The Future of Management Book

Hamel tackles a rather difficult and exciting topic: "Right now, your company has 21st-century, Internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th-century managment principles." In other words, the assessment he makes on today's views on management is that we still cling on principles that were invented in the industrial era (think of F.W. Taylor or even of Peter Drucker). These principles have become a dogma in a post-industrial world where they are becoming less and less relevant. The reason why they persist is that we have not found any better alternative... yet!

Hamel, in this book, is not providing a new set of rules or a cookbook on how to invent a new model of management. Instead, he gives us a few examples on how a few innovative companies (Whole Foods, Google, Gore, Best Buy...) are bringing about a radical change in management and making the workplace more vibrant and more human. One of the most interesting parts is when Hamel encourages us to model new management principles on life evolution (as a process that allows experimentation and variety), open markets (where there is innovation without hierarchy), democracy (where leadership is distributed from bottom to top and accountability from top to bottom instead of the other way around), faith (that provides a deep sense of meaning to human endeavors) and cities (where diversity and serendipity is the rule).

In a word: food for management thought.