14 Ideas for Busting Bureaucracy

By Polly LaBarre
January 11, 2012 at 6:27pm

Everybody hates it, but so much of life is ruled by it: bureaucracy. It's time to bust up the ideology of control that has infiltrated every aspect of organizational life.

That's why we launched the Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge (the second leg of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation)--a call for inspiring stories, bold ideas, and instructive experiments that demonstrate what can happen when you scrap compliance, conformance, and predictability for freedom, passion, and dynamism.

What's Your Question?

By Polly LaBarre
November 10, 2011 at 9:59am

Some fifteen years ago, in the early days of starting up Fast Company magazine, co-founder Alan Webber, shared one of his rules of thumb with me: "a good question beats a good answer." That pithy wisdom sunk in and took hold immediately. In the course of hundreds of reporting journeys and thousands of conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and doers of all stripes, I've tuned into the questions people ask.

How do you get to Management 2.0? Three lessons (from the M-Prize)

By Polly LaBarre
September 21, 2011 at 9:26am

We announced the winners of the Management 2.0 Challenge (the first of three legs of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation) here last week.

Announcing the Winners of the Management 2.0 Challenge

By Polly LaBarre
September 13, 2011 at 5:59pm

We know that if we want to close the gap between the status quo and our big dream of creating companies that are fundamentally fit for the future (and fit for human beings), we need to enlist the ideas and energies of the most progressive thinkers and radical doers from every realm of endeavor.

Provoking the Future to Arrive—Constructive Disruption and Collective Genius

By Polly LaBarre
July 18, 2011 at 8:45pm

The judges are now sifting through some 140 entries for the Management 2.0 Challenge (first round of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize). You can still play a part: review the Stories and Hacks and rate and comment on them here. I'll be highlighting the lessons and stories from the entires over the next few weeks in the blog. A huge thanks to all who contributed—we're energized and amazed by the wealth of ideas, insight, and practical pathways to the organization of the future.

Inventing the Future is Everybody's Job

By Polly LaBarre
June 24, 2011 at 10:32am

When Larry Huston faced the challenge of revving Procter & Gamble's innovation engine to contribute to $5 billion in annual topline growth, he opened up the ranks of the company's vaunted R&D operation to some 1.8 million scientists and researchers around the globe.

Introducing the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation

By Polly LaBarre
May 24, 2011 at 11:16am

We have a big dream here at the MIX: to create organizations that are fundamentally fit for the future—and genuinely fit for human beings. As much as "modern management" has delivered to the world, we believe it is time to radically rethink how we mobilize people and resources to productive ends. And we believe that's not an undertaking for any one individual or organization--it's everybody's problem.

Voices from the MIX: Human Capital M-Prize Winners

By Polly LaBarre
April 14, 2011 at 9:14am

One of our goals here at the MIX is to discover and celebrate the ideas and initiative of in-the-trenches management innovators—wherever they come from. While it's always energizing to watch those ideas and stories pop up on the site, it's especially rewarding to encounter these dedicated change makers in person. We had the chance to do that recently during a celebration of our HCI Human Capital M-Prize award.

HCI, M-Prize
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Hackathon Pilot Update #2: Research notes and a hack zone prototype

By Chris Grams
March 21, 2011 at 1:56pm

Since I suspect many of you won’t have a whole day to spare reading almost 100 Human Capital M-Prize entries, I’ve put together something of a highlight reel for you. My hope is that this will save you some time while also uncovering some possible hack zones for further study during the Hackathon Pilot.

Hackathon Pilot Update #1: Our work begins!

By Chris Grams
March 21, 2011 at 1:38pm

I’ve spent the past week preparing for the MIX Hackathon Pilot. As I mentioned in my introductory post, our plan was to take the first week to recruit 10-20 participants.