CSC: Experience. Results

View video clip  of the report authors introducing this topic and explaining the value of becoming involved.

Do you remember before the crisis when we had trouble believing that good things could come in small packages?

The economic recession has affected us all, but it was the outcome of the actions of very few people in very few organisations.  By contrast, the more important disruption that is unfolding, in front of our eyes, is the outcome of multiple small changes in the behaviour of very many people primarily enabled by technology.  Like all revolutions, it is a mass movement, even though many of the participants are sublimely unaware of the transformational role they are playing.

The last 20 years of business activity has been a dramatic story of strategic innovation and radically new business  models, as industry after industry was revolutionised by competitive strategies that overturned long-standing assumptions about the formula for success in that industry.

The next 20 years will swing the focus to innovation in the way we manage  and radically new organisational  models, as companies discover that their long standing assumptions about how best to manage talented people and organise collective work are no longer effective.  We can see glimpses of the future in companies like Google, W L Gore, HCL Technologies and Whole Foods Market.  Three powerful trends are converging to create this imminent tipping point:

• Technology is making available a portfolio of tools and media that are disintermediating many hierarchical structures and making many bureaucratic processes obsolete.  The internet, continuously enriched by the powerful applications being developed to exploit it, is increasingly driven by the wants, tastes and needs of individuals in their capacity as citizens, employees and entrepreneurs, rather than by the requirements of institutions, whether companies or governments.  The genie is out of the bottle.  Power is shifting irreversibly from hierarchies and elites to networks and enthusiasts. 
  
  
• Management is adding less and less value as those ostensibly being managed become better educated, more independent-minded, less deferential and more assertive.  In short, human resources are becoming resourceful humans.  There is increasing evidence that companies are as over-managed as their societies are over-governed. 
  
  
• Employees are increasingly disenchanted by their work situation and actively irritated by the assumptions underlying the standard model of management to which they are subjected.  Rising levels of expectation and aspiration amongst employees are not being matched by increasing levels of trust and empowerment in the workplace.  The gap is widening between the responsibilities freely chosen and skilfully exercised by people in their lives outside work and the responsibilities delegated to them by their bosses at work. 

Attending this session will provide insights to the argument that:

• Big gains in performance are available to companies that have the courage and foresight to re-invent their model of management by experimenting with dramatically different ways of leading talent and organising work.
  
  
• The critical test of these organisational models is the extent to which they re-engage the intellect and emotions of employees, which is the wellspring of corporate performance.
  
  
• These changes are heavily dependent upon the skilful application of new technologies, and particularly the tools that facilitate social networking and collaborative creativity.

In this half-day Management Update, Alan Matcham, Lee Schlenker and Jules Goddard will outline the results of our recent study to explain the potential role of enterprise technologies to rethink management practice.