In their new book, The Future of Management, (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) authors Gary Hamel and Bill Breen ask "What problem was management invented to solve, anyway?"

It’s a terrific question for managers of nonprofits to ask themselves as well.

They go back to the origins of modern management, as far back as Frederick Taylor and the 1890′s, and report, to little surprise, that management was invented to solve a very specific problem, “how to do things with perfect replicability, at ever-increasing scale and steadily increasing efficiency…”

With this origin, it is no wonder that modern management tools fall so far short of successfully addressing 21st century problems such as how to innovate faster, make use of rapidly evolving technology, recruit and retain top talent, and motivate a work force to give its best.

Sure, a steady parade of books and gurus advises us to make the organization more innovative, the workplace more people-friendly, and to engage in creative problem-solving.

But Hamel and Breen go further. They see the modern corporation, increasingly populated by "Fickle Gen Y" employees (currently under age 28) who will bolt to a competitor if they are the least bit unfulfilled, and facing increasing competition from all sides, as needing to re-think the essential purpose of management.

Is it to control or to unleash; to replicate the same tasks or to find the right ones for the future; to lead or to follow?

Good questions!

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.