You Should Read this (#5): Humanocracy

Richard Atherton and Tom van der Lubbe review in their podcast ‘Humanocracy’, a much rewarded book by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. What can business leaders learn from this work?

About Humanocracy

In Humanocracy Hamel and Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research, and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them.

Critical building blocks in this book include:

* Motivation

Rallying colleagues to the challenge of busting bureaucracy.

* Models

Leveraging the experience of organizations that have profitably challenged the bureaucratic status quo.

* Mindsets

Escaping the industrial age thinking that frustrates progress.

* Mobilization

Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes.

* Migration

Embedding the principles of humanocracy—ownership, experimentation, meritocracy, markets, openness, community and paradox—in your organization’s DNA.

About Hamel

Gary Hamel is on the faculty of the London Business School and is a co-founder of the Management Lab, an organization that builds technology and tools to support breakthrough management innovation. Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the world’s most influential business thinker, Professor Hamel’s landmark books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. They include The Future of Management and What Matters Now.

About Zanini

Michele Zanini is a co-founder of the Management Lab, where he helps large organizations become more adaptable, innovative and engaging places to work. Zanini is an alumnus of McKinsey & Company and the RAND Corporation, and holds degrees from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

*Source: Harvard Business Review Press