Restoring Humanity to Management (and wisdom to intelligence)
by David K. Hurst

Our Paradoxical Nature
Anglo-American management theory has been described as an incoherent battleground between warring scientists and humanists, between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ management. It’s time to recognize that this conflict is not a ‘bug’, but a feature: a vital tension in the human condition. Our paradoxical nature is the essence of our humanity, and it is the practical weaving together of apparently irreconcilable opposites that is the very warp and woof of our existence.

What Does It Mean to be ‘Human’?
Thus, the ‘Next Management’ and the ‘Next Knowledge Work’ will entail a radical reconsideration of what it means to be human. The long, slow process of reframing a practice will be catalyzed by the fading of the current AGI hype cycle and the realization that, while humans can behave like machines, machines can’t behave like humans. Machines may become fast and smart, but without bodies, metabolisms of flesh and blood, and the associated experiences, they can never become caring and wise.

The Next Management Canon
The ’Next Management’ will require dual process, ‘both…and’ theories of cognition and emotion and a new focus on practicing managers’ ability to make sense of situations and then to ‘toggle’, to switch seamlessly between two modes of being. This is not a movement from one management canon to another: it is a dynamic synthesis of old and new, the traditional and the radical. It points to managers as restless seekers on shifting ground for the adaptive space, the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, between continuity and change. From this perspective leadership and management become verbs, activities associated with the twin dynamics of ‘empathizing’ and ‘systemizing’: dimensions of adaptive social settings, rather than traits of individuals. The primacy of experience in learning a practice will be re-established.

This quest will also see humanity restored to management and wisdom reunited with intelligence.[1]

About the Author:

David Hurst is a speaker, writer and management educator (www.davidkhurst.com). His most recent book is The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World (Columbia University Press 2012).