Hats off to McKinsey and the HBR for creating MIX, an open innovation project to accelerate the search for new management models.
Speaking last week on The MIX Management 2.0 Challenge, Gary Hamel, described by the WSJ as 'the world's most influential business thinker', echoed its call for the reinvention of management:
"We are at an ideological inflection point. For 100 years, we've had the ideology of control. We need to think of control in new ways."
He called for new management models that draw upon the innovation of the Web: organizational hierarchies that grow from the bottom up; working in small autonomous teams wherever possible; and enabling 'communities of passion' to flourish around ideas and innovation.
He called also for the embrace of experimentation: 'cultivating an environment where people don't need extensive permission to run small-scale, low-risk experiments'.
It's not just theory. He cites an example of a business that has embraced Management 2.0 principles - a company with $3bn revenue and a 50-year history - with a lattice organization and no hierarchy. Every employee decides what to work on, and their compensation is linked to a ranking by 20 peers based on their value added to the company.
A brief aside - it seems to me that there's a dimension missing here: the social impact of work. We need to create work cultures that are less competitive and more collaborative; where trustworthiness and responsibility are deeply ingrained; where parenting and work are not in conflict; where creating quality jobs is a measure of success. In the jargon, we need Management 2.0 models that embrace far wider definitions of corporate social responsibility.
OK, I hear you say, so just what is the tenuous connection between all this heady stuff and business process management?
Well, it seems to me that every aspect of Gary Hamel's vision speaks to the need for an enterprise-wide integrated management platform.
And it's set to become even more complex, as the growth of shared services and outsourcing creates a new normal: hybrid service delivery models and intricate supply chains that are highly dynamic, constantly being re-optimized.
To avoid continually tripping up, to be able to implement Management 2.0 thinking, the enterprise needs a cortex, a way of pulling it all together: an integrated management platform. And its language has to be end-to-end business process because that can be universally understood across the enterprise. So it's a BPM platform.
In the BPM platform, business process becomes the key by which we describe what the enterprise does, and how it all fits together - and how we analyse what the impact of change will be.
But it goes way beyond this. The BPM platform integrates process with real-time metrics, risks and controls, compliance and quality management - all within one governance framework. It deploys process to every desktop and mobile device as a personalized intelligent operations manual. It also provides the collaborative framework that enables a culture of continuous improvement.
It's easy to see a BPM platform as the essential infrastructure for any enterprise looking to implement Management 2.0 thinking. It's at the heart of the management innovation that MIX is searching for: To be able to see and manage the enterprise in a new dimension - process.
And this is not just theory either ;-). Register for Inspiring Performance 2011 in London next month and join us to hear case studies from leaders in this field.
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