The need to empower natural leaders isn’t an HR pipedream, it’s a competitive imperative. But before you can empower them, you have to find them. In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record—it’s easy to discover who’s in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don’t...
Open Management: The idea of our time depends on the most eternal values. "Open" just might be one of the most crucial ideas for the future of business. This is very evident with the focus (not to mention, hype) on open innovation in which companies in a systematic way combine internal and external...
When you ask children what they want to be when they are older, how many of them say they want to be a manager? I've certainly never met one who had such aspirations. In part this is because management is a pretty amorphous concept to a ten-year-old. But it's also because we adults aren't exactly...
We have a big dream here at the MIX: to create organizations that are fit for the future--and fit for human beings. It's an aspiration that calls for nothing less than what the philosopher and reformer John Dewey described as a "new audacity of imagination." While "modern" management has delivered an immense contribution to global prosperity, the values driving our most powerful institutions today are fundamentally at odds with those of this age--zero-sum thinking, profit-obsession, power, conformance, control, hierarchy, and obedience don't stand a chance against community, interdependence, freedom, flexibility, transparency, meritocracy, and self-determination. It's time to radically rethink how we mobilize people and organize resources to productive ends.
Most economic theories (and many managers) assume that the best way to get what you want from workers is give them the right financial incentives. But most real people have lots of reasons for working besides just making money. They work to have fun, to socialize with others, to challenge...
Innovation can happen by chance, without a determined effort or specific methodology. But when it does, it's more like luck than strategic progress. While there is a role for serendipity in strategy – being able to take advantage of pleasant surprises -- too often, that's the only way companies approach innovation: with fingers crossed.
One enduring change in the management lexicon brought about by the dotcom revolution was the term business model —how a firm makes money. The concept had been in existence for decades, but the competition between "old" and "new" economy firms, with very different business models, helped to...
When it comes to making an impact and accelerating change, it turns out that the how is as important as the what . That goes for both how you design a disruptive initiative--and how you tell your story. To guide M-Prize participants and would-be management innovators alike, here are a set of high-level principles (and some low-to-the-ground tips) that just might increase your chances of success when it comes to making an impact and impressing the judges and your peers in the M-Prize.
Editor's note: Research by McKinsey & Company's Organization Practice finds that better collaborative capabilities help companies achieve superior financial performance. These results are supported by academic research, which shows that the ability to collaborate in networks is more important...
In the spirit of constant experimentation and evolution, we continue to invent new modes of engaging the most adventuresome practitioners and boldest thinkers in tackling the big challenge of making our organizations as resilient, inventive, inspiring, and accountable as they need to be to meet the...
