Gary Hamel
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Articles by Gary Hamel
The Social Case for Busting Bureaucracy
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America Needs a Smarter Government, Not Just a Smaller One | by Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini and Michele Zanini - Project Syndicate
en English Politics Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has prioritized performative stunts over meaningful reform, relying on crude measures that produce more disruption than savings. If the US is to remain globally competitive, it needs an accountable, innovative, and agile federal government.
America Should Be More Like Operation Warp Speed
The U.S. government can achieve great things quickly when it has to. In November 2020, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19. Seven days later, a competing vaccine from Moderna was approved. The rollout to the public began a few weeks later. The desperate search for a vaccine had been orchestrated by Operation Warp Speed, an initiative announced by the Trump administration that May.
A Simple Solution for Simplifying Work Processes
Across every industry, digital technologies have proved to be powerful tools for streamlining processes and automating workflows. In healthcare, the introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) was hailed as a groundbreaking cure to the inefficiency of paper-based systems. But as many healthcare providers have now learned, digitizing a pointless or poorly designed process can make it even harder for employees to get their work done.
Fixing bureaucracy requires more than a month-long sprint. Here’s why
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 5 minute Read Like many big companies, Google has a bureaucracy problem. Senior execs who left in recent years complain of long decision cycles, a faltering pace of innovation, and a waning appetite for risk.
This former Apple executive says leaders should draw their power from their teams
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 4 minute Read What does it mean to be a “leader?” In most organizations, the term is applied, indiscriminately, to anybody in a management role. However, only having subordinates doesn’t make you a leader. Research from Gallup shows that the single biggest predictor of engagement scores is the way employees feel about their boss. For instance, does a manager inspire and empower their employees—or badger and micromanage?
‘Create a cascade of change’: How to break through stubborn company infrastructure and get things done
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 3 minute Read Wherever one looks, one sees organizations—from universities, health care providers, and large- to medium-size companies—who are struggling to adapt to an ever-accelerating pace of change. In their quest to stay relevant, most organizations are hobbled by bureaucratic management systems—with too many layers and too may rules— that frustrate game-changing innovation and proactive renewal.
Why thinking innovatively means paying attention to design
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 6 minute Read There are few who would say the point of innovation is for improving the human condition. While history is pockmarked with tumultuous events, genuine progress has always been the product of innovation—be it in philosophy, public policy, science or business.
How to lead with courage and build a business with heart
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 7 minute Read It‘s unlikely you‘ve heard of Arthur Pigou, the Cambridge University economist who laid the groundwork for “stakeholder” capitalism. Pigou, who died in 1959, argued that production of goods and services often involves costs that are borne not by the producer or the end customer, but by society at large. These “externalities,” as he termed them, are a hidden tax on public welfare.
This is how big companies can bust out of bureaucratic thinking
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 3 minute Read We remember the conversation clearly, though it took place more than 20 years ago. He was sitting in his home office, a few miles from Palo Alto, California. Across the table was one of our heroes, Jim March. An emeritus professor at Stanford University, March was regarded as one of world’s preeminent organizational theorists.
MIT professor Zeynep Ton on creating jobs that don't suck
By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 2 minute Read Last year, 48 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs—a record. For many, COVID-19 was the last straw. Chaotic work schedules, health risks, and economic insecurity turned jobs that had been merely dismal into ones that were truly shitty. The pandemic forced an overwhelmingly large number of workers to rethink their relationship with their employers. A substantial fraction decided to clean out their lockers and leave.
The five reads you need to plot the future
05 February 2021 By Christian Stadler Here’s a shocker: it’s hard to predict the future. And in an age where disruptions have become more frequent the work of a strategist, who plots their organisation’s direction, has not necessarily become easier. The late Clayton Christensen brought disruptive innovation to boardrooms, but I want to highlight a number of more recent releases. 1 Uncharted: How to Map the Future By Margret Heffernan. Published by Simon & Schuster UK.
Commentary: The biggest problem with capitalism? Not enough capitalists
Commentary: More entrepreneurship within businesses can help fix the economic inequality plaguing many capitalist societies.
Unternehmensführung: 25 Herausforderungen an modernes Management
Foto: Cecilie Arcurs / E+ / Getty Images Das Management von Unternehmen ist zweifellos eine der wichtigsten Errungenschaften der Menschheit. Über hundert Jahre lang trugen Fortschritte bei der Unternehmensführung zur Stärkung der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung bei. Das Problem heute: Die meisten fundamentalen Managementinnovationen sind inzwischen einige Jahrzehnte alt.
Mehr Mitbestimmung: Warum das nicht zu weniger Bürokratie führt
Obwohl Bürokratie so viele Gegner hat, ist sie erstaunlich hartnäckig. Seit 1983 hat sich die Zahl der Manager, Vorgesetzten und Backoffice-Mitarbeiter in den USA fast verdoppelt, während die Beschäftigtenzahlen in anderen Berufsfeldern um weniger als 40 Prozent gewachsen sind. Das haben wir den Daten des Bureau of Labor Statistics entnommen.
Das Streben nach Erneuerung
Gary Hamel ist Gastprofessor an der London Business School und Gründer des Management Lab, einer Forschungseinrichtung mit Schwerpunkt auf Managementinnovationen. Hamel gilt als einer der weltweit führenden Experten für Open Innovation und den Abbau von Hierarchien in Unternehmen. Zu seinen bekanntesten Büchern gehören "Competing for the Future", "Das Ende des Managements" und "Worauf es jetzt ankommt".
So gelingen Innovationen in Krisenzeiten
Foto: Hiroshi Watanabe / Digital Vision / Getty Images Wachstum - echtes Wachstum zumindest - beruht auf Innovationen. Natürlich kann ein Unternehmen mit einer großen Firmenübernahme seine Gesamterlöse in die Höhe treiben. Dabei jedoch von Wachstum zu sprechen wäre nicht angemessen. Es ist eher unwahrscheinlich, dass mit Akquisitionen langfristig überdurchschnittliches Wachstum erzielt werden kann.
Die Zukunft gestalten - schon heute
Sehen Sie sich in Ihrem Unternehmen einmal genauer um. Nehmen Sie die ehrgeizigen Initiativen unter die Lupe, die gerade gestartet wurden, jene Anliegen also, mit denen sich Topmanager täglich befassen. Prüfen Sie die Kriterien und die Vergleichsmaßstäbe, mit deren Hilfe Verbesserungen gemessen werden. Verfolgen Sie die Erfolgsgeschichte neuer Geschäftsfelder. Sehen Sie sich auch die Gesichter Ihrer Kollegen an, um daraus auf deren Erwartungen und Besorgnisse zu schließen.
Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
5 Key Insights from author Gary Hamel Gary Hamel is on the faculty of the London Business School and is a cofounder of the Management Lab, an organization that builds technology and tools to support breakthrough management innovation. He has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the world’s most influential business thinker. Below, Gary shares 5 key insights from his new book, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, written with co-author Michele Zanini.
People at the Core
According to management thinker Gary Hamel, businesses that want to create thriving, resilient organizations will need to shift the way they think about employees. And business schools will have to help them. BY SHARON SHINN • October 02, 2020 ILLUSTRATION BY iSTOCK “HOW DO YOU build organizations that are as human as the people who work there?
Putting Principles Over Practices
Companies like Nucor Steel and Haier Group challenge the assumption that bureaucracy is indispensable to large-scale human enterprise, yet neither company would claim to be a perfectly developed specimen of “humanocracy.” Moreover, they would be the first to tell you that not all of their systems and processes are exportable. What makes these companies valuable as role models isn’t so much their unique practices as the distinctive belief systems that gave birth to those practices.
How to break free of bureaucracy in the workplace
So many of us work in organizations that are fainthearted and dispiriting, where it’s not uncommon to hear phrases like, “That doesn’t fit our strategy,” “We don’t have the budget,” “You’ll never get it past legal,” “That’s not our culture,” “It’s impractical,” or, “ There’s a lot of downside.” The problem likely isn’t your manager, who’s just as hamstrung as you are. The culprit is bureaucracy—with its authoritarian power structures, suffocating rules, and toxic politicking.
Harnessing everyday genius
HOW MICHELIN GIVES ITS FRONT-LINE TEAMS THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The loss of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy and elsewhere has inspired a slew of proposals, including mandatory labor representation on corporate boards, benefits for gig economy workers, tax breaks for investments in human capital and a minimum guaranteed income.
Harnessing Everyday Genius
Idea in Brief The Problem The number of “good jobs” in the United States and other countries is declining despite sustained government and policy efforts. Why It Happens There is a widespread assumption that low-wage jobs are filled with minimally capable people—a prejudice that has denied millions of employees the opportunity to enhance their skills and use their brains.
15 New Leadership Books for a Summer in Quarantine
It’s often said that leaders shouldn’t let a crisis go to waste. If your idea of using isolation time well is learning about leadership, here are the new releases I’ve been reading over the past few months. They’re not exactly beach books, but you might not be going to the beach anyway. Some are familiar names; others are first-timer authors. 1. Manifesto for a Moral Revolutionby Jacqueline Novogratz (May 5) Jacqueline is one of the most inspiring leaders on the planet.
Busting Bureaucracy
How did we become so inured to the inhumanity of our organizations? How is it OK that a scant 13% of employees around the world are emotionally engaged in their work? How is it OK that 70% of jobs in the US require little or no originality—this according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics? How is it OK that only 12% of employees in Europe say they’re always consulted before objectives are set for their work?
Bureaucracy Must Die
Almost 25 years ago in the pages of HBR, C.K. Prahalad and I urged managers to think in a different way about the building blocks of competitive success. We argued that a business should be seen as a portfolio of “core competencies” as well as a portfolio of products. By building and nurturing deep, hard-to-replicate skills, an organization could fatten margins and fuel growth.
The [New] Human Movement – Gary Hamel – Medium
Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini As human beings, we are measured not so much by our accomplishments, but by the audacity of the challenges we tackle. Each of us faces a critical question: what purpose is worth the precious currency of our time? There are many worthwhile challenges in the world, but one of the noblest is this: To ensure that every human being has the opportunity to fully develop and profit from their unique gifts.
The Best Leadership Books of 2012
Call Toll Free 1-800-423-8273 The ways we have thought about leadership have not always served us well. We have tended to think of leadership as something outside and above the rest. If leadership isn’t among, it will let us down. Hierarchies are still important, but they must allow for freedom to act, think, and experiment in a way that encourages individual growth. Moving ahead we need more clarity. We need to look at what we do with fresh eyes.
Yes, You Can Eliminate Bureaucracy
Idea in Brief The Problem Big companies end up creating big bureaucracies, which sap their organizations of creativity, willingness to take risk, and productivity. Though many executives express the desire to stamp it out, bureaucracy is thriving. Why It Happens With its clear lines of authority, specialized units, and standardized tasks, bureaucracy promotes efficiency at scale. It is also familiar, varying little across industries and cultures.
Strategy as Revolution
Let’s admit it. Corporations around the world are reaching the limits of incrementalism. Squeezing another penny out of costs, getting a product to market a few weeks earlier, responding to customers’ inquiries a little bit faster, ratcheting quality up one more notch, capturing another point of market share—those are the obsessions of managers today. But pursuing incremental improvements while rivals reinvent the industry is like fiddling while Rome burns.
Stop worshipping unicorns. Your firm can be entrepreneurial | London Business School
It’s hardly surprising that more people want to work for start-ups. Where else do they get the chance to stretch themselves, build something new and hustle for a big payout? According to an EY and Economic Innovation Group survey, 78% of millennials call entrepreneurs successful and 62% have considered launching their own business. But are start-ups the only way to inspire ingenuity?
What We Learned About Bureaucracy from 7,000 HBR Readers
We recently asked members of the HBR community to gauge the extent of “bureaucratic sclerosis” within their organization using our Bureaucracy Mass Index (BMI) tool. Since then, we’ve received over 7,000 responses from a diverse group of participants. Here are our initial takeaways: The blight of bureaucracy seems inescapable.
Assessment: Do You Know How Bureaucratic Your Organization Is?
Executive Summary Excess of bureaucracy costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion in lost economic output per year. To dismantle bureaucracy, then, the first step is to be honest about how much it’s costing your organization. These costs fall into seven categories: Bloat, Friction, Insularity, Disempowerment, Risk Aversion, Inertia, Politics. This assessment will help you determine where your organization on each of these measures.
A Few Unicorns Are No Substitute for a Competitive, Innovative Economy
The world’s unicorns, VC-backed startups worth more than $1 billion, have been getting a lot of press lately. At the moment, Google News lists about 16 million results for Uber and 7 million results for Snapchat. By contrast, there are fewer than 3.5 million stories about Walmart, 2.6 million about General Motors, and fewer than 700,000 focused on Exxon. Unicorns are to business journalists what Kim Kardashian is to Instagram users.
The $3 Trillion Prize for Busting Bureaucracy
Around the world, productivity growth has stalled out. While some hope that a “second machine age” will reverse the slump, we think that wringing bureaucracy out of the economy offers a more promising and less speculative route to boosting productivity. By our calculations, busting bureaucracy would add $3 trillion to economic growth in the US alone. Dismantling bureaucracy won’t be easy, but it has to happen—bureaucracy must die.
Bureaucracy’s $3 Trillion Price Tag
What’s the least efficient activity in your organization? What sort of work delivers the least value per dollar? We think it’s management and administration. The fault isn’t with any particular leader, but with the top-heavy, bureaucracy-infused management structures that predominate in most organizations. We believe that an excess of bureaucracy costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion in lost economic output, or about 17% of GDP. Here’s the data.
Why the United Nations Will Launch a Space Program
The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. 1. Why the United Nations will launch a space program. 3. Look out middle managers: Excess management is costing American businesses trillions. By Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini in Harvard Business Review 4. Why faster wireless tech is vital to unlocking the cities of the future. 5. How to make high school computer science more inclusive from the ground-up.
Excess Management Is Costing the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year
More people are working in big, bureaucratic organizations than ever before. Yet there’s compelling evidence that bureaucracy creates a significant drag on productivity and organizational resilience and innovation. By our reckoning, the cost of excess bureaucracy in the U.S. economy amounts to more than $3 trillion in lost economic output, or about 17% of GDP.
What Is Agile?
Until recently, Agile was seen as a set of management practices relevant to software development. That’s because Agile’s initial advocates were software developers and its foundational document was the Manifesto for Software Development of 2001. Fifteen years later in 2016, following recognition by Harvard Business Review, McKinsey & Company and the 2015 Learning Consortium Project, Agile is now spreading rapidly to all parts and all types of organizations.
Build a change platform, not a change program
It’s not you, it’s your company. Management Innovation eXchange founders Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini believe that continuous improvement requires the creation of change platforms, rather than change programs ordained and implemented from the top. Transformational-change initiatives have a dismal track record.
More of Us Are Working in Big Bureaucratic Organizations than Ever Before
Writing for the Harvard Business Review in 1988, Peter Drucker predicted that in 20 years the average organization would have slashed the number of management layers by half and shrunk its managerial ranks by two-thirds. Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way. Despite all of the hype around alternatives — the gig economy, the sharing economy, holacracy, lean – bureaucracy has been growing, not shrinking.
Top-Down Solutions Like Holacracy Won’t Fix Bureaucracy
For all its enemies, bureaucracy is amazingly resilient. Since 1983, the number of managers, supervisors, and support staff employed in the U.S. economy has nearly doubled, while employment in other occupations has grown by less than 40%, according to our analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That makes bureaucracy the organizational equivalent of kudzu, the invasive, herbicide-resistant vine that has overrun thousands of acres of woodland in the American south.
Leadership From the Inside Out — Part I
May 27, 2010 7:59 pm ET In a pair of recent posts (Part I, Part II) I argued that many of us have lost our faith in large institutions. We increasingly feel ill-used by our employers and ill-served by our elected representatives. More troubling still, many of us have also lost faith in faith-based organizations. In this regard, the Church of England (CoE) stands as Exhibit A.
HCL: Extreme Management Makeover
How’d you like to put a question to one of the world’s most inspired management innovators—a CEO who’s challenged a host of management orthodoxies. At the end of this post, I’ll explain how you can do just that.
Responding to Comments on HCL’s “Extreme Management Makeover”
Jul 9, 2010 5:28 pm ET Thanks, everyone, for your comments about my synopsis of Vineet Nayar’s recently published book, “Employees First, Customers Second.” (See my earlier post). A few of my own thoughts . . . Bold innovations often take time. That’s why progress must be judged both in relation to the starting point as well as the final destination.
HCL’s CEO on its ‘Management Makeover’
A couple of weeks back I provided you with a synopsis of Vineet Nayar’s new book, “Employees First, Customers Second,” which has been recently published by Harvard Business School Press. In it, Vineet, CEO of HCL Technologies, talks about the progress his company has made in making managers more accountable to those on the front lines. Having posted my summary, I invited you to submit your questions to Vineet, and many of you did, along with plenty of piquant comments. Herewith, Vineet’s reply.
Leadership from the Inside Out - Part II
Jun 17, 2010 5:19 pm ET In my previous post, I introduced you to Drew Williams. For seven years Drew served as assistant vicar at St. Andrews, an Anglican parish in Chorleywood, England. When he arrived in 2003, Drew found a church that was big but not growing, and a congregation that was loyal but not energized. Mark Stibbe, head vicar at St. Andrews, challenged Drew to develop a plan that would change this.
Capitalism is Dead. Long Live Capitalism.
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Who’s Really Innovative?
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