Gary Hamel: Slacker's Paradise #WBF09

At the World Business Forum today Gary Hamel presented new, innovative ways to manage an organization. This model is designed to specifically keep pace with exponential change in our industries and world. Here are some of the qualities of this new management style:

• employees do public performance reviews of their manager, and their manager's manager
• employees each year are required to rank 20 of their peers in order of "value to the company"
• there are no travel restrictions. Employees can travel anywhere they want, on any airline, eat what they want, and stay at any hotel they want. Their trip expense report is posted internally.
• employees with innovative ideas have access to instant funding on the order of several thousand dollars
• employees have the right to say "no" to any meeting request
• leadership is bestowed by calling a meeting where people actually attend because they want to

The visions presented by Gary go beyond "ideas". In fact there are large, multi-national, decades-old corporations that have rolled out these management strategies and are succeeding because of them. Gary's argument is that the command-and-control management structures of the last 100 years have "flattened" out in terms of new innovative management techniques. The rate of change in technology and global markets cannot be addressed any longer by "Management 1.0".

Here are the new challenges that these types of management techniques attempt to solve:

• How can you build an organization that can change as fast as change itself?
• How do you build an organization where innovation is everybody's job?
• How do you build an organization that INSPIRES extraordinary contributions?

The fear of rolling out this management style, of course, is that the corporation will turn into a "slacker's paradise". Employees could come to work each day and do whatever they want!

Hamel argues: not true. This type of management style assumes that as soon as a slacker's peers recognize that they are no longer adding value, the slackers will lose power, leadership, and compensation.

I've long felt that innovation belongs in the trenches, and employees desire to express their unique creativity daily. I've also encouraged my co-workers to run their own skunkworks as a matter of clandestine corporate improvement. Gary Hamel's vision brings this behavior out into the open.

Initiative, creativity, and passion are the desires of the up-and-coming workforce. They'll be looking for corporations that encourage those three things, and avoiding corporations that place excessive value on obedience, intelligence, and intellect.

Steve

http://stevetodd.typepad.com

Twitter: @SteveTodd

EMC Intrapreneur

Comments

[David Klein]

Hi Steve, I enjoy your posts. And I just love your titles... witty, concise, relevant. I actually linked your Gary Hamel post to mine at http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com/2009/10/gary-hamel-corporations-must-change-to.html

I too mention "slacker's paradise" in my Gary Hamel post. When I saw you called it out too, I had to hyperlink my text to your Hamel post.

Hope post-Forum life is treating you well... I'll continue to follow your blog.

Best,
David
http://thepoppedkernel.blogspot.com

[Steve Todd]

Thanks David - I've got your blog on my radar now and hope to connect with you at future forums!

Steve