more transparent and open, but they've really been successful in leveraging all of that energy and passion around some really focused, tough strategic issues.

Charlene Li: Yes, and I think Best Buy is a great example of that because they are in a really tough space. Consumer electronics, the margins are razor thing, they've got major competitors who don't have to have stores -- Amazon. And so how do you compete at that level? And if you've ever been to a Best Buy store, half the time it's a great experience, half the time it's a horrible experience. We're talking about people who are hourly workers who are there so they can get electronics discounts, that's why they're there.

So how do you promote excellence in that? And it's got to start with those front lines. They have to feel absolutely empowered. So when I asked a question on Twelpforce, I asked, "What phone should I get my son so that it has parental controls?" Somebody writes back to me and says, "Oh, you should get an Android phone because it's most likely to have that." And then the person said to me, online, "By the way--" because they have my location turned on, they said, "Why don't you come by the local Best Buy store where I am on Sunday with your son and we can look at phones together."

Gary Hamel: Yeah, that's pretty incredible.

Charlene Li: That's pretty incredible, right? But the thing is, that should be the norm. Why are we amazed by that? Shouldn't that be the norm? And that's what Best Buy said. They said that should be the norm. That's the level of quality service and power we want to give to our employees.

And that is absolutely inspirational. That's a competitive advantage that they will always have, 2,500 touch points of individuals dying to establish that relationship with customers. Amazon doesn't have that. Wal-Mart doesn't have that. Best Buy does.