[p2p-research] Fwd: The End of Management - WSJ.com

[Michel Bauwens]

excerpt from the wsj:


The strategy consultant Gary Hamel is a leading advocate for rethinking
management. He's building a new, online management "laboratory" where
leading management practitioners and thinkers can work together—a form of
mass collaboration—on innovative ideas for handling modern management
challenges.

What will the replacement for the corporation look like? Even Mr. Hamel
doesn't have an answer for that one. "The thing that limits us," he admits,
"is that we are extraordinarily familiar with the old model, but the new
model, we haven't even seen yet."

This much, though, is clear: The new model will have to be more like the
marketplace, and less like corporations of the past. It will need to be
flexible, agile, able to quickly adjust to market developments, and ruthless
in reallocating resources to new opportunities.

Resource allocation will be one of the biggest challenges. The beauty of
markets is that, over time, they tend to ensure that both people and money
end up employed in the highest-value enterprises. In corporations, decisions
about allocating resources are made by people with a vested interest in the
status quo. "The single biggest reason companies fail," says Mr. Hamel, "is
that they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be."

This is the core of the innovator's dilemma. The big companies Mr.
Christensen studied failed, not necessarily because they didn't see the
coming innovations, but because they failed to adequately invest in those
innovations. To avoid this problem, the people who control large pools of
capital need to act more like venture capitalists, and less like corporate
finance departments. They need to make lots of bets, not just a few big
ones, and they need to be willing to cut their losses.

The resource allocation problem is one Google has tried to address with its
"20%" policy. All engineers are allowed to spend 20% of their time working
on Google-related projects other than those assigned to them. The company
says this system has helped it develop innovative products, such as Google
News. Because engineers don't have to compete for funds, the Google approach
doesn't have the discipline of a true marketplace, and it hasn't yet proven
itself as a way to generate incremental profits. But it does allow new ideas
to get some attention.
 [image: [management2]] Granger Collection

Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors

In addition to resource allocation, there's the even bigger challenge of
creating structures that motivate and inspire workers. There's plenty of
evidence that most workers in today's complex organizations are simply not
engaged in their work. Many are like Jim Halpert from "The Office," who in
season one of the popular TV show declared: "This is just a job.…If this
were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train."

The new model will have to instill in workers the kind of drive and
creativity and innovative spirit more commonly found among entrepreneurs. It
will have to push power and decision-making down the organization as much as
possible, rather than leave it concentrated at the top. Traditional
bureaucratic structures will have to be replaced with something more like
ad-hoc teams of peers, who come together to tackle individual projects, and
then disband. SAS Institute Inc., the privately held software company in
North Carolina that invests heavily in both research and development and in
generous employee benefits, ranging from free on-site health care and elder
care support to massages, is often cited as one company that could be paving
the way. The company has nurtured a reputation as both a source of
innovative products and a great place to work.

Information gathering also needs to be broader and more inclusive. Former
Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley's demand that the company cull product
ideas from outside the company, rather than developing them all from within,
was a step in this direction. (It even has a website for submitting ideas.)
The new model will have to go further. New mechanisms will have to be
created for harnessing the "wisdom of crowds." Feedback loops will need to
be built that allow products and services to constantly evolve in response
to new information. Change, innovation, adaptability, all have to become
orders of the day.

Can the 20th-century corporation evolve into this new, 21st-century
organization? It won't be easy. The "innovator's dilemma" applies to
management, as well as technology. But the time has come to find out. The
old methods won't last much longer.
—Adapted from "The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management" by
Alan Murray. Copyright 2010 by Dow Jones & Co. Published by Harper Business,
an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

*Write to *Alan Murray at Alan.Murray at wsj.com


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 Michel--although
P2P is not named, this WSJ article endorses the P2P project.

I attended the recent American Sociological Association meeting. The main
theme was fear of the right--right with guns, right wing on immigration,etc.
Most academics are not engaged in a positive, long range project. I think
this makes vulnerable to the rage expressed by frightened people on the
right. Bill

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