The teeth-to-tail ratio is an expression that conjures up the image of a scorpion-like creature waiting to put on the bite. Actually it’s a fairly innocuous military term. You would be hard-pressed to guess whether a high T2T ratio is good or bad. When there are a lot of teeth and less of tail, it means its an aggressive army, but with very little support staff. Obviously, all tail and no teeth can’t be a good thing either. As with all slick-sounding concepts, management jargon has appropriated T2T too. It has been used to define organisations with a public-facing staff and a back end. For instance, Aquaguard door-to-door salesmen are the teeth while the engineers and the manufacturing staff are the tail. A debate has now started about looking for leadership in such companies. It wasn’t so much of a problem earlier; the system always threw up somebody. Now, however, there is a feeling that in many cases such organisations don’t even need formal leadership.

Today’s social movements seem to be following this pattern. In the recent protests in Delhi, there was much action — and violence. There was certainly a lot of teeth on display. There was also a tail — the silent majority. What was absent was a very obvious leader. “In tomorrow’s world, people will get together for assignments,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “They will all add their skills to the pot, get the job done and then disband. Individual members will go on to become parts of other groups to participate in other assignments. It is a sort of freelancer paradise. And there is no need for a leader anywhere here.”

This sounds very good in theory. But will it work in practice? Some companies — particularly in service areas like law or consulting — have tried out such collaborative working. There are no CEOs, but it has often been necessary to have a token head. All are partners, but there is also a managing partner. Singh sees a tomorrow in which there are a handful of very large organisations, many perhaps governments. They will be serviced by transient workforces.

The move towards this is already visible in the growth of temporary workers. A short while ago, the Bangalore-based TeamLease, a staffing firm providing temporary workers, almost became India’s largest private sector employer. The company hopes it soon will.

This debate — partly academic — has gained currency because of a recent decision by Internet major Yahoo to ask its work-at-home staff to report to office for duty by June this year. The company seems to feel that this will instil a togetherness necessary in a crisis. Yahoo, once an Internet powerhouse, is finding itself increasingly lost in a fast-changing digital world.

Employees, on the other hand, haven’t taken kindly to such summons. The argument about teleworking was that it saves on commuting time. More importantly it avoids commuting stress. Even when the worker spends eight hours in office, he is not at his peak productivity.

Whatever Yahoo’s intentions and final achievements, the move has provoked another discussion. If most of your workers are going to be employed at home, where will you find the next generation of leaders? (For large organisations, of course, a leaderless enterprise is a contradiction in terms.)

Yet even behemoth IBM has been talking about a virtual headquarters and a CEO from any geography. When, in the future, most of its employees are physically based in India though working virtually around the world, it will make little sense to have a CEO in the US. For the moment, however, leadership retains its traditional attributes. Some things change (see box). But if you look at what it takes to become a hotshot CEO, there is probably little difference from the prescription of a decade ago.

10 FOR 2013

Skills today’s leaders require

Strategic thinking. Look at the big picture.

Collaboration. Take everybody along.

Emotional intelligence. The softer touch.

Critical thinking. Go out of the box.

Communication. Talk, talk, talk.

Motivation.

Feedback. Tell, tell, tell. — Tough conversations. Tell it as it is.

Coaching.

Making values visible and viral. Spread the message.

Source: What great bosses know, Jill Geisler