The Preface from
The Future of Management On Christmas eve, 1968, the Apollo 8 command module became the first human made object to orbit the moon. During its journey back to earth, a ground controller’s
son asked his dad, “Who’s flying the spacecraft?” When the question was relayed up to
the homebound crew, astronaut Bill Anders replied, “I think Sir Isaac Newton is doing
most of the driving now.”
Like that curious lad I’d like to pose a question: Who’s managing your
company? You might be tempted to answer, “the CEO,” or “the executive team,” or “all
of us in middle management.” And you’d be right, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth.
To a large extent, your company is being managed right now by a small coterie of long departed theorists and practitioners who invented the rules and conventions of
“modern” management back in the early years of the 20th century. They are the
poltergeists who inhabit the musty machinery of management. It is their edicts,
echoing across the decades, that invisibly shape the way your company allocates
resources, sets budgets, distributes power, rewards people, and makes decisions.
So pervasive is the influence of these patriarchs, that the technology of
management varies only slightly from firm to firm. Most companies have a roughly
similar management hierarchy (a cascade of EVPs, SVPs, and VPs). They have
analogous control systems, HR practices and planning rituals, and rely on comparable
reporting structures and review systems. That’s why it’s so easy for a CEO to jump
from one company to another—the levers and dials of management are more or less the
same in every corporate cockpit.
Yet unlike the laws of physics, the laws of management are neither foreordained
nor eternal—and a good thing, too, for the equipment of management is now groaning
under the strain of a load it was never meant to carry. Whiplash change, fleeting
advantages, technological disruptions, seditious competitors, fractured markets,
omnipotent customers, rebellious shareholders—these 21st
century challenges are
testing the design limits of organizations around the world, and are exposing the
limitations of a management model that has failed to keep pace with the times.
Think about the great product breakthroughs over the last decade or two that
have changed the way we live: the personal computer, the mobile phone, digital music,
e-mail, the Internet. Now try to think of a breakthrough in the practice of management
that has had a similar impact in the realm of business—anything that has dramatically
changed the way large companies are run. Not easy, is it? And therein lies the problem.
Management is out of date. Like the combustion engine, it’s a technology that
has largely stopped evolving, and that’s not good. Why? Because management—the
capacity to marshal resources, lay out plans, program work and spur effort—is central
to the accomplishment of human purpose. When it’s less effective than it could be, or
needs to be, we all pay a price.
What ultimately constrains the performance of your organization is not its
business model, nor its operating model, but its management model. Hence this book.
My goal is to help you become a 21st
century management pioneer, to equip you to
reinvent the principles, processes and practices of management for our post-modern age.
I will argue that management innovation has a unique capacity to create a long-term
advantage for your company, and I will outline the steps you must take to first imagine,
and then invent, the future of management.
Having said a few words about what this book is about, let me comment briefly
on what it’s not about. While there are plenty of examples and anecdotes in the pages
that follow, this is not a compendium of best practices. It’s not filled with exhortations
to “go thou and do likewise.” Frankly, today’s best practices aren’t good enough. Even
the world’s “most admired” companies aren’t as adaptable as they need to be, as
innovative as they could be, or as much fun to work in as they should be. My
assumption is that when it comes to the future of management, you’d rather lead than
follow. So this is a guide to inventing tomorrow’s best practices today.
Neither is this book one person’s vision for the future of management. While I
will point you to what I believe are some of the most promising opportunities for
reinventing management, I’m humble enough to know that one person’s imagination
and foresight is no substitute for that of a multitude. So rather than try to sell you my
point of view about the future, I want to help you build your own. If you want an
analogy, imagine a course in entrepreneurship where the instructor’s goal is to teach
you how to create a killer business plan. Well, my goal is to give you the thinking tools
that will allow you to build your own agenda for management innovation, and then
execute against it. I can be a coach and a mentor, but in the end, the vision must be
yours.
Nevertheless, I do have a dream. I dream of organizations that are capable of
spontaneous renewal, where the drama of change is unaccompanied by the wrenching
trauma of a turnaround. I dream of businesses where an electric current of innovation
pulses through every activity, where the renegades always trump the reactionaries. I
dream of companies that actually deserve the passion and creativity of the folks who
work there, and naturally elicit the very best that people have to give. Of course, these
are more than dreams; they are imperatives. They are do or die challenges for any
company that hopes to thrive in the tumultuous times ahead—and they can only be
surmounted with inspired management innovation.
So this is a book for dreamers and doers. It’s for everyone who feels hogtied by
bureaucracy, who worries that the “system” is stifling innovation, who secretly believes
that the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle, who wonders why corporate life has to be
so dispiriting, who feels that individual competence and positional power should be
more tightly correlated, who thinks that employees really are smart enough to manage
themselves, who knows that “management,” as currently practiced, is a drag on
success—and wants to do something about it. If that’s you, then welcome.