Reading List: The Future of Management by Gary Hamel, with Bill Breen
Hamel makes a good case for why modern management is a mature technology. He explains that most of the approaches and tools that we use today were designed to ensure efficient mass production. Our approaches to management reflect this goal—with hierarchical organizations, where strategy is formed at the top and systems are in place to ensure compliance with the edicts of the corporation’s leaders. He says the ghosts of the creators of modern management haunt the halls of all corporations today.
His solution is what he calls “management innovation,” a way of breaking out of old thinking and trying new things. The heart of the book reads like so many innovation books today—challenge current thinking, put in place a process to nurture innovation, and learn from new sources. He includes many stories of managers and leaders that have broken out of the industrial paradigm, but the result is somehow unsatisfying.
Hamel declined to offer suggestions on what the future of management really looks like. While he is right that it is hard to see into the future, all his thinking about how to break out of the old approaches surely gave him some hints about the future. It would have been nice for him to show us his hand.
He is also blogging about the book. Too often, these kinds of blogs just contain excerpts, but in this one, there are some fun contributions by other writers.
