Book review: The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel with Bill Breen.
Gary Hamel’s latest book, The Future of Management comes at a time when many companies, especially those in the U.S., face overwhelming competition from Chinese and Indian firms, not to mention established competition from Japan and Western Europe.
Hamel asks if companies constantly innovate new products, and improve existing ones, why don’t they do the same to their management approach? This might imply a change in management style away from a militaristic command-and-control model of past centuries, to a latticed, network style of management birthed out of how the Internet has changed the way we think of information and communities.
Employees aren’t 13 anymore
The Future of Management focuses on three companies: Whole Foods, WL Gore, and Google. Despite their shortcomings, these companies have adopted a management style that respects employees as adults, not as children who need clear boundaries to their freedom.
Hamel says, “To a large extent, managers play the role of parents, school principles, crossing guards and hall monitors. They employ control from without because employees have been deprived of the ability to exercise control from within. Adolescents outgrow most of these constraining influences; employees often aren’t given that chance. The result: disaffection. Adults enjoy being treated like 13-year olds even less than 13-year olds.”
The book implies we will need less managers in successful organizations of the future. The best companies will be those where employees have the power to innovate, not just the duty to follow orders.
It’s surprising that Mr Hamel’s latest book has attracted so little attention since its publication in October 2007. Perhaps it’s because it questions the effectiveness of business schools to turn out graduates capable of root-and-branch management innovation. Could it be that even these venerated institutions simply propogate the status quo?
