Inventing the Future of Management

Gary Hamel, through his new organization MLab, invited 30 leaders in management development, education, consulting, and the CEOs of Whole Foods, Gore, Ideo, Google, and HCL (one of the fastest growing IT companies in India) to an “Inventing the Future of Management,” gathering earlier this year. McKinsey sponsored the event along with the London Business School. Gary’s gathering question was “why can’t we bring as much innovation, adaptation, and engagement to our organizations as we do to our development of products and technologies?”

As the graphic facilitator for the event, I was fascinated with the choices these folks made when we asked them to identify the challenges they might take on.

1. Holographic information systems
2. Creating “bungee” chords for people who need change
3. Creating more “liquid” organizations
4. Collapsing the distance between center and periphery
5. Changing models of how leaders lead
6. Breaking up into smaller groups and teams
7. Rethinking how people are measured and rewarded.
8. Systematizing collective decision making
9. Recalibrating ownership incentives
10. Making transparency a feature not a “bug”
11. Replicating enthusiasm and alignment of the best social movements
12. Continuous and instant feedback and transparency of true markets
13. Making organizations as immersive and interesting as computer games
14. Shifting the balance of power; measure something other than R.O.I. for investors
15. Harnessing cognitive surplus
16. Creating emergent, creative, adaptive organizations
17. Finding what it will take to create cultures of innovation
18. Determining how to balance all THREE sectors—private, public and social/
19. How to get around short-term ownership orientation?
20. How to develop purposes beyond shareholder maximization.

At the end of this reporting back, the group had an unsettled feeling that they hadn’t really come up with much new. These challenges have been around for a long time, and many have been faced before. Something was missing.

This catalyzed some to wonder why they hadn’t brought up equity and justice, an enormous problem, or the global warming crisis, or the role of diffuse networks. What about globalization, taxation, intellectual property?

I came away sure that collaboration methodologies will be in high demand, regardless of which challenges turn out to be the most pressing.