Gary Hamel | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Considering the gap between management 2.0 and enterprise 2.0

February 24, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 1 Comment

I’ve been neglecting the management 2.0 topic for a long time although it was what this blog was about since 2005. Last years I slowely slipped from management 2.0 to enterprise 2.0, even if I find it sad that there were so many people to discuss about of make companies use 2.0 tools than people wanting to focus on building a new management framework in which these tools would make sense. But this question is coming back like a boomerang while companies are slowly realizing that small side adjustments won’t be enough to make tools useful and that a systemic overhaul is needed to make tools serve as catalyssts in a new organization model.

In february’s issue of the Harvard Business Review, Gary Hamel put this issue back to the headlines with an article called “Moon shots for management” which clearly defines management issues for the upcoming years.

Namely :

The change that could not happen…

November 15, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Economy is experiencing minor troubles, bringing about few bankruptcies, leading many players to feel lost into emptyness.

But what really happend ?

• Lawful practices of which it was possible to guess they would lead to a major crisis if taken to their paroxysm. “But dont worry, we master the system and know when to stop”.

• Always more. Why being satisfied with 7 when you can get 10 ? Because the 3 you’ll take will make it impossible for you to get 7 next year. “Tomorrow is another day, I have targets for today sir”. “And what if you reach it ?” “I’ll be asked to do more tomorrow”. “Do you find this logical, Perhaps one day it will be impossible to do more”. “That’s the way things hae always been…”. “Of course…and it always ended the same way”.

• Transfering risk. I optilize my ‘local maximum’ without taking care of macr equilbrium. I pass the “hot potatoe” to someone else, I reach my targets and the others just have to do the same. But one day the “hot potatoe” becomes a bom that explodes in someone else’s hands and I realize that my success is conditioned by the other’s, and that when my partners or even my competitors fail it makes me fail too.

• Many warning signs. Nothing was discovered those last weeks and people were pointing at the system’s weaknesses for years…but people in charge decided to wait untill it’s too late. “You’re true, it’s impossible to run a 100m race in zero seconds and a regular and sustainable growth is better than jerking forward and distroying in one day what took years to build. But things are like that and there’s no reason to change, there’s no other model”.

• Doomsters can’t be right. “Because the current system is the only one we know, it’s always been like that and will always be. It’s undestroyable. Do you imagine the major banks collapsing ? Wall street on its knees ? The state being forced to buy it all ? Stop dreaming, it’s impossible. And since it’s impossible, your reasonning is wrong, so there’s no need to change a thing”. “You remember Titanic ?”. “But Titanic was only a movie…”.

Everybody knows what happends. It couldn’t happen….

Does it remind you of something ? Something that is very close to us in our every day job ?

As Umair Aque says, we have to reinvent the way we do business, which will not be without impact on the way we work. New goals, new realities to take into account….

That is not a matter of business model, strategy,processes, it’s about a paradigm shift. As Aque says, we need to put sense back into business. Not only in day to day job but something collective, something that makes people being something more than a productive ressource in a chain. If not history will repeat again and again.

Learning to live in a world of interdependance where both success and failure will be collective and built the organization that fits this reality.

So the very enterprise DNA has to be reinvented. As Hamel wrote in “The Future of Management“, businesses will have to deeply change but, sinc change is not a part of the corporate DNA, some companies will need a major crisis to change. Hoping they’ll be able to survive..

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: bank, change, crisis, gary hamel, management, organization, strategy

Enterprise and management 2.0 : is this the beginning or the end

February 4, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I published on my french blog a note about the latest book by Gary Hamel : “The future of management”. A few days later I received a comment from his french publisher, saying the french edition will be available in april. What surprised me was the title : in France the book will be called “The end of management”.

Ok, the is about both end and future : the end of what we know, and how to successfully embrace the future. But, although both titles are relevant, I don’t think they embody the same message : “the end”implies we don’t know what’s next, something like if our practices are close to death and, since we rely on them, we’re close to death too. The english title is closer to reality since Hamel not only says an era is finishing, he also gives us hints about the future and how to build it.

Perhaps it’s also a way to take into account cultural differences : US people are more positive and think about opportunities, French people often focus on a kind of security that’s disappearing little by little, on what they’re loosing rather than what they may win in the future.

What a pity. I’m affraid using such words is not the best way to make people feel more comfortable with the upcomming and unavoidable change.

I’d like to have your opinion about that ? Not only about the title (even if I’d be glad to have Hamel’s point of view…there’s no harm in dreaming), but also about how you consider the tipping point we’re reaching. Is it the end ? The beginning ? More an evolution than a real end ?