Management 2.0

A recent piece from famed management writer and all-round guru Gary Hamel is worth a quick look. Just in case you thought the whole "everything 2.0" debate was in need of a little more hyperbole, this is Hamel’s basic message:

"Over the next decade or two, it is likely that Internet will grow into the most powerful tool that humanity has ever possessed for boosting human accomplishment…Eventually, the Web may allow each of us to avoid the trade-off between fully exercising our humanity and being a full partner in a grand enterprise, between being enormously creative and enormously productive, between doing the things we love and doing things at scale. Even in its adolescence, the Web gives us reason to believe that such hopes are not entirely naïve."

Call me a gullible old romantic, but isn’t Hamel right basically? Give or take the pesky issues of people, culture, the availbility of talent etc etc, the Internet does seem to hold out the prospect of being able to do both of management’s core tasks at the same time – to amplify and to aggregate human talent.

There's an interesting link developing between the vision of a 'connected republic' as the model for governing into the 21st centiury, the model of connected government that suggests how the public sector itself might operate and then these ideas of a new management approach, telling us something about the way people and leaders in the public sector might find themselves actually working.

Here's one of Hamel's tyically pithy and slightly uncomfortable shots across the bow of lumbering old hierarchies unable to see the damage their management 1.0 instincts are inflicting on the social networks from which all the innovation they crave actually springs:

"Yet as every victim of red tape, myopic leadership, and organizational inertia knows, bureaucracies aren’t very good at amplifying human capabilities. In a Management 1.0 regime, initiative and creativity nearly always take a back seat to conformance and alignment. In such a setting, individuals with a sense of derring-do are labeled loose cannons; those with a large dollop of creative genius are dismissed as romantic dreamers; and anyone who’s truly passionate is likely to be viewed as slightly delusional. It’s hardly surprising, then, that most large organizations are less lively, less creative, and less adaptable—in short, less human—than the people who work there."

Have a read and tell us what you think. Check out Hamel's site too...he's always worth a read.