The Hames Report

A Proper Job

Given the number of books I still feel compelled to write it is indeed fortunate that longevity runs in the Hames family. My father passed away in his late 80’s and mum died at the grand old age of 97. In the end she was blind and a little bit grumpy but utterly alert to what was going on around her.

Mum had many friends to whom she would talk for hours at a time about almost anything that happened to attract her attention. A true scavenger of trivia, she would eagerly regale anyone within earshot, reciting obscure details about everything under the sun – from the best recipe for egg custard to the mating habits of the common cockroach! Mum was never short of an opinion (or three) and remained curious about life right up to her death.

Which is not that unusual, except for the fact that she was forced to leave school at the age of 12 and was taken into service. She subsequently worked as a maid and later as a cook-housekeeper in the south of England until she was well past 50. But although her education was virtually non-existent, she valued knowledge above everything else. She was a simple woman but a wise one.

In her later years the radio became an important link to the outside world. Each day she would listen to the evening news, often making quirky yet startlingly pertinent pronouncements on the state of things. Her view on terrorism was, quite simply, that the world had gone mad. She couldn’t abide Margaret Thatcher and the air would turn blue if she so much as heard her name mentioned. Just a third-rate teacher, she would snort in disgust.

Tony Blair became her pin-up boy. Quite literally as it happens. She had at least three framed prints on her wall. His mum must be terribly proud of him, she would mutter, just loud enough for me to hear. At least she knows what he does! The quick glance in my direction was subtle yet pointed. My mother, you see, had never really understood what I did to earn a crust. She was incredibly confused by the fact that I remained at University for so many years, refusing to acknowledge any distinction whatsoever between the teacher and the taught. So much study can’t be good for your health you know, she would half-seriously taunt. When are you going to get a proper job?

When I eventually started to lecture at Dartington College of Arts her entire demeanour changed. She understood that you see. Teaching was a proper job. My son’s a lecturer, had a lovely ring to it, especially in a village where status and achievement was so important. Years later, when I stopped teaching and writing music to focus entirely on consulting to business, she was totally baffled and not a little distraught. Her worst fears were once again confirmed. Her youngest son was a complete failure!

How often do we rely on preconceived ideas of what constitutes success? Our beliefs and values are shaped by cultural mindsets that resist any rational explanation. How else could I tell my mother what a CEO of a corporation did? How could I explain to her that he might earn many times more than the average worker yet be paid for performance that was mediocre by most standards? That he was no more intelligent than the average university graduate but would often use that intelligence to deceive, control and intimidate others? That his executive team could manage the business without his direct contribution yet the ideas he imposed would often be the cause of unecessary disruption and distress?

Mum would have stared at me as if I had been pulling her leg. Then she might have laughed out loud. But she would have had no hesitation in making an immediate judgement. You’d better tell them to get a proper job, she would have said.

 

World Class Challenge

Organizational culture has long been accepted as a critical factor in the execution of daringly new business strategies and ideas. But culture is actually only part of the story. The entire social ecology of an enterprise (its ethos, purposeful evolution, state of being and identity) is a significant element in an organization's internal capability to deliver on its strategic ambitions - along with other things like plans, resources (time, skills, human and financial capital) and know-how.

Internal capability allows a company to change both what it does and how it does this. It is naïve to believe that strategic goals can be achieved merely through dictate or willpower. On the contrary, four key prerequisites need to align:

• Internal and external conditions need to be receptive to any new strategy
• The strategic intent has to resonate well with both market and customer expectations
• Resources have to be made available
• An appropriate social ecology needs to exist - or be shaped.

Consequently an organization's emergent social ecology, including the dynamics brought into play by various components of this ecology, must always be taken into account when determining strategic direction and intent. Frequently, the most courageous of intentions remain unrealized (and unrealizable) simply because external conditions are misinterpreted and social ecology is ignored.

Executives always need to pose relevant questions: What is the present state of our organization's social ecology? How might that present state impede or assist particular goals? What will need to change, and how, if a more strategically appropriate social ecology is to be acquired?

In order to answer these questions I will use the results from a global survey examining world-class performance, which we undertook recently. As in previous years, social ecology emerged as one of several key factors. Within this category, the following seven outcomes were seen to offer clear evidence of world-class performance in today’s zero geography landscape:

• Brand resonance – top-ranked on value, strength & emotional connection
• Reputation – best rated service founded on trust and professionalism
• Innovation – continuously out-performs peers on creativity and innovation
• Flexibility – the ability to adapt and respond rapidly to unforeseen circumstances
• Peer “envy” – management practices most admired and respected by peers
• Client credibility – consistently preferred by blue chip clients
• Employer of choice – attracts and retains top talent effortlessly.

This year we decided to undertake a second, more detailed survey. This was designed to illuminate those practices seen to be vital for sustained growth and prosperity. Thus, on completion of the initial survey, a group of 50 CEOs from among the top-ranked companies in the world were invited to propose four strategic principles that would assist companies in their journey towards becoming better in their chosen fields.

Without being overly prescriptive, these four principles can be used as a framework for thinking through how an organization's inherent strengths can be leveraged more effectively to combat perceived weaknesses and drive long term progress.

1. REINVENTING WHO YOU ARE
Letting go of the past in order to rethink who you are and what you value is the scariest thing. Sometimes it means jettisoning the very processes, products and business models that have brought you to where you are today! But today's business landscape is not like it was even five years ago. In fact it has become so dynamic and so unpredictable that just failing to keep up can spell disaster. 

The past (manifest in people's habits and customs) exerts an almost gravitational pull that tries to keep things the way they have been. Maintaining the status quo will always appear attractive to some executives, especially where risk-averse cultures are common. 

In order to get to the future first the best companies confront these factors head on. Keep the best of what works today but create new value through innovation. Be brutally honest. Debunk the myths that go unchallenged so as to sort out and nurture what is of real value to your company's future. 

This will entail divesting under performing assets, finding innovative ways to grow the business, managing costs more intelligently, investing in learning and development, discarding mechanisms and models that are no longer working for you, and liberating the real value locked up in your web of global networks and relationships.

2. RESPONDING TO CHANGING CONDITIONS
It is impossible to out-think markets; they are far too complex, capricious and fast. However, in order to keep on the front foot you do need to adapt instantly to changing conditions. Being this alert should enable you to meet client needs in as near to real time as makes no difference. Alertness of this kind requires mechanisms in place for monitoring, learning from, and adapting to changes in the market, anticipating future trends, and using strategic intelligence to make more informed decisions. 

Most Western companies are far too bureaucratic – built for efficiency rather than speed. Now is the time to get rid of unnecessary trivia, flattening the structure and liberating leadership at all levels across the firm. You will be surprised at how better placed you are to take advantage of emerging opportunities as they arise.

3. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
The market needs to be clear about what you stand for, what sets you apart, what your aspirations are, and how these connect to the overwhelming concerns and beliefs in contemporary society. You cannot afford to be out of touch with society. This applies to the firm as a whole as well as to the individuals who make up your company. Such clarity helps grow credibility and reputation. In today's world reputation is critical. It also helps to be unique – or at least distinctive in some form or other. 

In staking out your own unique territory you must exploit your most deeply felt principles if you are to connect effectively with the stakeholder community of which you are a part. Make sure you communicate this ethos consistently. Do not deviate from it under any circumstances, as this will only confuse the market.

Taking responsibility for your actions helps build coherence in the minds of customers. It also creates an emotional attachment that leads to brand resonance, increased loyalty and, ultimately, world-class leadership.   

4. LEVERAGING NETWORKS
In today’s multi-polar, globally-distributed economy, world-class businesses depend upon deep relationships and collaborative networks in order to build success. A vigorous network of relationships with high profile business leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians and senior bureaucrats across the firm's market space is particularly vital. Today’s very best CEOs identify the most influential people with whom they must continuously interact – then use their time in maintaining and nurturing the relationships that matter across this preferential network.

Leveraging know-how and intelligence flows through preferential networks is also crucial.  Few corporations actually get the power of networks... Yet! 

Networks do not function like hierarchies. They are based on different axioms – diversity, abundance and generosity of spirit, for example. But if you understand these operating axioms you can grow value in ways that lead to increasing returns. In no time at all, your organization's culture can change as executives develop the confidence and capability needed to prosper.

Global War for Talent

For some years now the industrialized world has faced critical shortages of knowledge and skills in the workforce. Established talent pools have shrunk while new ones, continuously forming, are as yet relatively unfamiliar.

This problem has been caused (in part at least) by a shift in the global economy, particularly the swing away from conventional industrial powerhouses in time-honored locations to the dynamic emerging markets of Asia. Economic power, formerly concentrated among a few industrialized nations, has become dispersed across multiple centres of commercial and trading activity.

In such a multi-polar world competition for new products, consumers, markets (and therefore talent) can arise from anywhere. Three factors have enabled this re-alignment of global economic power:

Arguably the most potent of these has been internet-based communications technologies. These allow people to access knowledge and execute work irrespective of their physical location. Another factor is distributed outsourcing - the ability to source work from wherever skilled people are available at the most competitive price has irrevocably altered the way multinationals operate. Yet a third factor is the changing face of consumer demographics. Over the coming decade a billion or more new consumers will become active participants in the global economy. Most of these will come from emerging markets.

Globalisation of the market for talent took many by surprise. The majority of companies were not well prepared for the consequences although it was always apparent that new technologies like robotics and computing would eventually transform the nature of work, the knowledge and skills required, the manner in which work was sourced and the ways in which people were required to collaborate.

As talent shortages continue to impact business, a dual track strategic response is required. Firstly, new global alliances between businesses, governments and institutions of higher learning need to be forged with the intention of creating a better coordinated agenda to raise awareness, knowledge and appropriate skills levels among all citizens. Secondly, organisations must develop the capability to address talent issues at a whole-of-enterprise level.

There are at least four essential components to strategic talent management in today’s global economy:

1. Defining Talent – Most organizations have poor track records when it comes to identifying the expertise they are going to need in the future. Emphasis on short-term financial results usually means that insufficient time is devoted to the forecasting of human capital requirements and even less on exploring alternative future scenarios that might pre-empt significant changes in specific knowledge, skills and activities. In fact guesswork frequently takes precedence over any conscious capability building. The most essential factor in a corporation’s ability to achieve and sustain high levels of economic performance in an increasingly competitive environment is the ability to align knowledge and skills with the execution of robust business strategies. Without that link the future viability of the business is immediately put at risk.

2. Sourcing Talent – Today’s competition for talent is global. New intermediaries, like social networks, personal advocacy websites and boutique search firms have emerged, disturbing the quasi-monopolistic complacency of traditional recruitment practices. It stands to reason that diversity, too, has become an issue as the workforce acquires multicultural variety. As a consequence, the ability to appreciate and source talent strategically becomes even more of an imperative. Some firms, like Lenovo the Chinese PC manufacturer for example, have even developed a label for this phenomenon. It is called worldsourcing: the ability to find and access appropriate talent wherever it happens to be in the world.

3. Developing Talent – Development of any kind is usually interpreted as being concerned with growing the skills of the people one employs. Focusing on staff development is vitally important. Yet so much hangs on the quality and preparedness of people entering the workforce. Traditionally, corporations have relied on educational institutions to prepare people for work. Today that is simply inadequate. Once again corporations are being forced to focus on the overall capabilities of the talent pool from which they recruit to ensure that they get the best possible performance from the people they hire.

4. Liberating Talent – We know that people do not give of their best when suffocated by an excess of rules, protocols and procedures designed purely to control their every move. In today’s environment, creativity and innovation are vital factors in growing business success. These qualities do not arise naturally in organizations that have been designed for economic efficiency. On the contrary, in order to burgeon they require an environment in which people feel free to express themselves and where they are encouraged to play, learn and experiment.

Without a doubt the topic of talent is one of the most volatile and demanding strategic dilemmas besetting businesses today. Every thinking Managing Director I talk to has this issue uppermost on their mind. Typically the fear is expressed along these lines: We can no longer assume that a steady supply of skilled and talented people are ready to assume responsibility for executing the work that needs to be done. We have yet to find a workable solution. Right now we are not even certain how to begin to confront this issue.

As is so often the case today (in matters ranging from the environment to social corporate responsibility - and now talent acquisition) business can no longer afford the luxury of minding its own business. It has to engage in broader issues if it is to maintain high levels of performance while assuring ongoing social relevance.

It is essential that the nature of securing, developing and retaining talent is understood in today’s context. But the quest for talent must be based upon a resilient future profile and strategic direction rather than on current activities. As far as I’m concerned this can best be achieved by focusing more resources on:

• Developing an awareness of global talent and entering into strategic partnerships with governments, universities and schools that consciously shapes, fosters and delivers education of relevance to future needs
• Creating conditions within the enterprise where employees feel motivated, gain a sense of personal achievement and pride in their work, and feel part of something important.

Without these two dimensions organizations will find it increasingly impossible to retain the talent that has been so hard to find and secure in the first place.

Globalisation + Strategy

I started work as a corporate strategist in the late 1980s. For anyone with half a brain (the left half mind you - no creativity was expected) life was a cinch. For some decades the standard business proposition had been based on an unvarying formula. Essentially this formula focused the entire enterprise on the creation of value – for customers, for shareholders, even for staff.

Profits were key as they enabled smart CEOs to invest in growing their organization’s capability to do better. Organizational purpose was usually a distracting afterthought. The role of business, most people agreed, was to make money. And this it did with remarkable alacrity and stoicism. It was as though business existed a world apart from society; servicing its needs and desires while ignoring its plight – a plight that was becoming more and more perilous as we consumed more and more of everything business had to offer.

In this context strategy didn’t take much of a brain to figure out. Design goods and services for specific markets utilizing local talent wherever possible. Factor in things like organizational capability, costs, the nature of competition. Ensure efficiency at every possible point in the value chain. Deliver on quality.

Little ingenuity or discipline was required – unless, of course, you wanted your brand to conquer the world. Virgin and The Body Shop empires were simply serendipitous flukes. They flourished because of an entrepreneurial spirit that threw caution to the wind. The success stories of companies like Sony, Toyota, Microsoft and GE, on the other hand, transpired through disciplined financial management coupled with an intense determination to dominate certain industries or markets.

These days strategy is far more complicated. So many subtle factors need to be taken into account. Traditional boundaries between makers and users are dissolving. New technologies and their rapid convergence are enabling products straight out of science fiction. Talent is scarce – and becoming scarcer. Novel niche markets are exploding with activity. Furthermore the discipline of management is in transition now that so many tasks can be undertaken more efficiently by computers and robots.

Innovation, itself the result of our insatiable desire for anything new, or that speaks directly to our sense of self; speed to market; and a deep appreciation of different cultures and value systems have become the drivers of today’s success.

The business environment, too, has changed and will continue to shift in ways that are difficult to predict. Globalisation has created conditions that remain fluid and uncertain, like water in the rapids. These conditions are hazardous and erratic. Rare degrees of strategic intelligence and insight are now needed in order to navigate these volatile conditions. Even more so if an enterprise is to prosper by spotting (or consciously creating) opportunities others have missed.

Several factors will be increasingly significant for business in the coming decade. So significant in fact that, when linked together, could result in the reconfiguration of the entire material basis of our civilisation.

First, most obviously, is the opening up of currently uncontested market space. The upshot is the creation of entirely new industries and markets, many of them in under-developed parts of the world. Over the past decade such expansion typically centred around the deployment of new communications software to change business models and shift the locus of value creation. In the future we are likely to see much more of an emphasis on addressing human-induced crises such as global warming, the cost and distribution of food, and the lack of energy.

A second, accompanying factor is the need for ecologically intelligent deep design; a deliberate configuration of industrial systems to ensure that there is no waste. There is already an awareness that re-cycling is passé and that a completely different system of ‘cradle to cradle’ closed-loop manufacturing is urgently required. Using natural living systems as a model the outcome will be the dawn of a new industrial revolution where even products like ethanol for fuel will be produced from waste materials, rather than sugar cane or corn as at present.

A third, and hugely promising factor on the immediate horizon is the convergence of digital and genomic technologies, coupled with smarter manufacturing methods using molecular engineering. These will be used more and more in the production of smart materials, smart foods, smart drugs and other life enhancing products.

But another factor, one that is largely overlooked, is the repercussions from the arrival in force of emerging-market multinationals. As yet these newcomers are not a threat to the more established global giants. They do not even register on most corporate radar screens. Quite soon, however, their impact will be sweeping and unavoidable. And, rather like the adoption of digital technologies over the past twenty years or so, they are set to revolutionise the very nature of strategy. How do we know that?

For some time now foreign direct investment has been flowing across traditional borders. As wealthy nations run up massive current-account deficits they borrow from the sovereign-wealth funds of emerging economies - most notably oil exporters with huge surpluses. By 2006 foreign direct investment from developing economies had reached US$174 billion (14 per cent of the world’s total) and five companies from emerging economies had made it into the world's top 100 multinationals - measured by overseas assets. This trend continues to accelerate. Just last week the governments of Kuwait, Singapore and South Korea provided much of the US$21 billion lifeline to Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, two banks that have lost fortunes in the US credit crisis.

Economic theory maintains this should not happen. Rather, rich countries are supposed to export capital to poorer nations, not the other way round. In fact most tariffs and anti-dumping laws have been designed by rich nations to protect their industries in ways that prevent developing countries from achieving the kind of prosperity enjoyed elsewhere!

But this shift is but the tip of an iceberg. Thousands of companies are starting to expand their sales and production internationally such that these trends already represent an unmistakable and fundamental shift in economic power. Emerging economies are spawning their own breed of multinational giants in industries ranging from consumer electronics, cement and steel to automobile and aircraft production. Even iconic brands are not safe as the likes of Tetley Tea, Jaguar, Land Rover, Daewoo, Arcelor and Corus pass into the hands of emerging-economy multinationals.

For those with eyes to see and a penchant to learn much can be discovered from their ascendancy. From China’s Lenovo, Haier and Chery to Brazil’s Vale and Embraer and from India’s Tata and Mittal to Mexico’s Cemex, there is now growing evidence as to how these companies intend changing the rules. For sure these companies have been buying Western know-how. But they have also been bringing management and entrepreneurial skills, as well as capital and reconfigured business models, into the mix. They seem to have a different 'take' on globalisation and adjust their strategies accordingly.

There are at least five specific strategies underpinning the expansion of these new multinationals that merit a closer look. These are not mutually exclusive by the way:

• Worldsourcing is a decentralized strategy designed to drive greater value and quality by distributing an organization’s core functions across multiple global hubs of excellence. These hubs are located wherever the best resources, talent, ideas, and efficiencies exist or can be created. Based on the assumption that whole-of-brand is more important than discrete factors (such as nationality or geographical location) the philosophy of worldsourcing encourages companies to reach out across the entire globe in search of the best value in all aspects of their business - from talent and ideas to materials, logistics, infrastructure, products, and even corporate social responsibility. Thus, a multinational intent on worldsourcing can create value 24 hours a day.

• Perhaps unexpectedly, the domestic markets of these companies offer distinct advantages which are deliberately factored into growth trajectories. Costs are low. The hassles of operating in an emerging market has made managers more resilient, inventive and adaptive. There is also unimpeded access to a vast, cheap manufacturing base to which other advantages, such as stylish design and world-class R&D facilities, can be added as they take their brands from local to global. Furthermore, gradual liberalisation in the home market has already exposed these companies to fierce competition and the very best of international practice – a platform out of which innovation can effortlessly blossom.

• Low cost production coupled with advanced R&D leads to innovation and the creation of new, open, market space. Most people agree that innovation drives performance in almost all sectors of today’s global economy. In a number of emerging-economy multinationals, however, local engineering skills coupled with entrepreneurial expertise and global supply webs, have been used very effectively to embrace cross-border relationships, enabling innovation on a genuinely global scale. In addition, the fact that many of these multinationals are still family-owned, or family-controlled (even when they are public companies) means that decisions can be taken quickly.

• Many of the new breed of multinationals are going for global leadership in highly specialised, narrow product categories catering, at the same time, to precisely formulated specifications from their customers. Typically utilising low cost labour-intensive production systems, companies like Hong Kong’s Johnson Electric, a firm that manufactures tiny electric motors for use in powering the wing mirrors in automobiles, for example, carve out niche markets which they can dominate. In some cases, targeted and well-timed acquisitions in target markets allows these firms to get closer to customers.

• New (or better) business models have proven to be very effective when selling into diverse global markets – and even when undertaking M&A activities. Standing conventional wisdom on its head, know-how and smart investment are now routinely used to capture markets that were previously thought to be either impractical or unprofitable – or both. In addition, highly developed ICT systems, many of which can be purchased off-the-shelf, are now being used to standardise practices and procedures. In many Western companies convention, demarcation, and an ingrained management mindset that all too readily accepts waste and re-work as inevitable, inhibit breakthroughs in the design of work. There is no such legacy in these emerging-economy multinationals.

Obviously these companies are up against a whole range of disadvantages too. For one thing they are trying to break into a world economy where globalisation already favours the front runners. I have already mentioned the debilitating effect of tariffs and quotas on their economies. A great many of these firms are ignorant of the markets they are trying to crack. Their brands too, while well established at home, may be totally unknown in the West. Some still lack the necessary management talent to be successful in the global arena. Furthermore, pay structures are hard to devise when managers in rich-world subsidiaries expect to earn more than their seniors in head office.

But many of the new firms have already leapt these hurdles impressively. A heap of others are following the pioneers as I write this blog. In fact the effect is being felt today as they reverse the brain-drain by sucking non-resident (but experienced) talent back from branch offices into the centre. Ultimately these companies will prevail and become a force to be reckoned with. They will change the landscape of investment and production globally. And they will change the nature of strategy. We had better be prepared for that.

The Real Future of Management

Last year a new book was published by Gary Hamel. I know Gary and have seen him present. He is an outstanding speaker which probably explains his popularity. Proclaimed by many as 'the world's leading expert on business strategy', there is actually nothing especially startling (or new) in Hamel's vision of The Future of Management. There is, however, a lot of highly pertinent and valuable thinking that has been ignored or omitted, presumably because it does not fit into Hamel's (rather conventional) beliefs about management. Allow me to illustrate with just one example.

Technology, particularly the technology of knowledge, biases our reasoning in preference of perceiving the world a certain way. A blackboard, for instance, encourages deletion, continual modification, exploratory thinking. Pen and paper require neatness, attention to syntax, orderly thinking. Online hypertext inspires discontinuity, non-linearity, collective, flexible thinking. Thus, the way we construct our thinking space is also the way we orchestrate ideas. The problem is that over time we come to believe our particular model represents the way the world itself is organized. Extreme myopia results.

Essentially, each paradigm shift in technology changes what we mean by ‘knowing’. In effect our culture is just a vast thinking space, a complex semiology of idiosyncratic structures and symbols. And, just as our culture is moving from the printed word to the electronic text, so are we shifting from an hierarchical social order (of empire) to a dynamic network culture (or earth community). Such a shift challenges even the most well-worn of ‘truths’ and alters, usually quite significantly, those embedded conventions and traits of thought that produce for us a sense of reality.

A paradigm shift of this ‘reality-altering’ kind occurred at Cambridge University in 1792. A tutor by the name of William Farish suggested that students’ papers be graded. This novel proposal - that a numerical value be assigned to the expression of human thought - was a breakthrough in our acceptance of numerical measurement as an authenticator of knowledge and of our formulating a mathematical impression of reality.

A simple idea changed the entire experience of meaning and learning. By instituting fierce competition among students through the provision of sharply differentiated symbols of attainment, grading provided an ‘objective’ measure of human performance. It thereby created the illusion that accurate estimations could be made of worthiness. In Foucault’s phrase, the human being became ‘a calculable person’.

The concept quickly spread for if a number could be given to the quality of a thought, then it could equally be given to other qualities such as mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, personality, intelligence - even sanity.

This concept still permeates our thinking today. Just try to imagine a world in which there are no clocks, no timetables, no accountants - most of us would find it quite impossible to do our work without resorting to mathematical calculation of some kind. We have been thoroughly indoctrinated into a mode of numerical patterning (of counting, measuring and calculating) in order to perceive the world this way.

There is nothing inherently incongruous with that, of course, so long as we understand that our awareness of what is ‘real’ is being shaped, and our choice of what is important significantly preordained, by such ingrained partiality. We should not assume the absence of (or deficiencies in) other, strange, unfashionable, even contrasting - and equally valid - ways of comprehending the world.

Secreted within every technology is an ideological bias - a predilection to construct meaning as one thing, rather than another. We are easily seduced by such ideological biases, but that is not all. Those who become adept in the use of a new technology quickly become part of an elite information monopoly, accumulating power and influence in such a way that they are then granted authority, status and prestige by those lacking in such competence.

For well over 500 years, for example, teachers and academics have been part of such a monopoly created by the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Now, however, with the advent of new communication technologies, we are witnessing the inevitable disintegration of that dominance. The same fate awaits all ‘status’ professions, from lawyers to medical practitioners. Sooner or later, when the technology shifts, the knowledge monopoly crumbles.

As it developed, industrial society spawned its own self-referential ideology. Modernism became a ‘totalitarian technocracy’, purging alternatives to itself. This was accomplished, not by rendering alternatives illegal, immoral or unpopular, but simply by making them ‘invisible’ and therefore irrelevant. In the process of fashioning modernism, new meaning was ascribed to old concepts as diverse as religion, culture and progress, so that our definitions still made sense within the new context. And we devised new instruments - among them management, bureaucracy and production.

Innovations like these spread rapidly through industrial society, formalizing and cementing the new ideology in place. Based implicitly on the appropriation of notions of calculability and the authority of the written word - which led inevitably to ideas such as detailed accounting mechanisms, inventory control, and productivity norms - these new techniques became the bedrock for ‘scientific’ management systems.  Indeed, by adopting these principles, American business created the modern corporation. W. H. Galbraith maintained that, “More perhaps than machinery, massive and complex business organizations are the tangible manifestations of advanced technology”.

Like any other technology, however, management has progressively tended to operate independently of the system it serves. The technology of management is comprised of rational protocols, reductionist controls and precise regulations designed to achieve clarity and efficiency while standardizing behaviour and dampening down unwanted perturbations in the system of industrial production. It has become sanctified, fixed - ruling out any possibility of other, more appropriate, alternatives taking its place.

Only now, poised in a liminal moment in history when the depleted frameworks of modernism are breaking down and the new have yet to be created, are we discovering that our identity is not fixed, but fluid and transitional. We have become multiple - a community of mind. Chaos and complexity theories assert that the world is both unknowable and unpredictable. All we can do is engage in moments of transient meaning-making. In this bewildering and unfamiliar context, the prevailing ‘science’ of conventional management has become irrelevant.

And so our cultural memory adjusts (at times painfully) to postmodernism - shimmering with new possibilities, confusing yet exhilarating. Everything in this new world is infused with new meanings. There is no central authority, no keeper of wisdom or knowledge here - only fiduciaries of particular ephemeral points of view.

The art now is to find appropriate models for a new society and then trust sufficiently in these models to let go of the old ones. This is far easier said than done. Management has become deeply implanted in our consciousness as the prime mechanism for effectively coordinating and directing the institution of work. We have come to regard management as an unquestionable imperative. Indeed, it has become so analogous with getting things done that it is difficult enough to make changes to the institution of management, let alone devising alternative methods for achieving our purposes.

In fact management has become an ‘invisible technology’ working subversively but convincingly to insinuate itself into our cultural state of mind. And yet, painful though it might be to imagine, it is entirely possible for business, and almost any other institution, to operate once again without a highly technocratic management structure or managerial elite. In fact, it is inevitable that such sociocratic governance will ultimately prevail.

Professor Hamel's 'future' of management is nothing of the kind: it is a neat set of observations focusing on current trends. But it is no more about the future than the latest stock prices. His central hypothesis revolves around the fact that any business is now global and therefore needs to function in real time. I cannot argue with that. But he fails to explore the real consequences of what this really means.

My central hypothesis is that modernist management - as a ‘technospheric solution’ to running a modern corporation - is obsolete. Almost any attempt by a professional management elite to manage as it has done in the past now risks serious damage to their organization as a whole. Besides it is not necessary. This hypothesis is based on two revolutionary principles resulting from close observation of the ‘pathology’ of many different types of organization:

Principle 1:
Observing the laws of ‘complex adaptive systems’, such as ecosystems, teaches us that organizations may consciously need to adopt comparable processes to those found in natural systems in order to survive in the long term. Within this context, strategic development becomes nothing less than the creation of new social ecologies.

Principle 2:
Noting the results of recent research, it is apparent that the greater proportion of an organization’s financial and operational performance (especially in long-surviving companies) appears to result not from any formal plans, vision, or management control system, but from informal actions, habits, instinct, conversation, and personal/cultural agendas enacted routinely by every member of the enterprise.