No conventional management model will tackle the challenge
No amount of skunkworks, co-creation, just-in-time, incubation, total quality management, high performance teams, intrapreneurship, design thinking, re-engineering, learning organisation, knowledge management or customer centricity will meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the emergence of technology and the pace of change.
No conventional organisation will tackle the challenge
Executives are not necessarily champions of bureaucracy, but most are comfortable at the top of ‘their’ hierarchy. For some time now, we have been refining operating models, flattening hierarchies and simplifying processes.
We have embraced empowerment, but not distributed executive authority. We have invested heavily in innovation, but based on the same hierarchical patterns. We have evangelised the need for change, but our people do not understand how to do it.
Unprecedented challenges requires more than a future-fit management fix
Yes, we need control, discipline, focus, accountability – but if a company is to outpace the future, employees and team members need freedom with responsibility.
As Gary Hamel puts it: We need a set of radically new management principles and processes that will help us take advantage of scale without becoming sclerotic, that will maximise efficiency without stifling innovation, that will strengthen discipline without extinguishing freedom. We can cure the core incompetencies of the corporation – but only with a bold and concerted effort to pull bureaucracy up by its roots.
