{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16th year. During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis. We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather –related cancellations). These posts will focus only on books I have presented. My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings. I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward. The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy’s blog entries — though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #21 of 30
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Synopsis presented January, 2008
The Future of Management by Gary Hamel (with Bill Breen). (Harvard Business School Press. 2007).
Ok – this is moving from hard, to difficult, to nearly impossible. Narrowing down my list to just two books a year is proving quite difficult. For 2007, I “skipped” a number of good and valuable titles, including How She Does it by Margaret Heffernan, How by Dov Seidman (that one really is one of a kind, and I hated to skip it), and The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan was practically “unskippable” – few books generated as much buzz. But, I had to choose two, and the two were both important choices: Made to Stick by the Heath brothers, and Wikinomics by Tapscott & Williams. (You can read those posts from earlier in this series, 30 Books in 30 Days).
So, now as I come up to 2008, I’m faced with the same problem: so many good choices! I know I will be leaving out some terrific books, like The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin (how could I skip this book?), and Big Think Strategy by Bernd H. Schmitt. But, again I have to choose. I’ve tried to choose books that I think deal with issues that always seem to crop up — books that approach issues in ways that might “move things forward.” (And, yes, some of the titles I am skipping also did exactly that).
So, the first of my two selections from 2008 is the Gary Hamel book (with Bill Breen), The Future of Management.
One of my most viewed posts ever on our blog was prompted by this question: Which is It? Overmanaged and Underled — OR, Undermanaged and Overled? How about Undermanaged and Underled? I ended my post with these words: “Too many American organizations are, sadly, both undermanaged and underled.”
I think that the evidence continues to mount that companies/organizations need both good leadership and good management. Both are crucial, critical to the success of the organization.
To this book… Why should we care about the future of management? And why will tomorrow’s practices in so many organizations simply emulate the past of management? Here’s why, with one of my all-time favorite sentences:
Every business is successful until it’s not. What’s disconcerting, though, is how often top management is surprised when “not” happens.
Gary Hamel is dealing more with management than leadership in this book, though there is plenty of overlap. He is clear about “the problem” –
Unlike the laws of physics, the laws of management are neither foreordained nor eternal… Whiplash change, fleeting advantages, technological disruptions, rebellious shareholders – these 21st- century challenges are testing the design limitations of organizations around the world and are exposing the limitations of a management model that has failed to keep pace with the times.
Even the world’s “most admired” companies aren’t as adaptable as they need to be, as innovative as they need to be, or as much fun to work in as they should be.
And, he assumes that things will continue to change, so he asks:
How will tomorrow’s most successful companies be organized and managed?… What will managers in bellwether organizations be doing, or not doing, that would surprise today’s business leaders?
Hierarchies may have gotten flatter, but they haven’t disappeared. Frontline employees may be smarter and better trained, but they’re still expected to line up obediently behind executive decisions. Lower-level managers are still appointed by more senior managers. Strategy still gets set at the top. And the big calls are still made by people with big titles, and even bigger salaries… Why does management seem stuck in a time warp? Perhaps it’s because we’ve reached the end of management – in the sense that Francis Fukuyama argues we’ve reached the end of history. If liberal democracy is the final answer to humankind’s long quest for political self-determination, maybe modern management, as it has evolved over the last century, is the final answer to the ago-old question of how to most effectively aggregate human effort.
Or maybe not. (emphasis added).
Mr. Hamel likes management – praises management. Here is such a wonderful reminder:
If you have two cars in the garage, a television in every room and a digital device in every pocket, it is thanks to the inventors of modern management.
But, as society changes, management needs to change also.
To put it bluntly, management innovation pays. …management innovation is anything that substantially alters the way in which the work of management is carried out, or significantly modifies customary organizational forms, and by so doing, advances organizational goals. Put simply, management innovation changes the way managers do what they do, and does so in a way that enhances organizational performance.
He asserts that the future has (always) belonged to management innovators:
Histories most consistently victorious armies and navies have been those that were able to break with the past and imagine new ways of motivating, staffing, training, and developing warriors. They have been management innovators.
and
Innovation comes in many flavors: operational innovation, product innovation, strategy innovation, and of course management innovation. Each genre makes its own contribution to success, but if we were to array these various forms of innovation in a hierarchy, where higher tiers denote higher levels of value creation and competitive defensibility, management innovation would come out on top.
One provocative thought from Hamel is that the more efficient an organization, the more difficult it is to innovate…
In the pursuit of efficiency, companies have wrung a lot of slack out of their operations. That’s a good thing… The problem, though, is that if you wring all the slack out of a company, you’ll wring out all of the innovation as well. Innovation takes time – time to dream, time to reflect, time to learn, time to invent, and time to experiment. And it takes uninterrupted time – time when you can put your feet up and stare off into space. As Pekka Himanen put it in his affectionate tribute to hackers, “… the information economy’s most important source of productivity is creativity, and it is not possible to create interesting things in a constant hurry or in a regulated way from nine to five.”
And – don’t automatically reject the “weird” ones…
Look someplace weird, someplace unexpected, far beyond the boundaries of “best practice.” Why? Because uncommon insights usually come from uncommon places.
Maybe what Gary Hamel is really saying is this – tomorrow’s management has to set a lot of people free (to be their own self-managers):
Can you remember any instance in which something that was assigned to you brought you more joy than something you chose to do? No? Well, neither can anyone else in your company…
In other words, treat people like “people…”
For the first time since the dawning of the industrial age, the only way to build a company that’s fit for the future is to build one that’s fit for human beings as well.
Here are a few key elements that I included in my synopsis handout:
• Management innovation tends to yield a competitive advantage when one or more of three conditions are met
1) the innovation is based on a novel management principle that challenges some long-standing orthodoxy
2) the innovation is systemic, encompassing a range of processes and methods
3) the innovation is part of an ongoing program of rapid-fire invention where progress compounds over time.
And…
“Sooner or later, the Web is going to turn our smoke-stack management model on its head.: Why, exactly is the Internet so adaptable, innovative, and engaging? Because…
• Everyone has a voice
• The tools of creativity are widely distributed
• It’s easy and cheap to experiment
• Capability counts for more than credentials and titles
• Commitment is voluntary
• Power is granted form below
• Authority is fluid and contingent on value-added
• The only hierarchies are “natural” hierarchies
• Communities are self-defining. Individuals are richly empowered with information
• Just about everything is decentralized
• Ideas compete on equal footing
• It’s easy for buyers and sellers to find each other
• Resources are free to follow opportunities
• Decisions are peer-based
Look carefully, (or, not so carefully), at practically any organization, and you see constant shifting in management needs, management styles. It is a make-the-shifts-or-die era. This book will help you think through the ever-shifting world of management, and make needed changes in management processes in your organization.
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Here’s a bonus. The book summarizes what management has been, historically:
• The practice of management entails (has entailed):
• Setting and programming objectives
• Motivating and aligning effort
• Coordinating and controlling activities
• Developing and aligning talent
• Accumulating and applying knowledge
• Amassing and allocating resources
• Building and nurturing relationships
• Balancing and meeting stakeholders demands• and Management processes include (have included):
• Strategic Planning
• Capital budgeting
• Project management
• Hiring and promotion
• Training and development
• Internal communications
• Knowledge management
• Periodic business reviews
• Employee assessment and compensations
But the big news in the book is that management has to change, it has to meet those three conditions (above), and then, the new management processes led by new-thinking, new-functioning managers can lead to the next chapter of forward progress for the organization.
You can purchase many of our synopses, with our comprehensive handouts, and audio recordings of our presentations, at our companion site 15minutebusinessbooks.com. The recordings may not be studio quality, but they are understandable, usable recordings, to help you learn.
(And though the handouts are simple Word documents, in the last couple of years we have “upgraded” the look of our handouts to a graphically designed format).
We have clients who play these recordings for small groups. They distribute the handouts, listen to the recordings together, and then have a discussion that is always some form of a “what do we have to learn, what can we do with this?” conversation. Give it a try.
First Friday Book Synopsis 