A Paradigm Shift in Management
Posted: March 27, 2015 Filed under: Business, Leadership | Tags: Agile, Gary Hamel, Management 2.0, Steve Denning Leave a comment
In the 16th century, Copernicus shifted our world by postulating that Earth revolved around the Sun. Prior to the publication of this model in On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543, EVERYONE understood that the Sun revolved around the Earth. It was just the way it worked. More than astronomy was impacted by his scientific work—we began to revisit many things in our culture when this shift occurred.
I believe something similar is happening in organizations today as we are moving to Management 2.0. For background, read Inventing Management 2.0 and watch Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment.
Management 2.0 is customer-centric and employee-centric. According to noted business thinker Gary Hamel, Management 2.0 challenges, “…the fundamental conventions of Management 1.0—the notion that authority trickles down, that tasks are assigned, that strategy gets created at the top, that control must be imposed and so on.” It addresses the question: How do we satisfy customer needs with service-oriented employees within a sustainable business model that provides returns to shareholders?
It’s a shift—a really big shift.
Steve Denning does an excellent job of outlining this (and hitting home with IT professionals) in Why Do Managers Hate Agile? He offers this definition, “For those managers who don’t know what the Agile is (itself a part of the problem), the horizontal world of Agile involves self-organizing teams that work in an iterative fashion and deliver continuous additional value directly to customers.”
Part two, More On Why Managers Hate Agile, also hits home (hard), given some of the current projects I’m involved in. On one hand, traditional organizations are built for predictability. Initiating “agile projects” flies in the face of this predictability, requiring a focus on the customer and allowing the team to innovate with the product owner representing the customer.
Am I part of the problem? Part of the solution? Or a mix of both? Life is all a transition…I’m feeling this one.
Weekly Download 14.1
Posted: April 14, 2014 Filed under: Weekly Download | Tags: Agile, Box, Cisco, Forrester, holacracy, The Economist Leave a comment
Here’s a recap of news and notes from around the Web that caught my attention over the past week or so.
Box Files for IPO. This should be interesting to watch. While still losing money after $400M in investments, they are seeking to raise $250M. Almost 34k organizations and over 1.75M individuals are PAYING for the platform. When including free users, totals rise to 225k organizations and 25M individuals.
$1B CISCO Intercloud Investment. Cisco is going to be the “engine inside” many cloud offerings, from Telecom companies to software vendors and traditional distribution partners. This goes well beyond IaaS to encompass collaboration, unified communication, mobility, big data, etc. Of note: Openstack and Hadoop are significant elements of the offerings.
Forrester on Corporate Learning from Cloud Infrastructure Providers
Holacracy. A different way of organizing leverage social technology.
What’s gone wrong with democracy. The Economist looks at the decline of the most successful political idea of the 20th century.
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