Encouraging adaptation
How suited are today's management systems to the challenges at hand? That was the question raised in a discussion among a group of University of Chicago trained strategists.
Management thinker Gary Hamel, author of The Future of Management, has proposed that we "dramatically retool" the way we create strategies, identify opportunities, make decisions, allocate resources, coordinate activities, exercise power, build teams, match teams and talent, measure performance and share rewards. (http://www.managementlab.org/blog/2011/inventing-management-20) His contention is the current way organizations are managed, what he terms Management 1.0, is a bureaucratic system "designed to minimize variances from plan by maximizing adherence to policy." The upshot of this system is that the leadership talents of all but the top in the organization are stifled and the organization is ill equipped to adapt and change as it must in today's dynamic environment where "the winds of creative destruction are howling at gale force, where knowledge is fast becoming a commodity, where customers are omnipotent and where right-brain thinking drives value creation."
The problem is bringing about this conversion to a new and better management system, Hamel observes, is that the very leaders who control the organization in Management 1.0 are the ones who block the development of Management 2.0. Thus, he encourages "management rebels" in the organization to take it on themselves to experiment with "new ways of motivating, organizing, compensation and goal setting."
Let's agree with the wisdom of working to develop a better management system for our turbulent and challenging times and for a world that is saturated with information and new opportunity. The problem is that asking middle management to rebel is fraught with risk. After all, if you step out from the accepted procedure and reallocate resources not in accordance with the plan, in a Management 1.0 organization you subject yourself to disapproval from the top, a bad review and worse.
Better, it seems to me, is to educate organizational leaders in what Harvard professor Ron Heifetz calls Adaptive Leadership, which asks leaders not to jettison the current management system in whole cloth but instead to recognize those instances when the situation "demands a response outside your current toolkit or repertoire; it consists of a gap between aspirations and operational capacity that cannot be closed by the expertise and procedures in place." (www.creelmanresearch.com/files/Creelman2009vol2_5.pdf) Like Hamel, Heifetz, too, promotes experimentation, but more pointedly when it is most needed and in constrained circumstances.
Indeed, Hamel's siren song calling for a new and better management system is alluring, but asking leaders to abandon the current system and for middle managers to rebel seems to me to be unrealistic.
As strategic thinkers and actors, isn't it better for us to encourage current and upcoming organizational leaders to recognize the critical points where the system in place is not delivering or suitable? At these points we can help leaders see where being adaptive is especially needed, and encourage them to learn by sharing with their teams, raising tough questions, and encouraging experimentation to see what works and what does not work.
