New Book Review: "The Future of Management"

Recently posted book review for The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel and Bill Breen, Harvard Business School Press, 2007, reposted here:

In the preface to this text, the authors indicate that their goal is "to help [the reader] become a 21st-century management pioneer; to equip [the reader] to reinvent the principles, processes, and practices of management for our postmodern age", but that "this is not a compendium of best practices. It's not filled with exhortations to 'go thou and do likewise'". In addition, Hamel and Breen go on to write that "this is a book for dreamers and doers. It's for everyone who feels hog-tied by bureaucracy, who worries that the 'system' is stifling innovation, who secretly believes that the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle, who wonders why corporate life has to be so dispiriting, who thinks that employees really are smart enough to manage themselves, who knows that 'management', as currently practiced, is a drag on success – and wants to do something about it."

In some sense, within the closing lines of this book the authors reiterate their goal in writing this book, which "was not to predict the future of management, but to help [the reader] invent it. At every turn, [the authors] have argued that the technology of management must be reinvented, and will be reinvented. The only question is: Who's going to do the reinventing?" So for any reviewers here who are disappointed that this book does not attempt to predict the future of management, the authors make it clear throughout their discussion, right from the outset, that this was not their goal. On many levels, "The Future of Management" provides an excellent follow-up discussion to Christopher D. McKenna's "The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century" (see my review) because the latter text discusses how management philosophy became ubiquitous to begin with over the course of the last century.

The authors first discuss why management innovation matters, and then provide case studies of management innovation in action, followed by discussions on imagining and building the future of management. Hamel and Breen make a convincing case that management innovation, "anything that substantially alters the way in which the work of management is carried out, or significantly modifies customary organizational forms, and, by so doing, advances organizational goals", sits at the top of the innovation stack, below which reside strategic innovation, product/service innovation, and at the base, operational innovation. The Whole Foods Market, Google, and W.L. Gore case studies are well done, and the accompanying lessons at the conclusion of each of these case studies far exceed similar attempts of most business texts of which this reviewer is familiar, including many from Harvard Business School Press, the publisher in this case.