The Future of Management

Thomas Friedman did the world a favor by writing 'The World is Flat'. Gary Hammel has done the same. Management is no longer just about the same rules that were so critical during the industrial age. Gary Hammel talks candidly about the the current static state of thought in managerial circles and points out the hazards of not changing the way managers look at existing business processes. He clearly outlines the steps that management needs to take to keep itself competitive. Gary Hammel uses real world examples of Google, Whirlpool, WL Gore and Toyota to provide a reference point for all readers. I highly recommend this book for any student of Management.

I just finished Gary Hamel's latest book, The Future of Management. It is absolutely the most inspiring business book I have ever read. Hamel accurately makes the case that management theory has hardly evolved in the past 50 years. There are plenty of reasons why, but the heart of the problem is that restructuring the organization must go through senior executives who are (a) afraid of change, (b) unfamiliar with innovative approaches, and (c) unwilling to relinquish the command and control power they have so deliberately "earned." So it is, quite literally, business as usual. The book carefully dissects examples of companies that have dared to take a radically different approach and been rewarded with extraordinary results. Gore, Whole Foods and Google were all born from visionary founders who were unburdened by history, dogma or business school educations. And even the changes that Lou Gerstner at IBM or A.G. Lafley at P & G were compelled to make are illustrative of the possibilities for gradual transformation in even the most traditional corporate behemoths. I experimented with some of these principles as a CEO, but never had the vision to jump in the deep end. As a result of The Future of Management, I now see how much more powerful, innovative, effective and personally fulfilling businesses can be. This is a must read for those executives who are not too timid to shy away from redesigning the organization. Bill Aho www.atclevel.typepad.com

Through this book, Gary Hamel goes after all the sacred cows of management: all the bureaucratic practices that have been built up over the past 100 years starting with the "scientific management" theories in the early 20th century. He makes a compelling argument that the most innovative companies of the 21st century are going to be the ones that will innovate their management practices. These practices include the planning processes, the budgeting processes, the hiring processes, the incentive and performance management processes. And, he backs it with examples of companies that are leading the way: Whole Foods, Gore and Google. Then based upon these companies and others (e.g. Toyota), he defines some principles of the future of management - a workplace that is as democratic as the countries that the corporation exists in today. And, why shouldn't that occur? Why shouldn't the same democratic principles that the average corporation thrives on be provided to the people who work there? Needless to say, there will be a lot of conflict on the way to this management philosophy, but the companies who get there first will be able to draw the talent in the future, just like Google is doing today. And that will probably be the reason that some of today's dinosaur organizations will be dragged kicking and screaming into 21st century management - or just like the dinosaur become obsolete.

I read a great book called, The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. I found the book to be very well written. I read a lot of business books and many of them are not that well written; however, I still like the books if they are well laid out and organized so often report favourably on them. Gary Hamel is a good writer in addition to having good thoughts. Part One of the book is where Gary challenges us to think. I was contemplating writing an article before I read the book on, "The Power of Excess Resources", or "Is It Possible to be Too Efficient?" Here is what Gary Hamel has to say: Contrary to popular mythology, the thing that most impedes innovation in large companies is not a lack of risk taking. Big companies take big, and often imprudent, risks every day. The real brake on innovation is the drag of old mental models. Long-serving executives often have a big chunk of their emotional capital invested in the existing strategy. In the pursuit of efficiency, companies have wrung a lot of slack out of their operations. Thatâ(tm)s a good thing. No one can argue with the goal of cutting inventory levels, reducing working capital, and slashing overhead. The problem, though, is that if you wring all the slack out of a company, youâ(tm)ll wring out all of the innovation as well. Innovation takes time â" 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. In section one he also explains what a huge percentage of people are not fully engaged in their work at all levels of the company. As English novelist, Ian Forster said, "A person with passion is better than 40 people merely interested." He also talked about too much management with too little freedom. The gist of that message is that often managers are over-managed. Part Two moves into a series of stories about real businesses and real people including: Whole Foods, Goretex, and Google. One thing that I donâ(tm)t like about many authors is when they talk about company success stories, they tend to attribute success to some characteristic they point out when I think they may have pointed out the wrong characteristic so there might not be a link with success. I also note that every circumstance is different at any different time so it is very difficult to take one solution and apply it to another circumstance. Unfortunately, we all still need to think. Part Three talks about our beliefs. Sometimes our past success can lead to future failure. It is all about change. One thing I particularly like about this part is a chapter on Learning from the Fringe which basically points out that many of the better ideas and innovations might not come from the existing business or even the existing managers. They often come from the fringes of the organization or the fringe of the business they do. In Part Four â" The Building of the Future of Management, talks about manag

As he clearly indicates in his earlier books, notably in Competing for the Future (with C.K. Prahalad) and then in Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel's mission in life is to exorcise "the poltergeists who inhabit the musty machinery of management" so that decision-makers can free themselves from what James O'Toole aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." In his Preface to this volume, written with Bill Breen, Hamel asserts that "today's best practices aren't good enough" and later suggests that he wrote this book for "dreamers and doers" who want to invent "tomorrow's best practices today." In this brilliant book, he explains how to do that. In the city where I live, we have a number of outdoor markets at which slices of fresh fruit are offered as samples of the produce available. In that same spirit, I frequently include brief excerpts from a book to help those who read my review to get a "taste." Here is a representative selection of Hamel's insights: "To thrive in an increasingly disruptive world, companies must become as strategically adaptable as they are operationally efficient. To safeguard their margins, they must become gushers of rule-breaking innovation. And if they're going to out-invent and outthink as growing mob of upstarts, they must learn how to inspire their employees to give the very best of themselves every day. These are the challenges that must be addressed by 21st-century management innovators." (Page 11) "Many factors contribute to strategic inertia, but three pose a particularly grave threat to timely renewal. The first is the tendency of management teams to deny or ignore the need for a strategy reboot. The second is a dearth of compelling alternatives to the status quo, which often leads to strategic paralysis. And the third: allocational rigidities that make it difficult to deploy talent and capital behind new initiatives. Each of these barriers stands in the way of zero-trauma change; hence each deserves to be a focal point for management innovation." (Page 44) "Skepticism and humility are important attributes for a management innovator - yet they're not enough. To create space for management innovation you will need to systematically deconstruct the management orthodoxies that bind you and your colleagues to new possibilities. Here's how to get started. Pick a big management issue like change, innovation, or employee engagement, and then assemble 10 or 20 of your colleagues. Ask each of them to write down ten things they believe about the nominated problem. Have them inscribe each belief on a Post-it note. Then plaster the stickies on a wall and group similar beliefs together." Then sustain a rigorous discussion during which all premises and assumptions are challenged. "To escape the straitjacket of conventional thinking, you have to be able to distinguish between beliefs that describe the world as it is, and describe the world as it is and must forever remain." Focus on what c