On the upper levels of management as well as in management literature, one will frequently hear the almost ritual complaint about the growing sluggishness of organizations, their lack of agility. As proof, the argument will point to their difficulty to implement necessary radical transformations. Routinely, this will lead to a call for the “bull-dozing” of organizational layers and the radical streamlining of chains of command.

The bull-dozing rationale

The thrust of the underlying reasoning will run as follows: it is not the ever-increasing creativity of management theory and the multiplication of ever more abstract organizational models creating ever more injunctions and hierarchical layers that are to blame for the growing bureaucratization of modern corporations. No, the culprits are the structural complexities of modern corporations as well as the multiple organizational layers and the entrenched intermediaries they produce. Hence the necessity to do away with them and radically simplify organizational structures and chains of command.

This paper will not pretend that the structural complexity of present-day organizations is unproblematic per se or is not partly linked to the bureaucratization of modern corporations. Things have to be done about this trend. Neither will it argue that in many organizations some reduction of organizational layers would not be commendable, as all intermediaries are not equally important or indispensable. However, that is a matter to be dealt with on a case-to-case basis, not by general, decontextualized solutions.

The mental model of transparency

Instead, let us discuss the general, uncontextualized nature of the proposed solution for making “agile” organizations by drastically reducing structure and intermediaries and question the “mental model” this “solution” implicitly builds one: the myth or ideal of the “transparent organization” which itself is based on two premises.

The first says secrecy and non-communication are bad by nature, whereas communication and information sharing are good, as they provide the lifeblood of organizational togetherness.

The second holds that hierarchical layers and intermediaries in organizations are useless filters, only distorting or interrupting the information and communication flows through which the common purpose can be shared, explained, and made meaningful for members of the organization at all levels.

The transparency myth

The idea of the transparent organization builds on the idea that organizations are coherent and homogenous entities, where all participants share a core-purpose, pursue naturally aligning interests and have similar, if not identical understandings of what is going on. The mere spelling out of these implicit premises of the “transparent organization” underscore how unrealistic the whole idea is. It ignores the fundamental heterogeneity of organizations.

Networks of work-contexts

Organizations must be understood as loosely connected networks of work-contexts, in which the organization’s core-purpose takes on distinct colors and meanings. Within them, the diverging interests of the participants are arbitrated on a day-to-day basis in order to construct their difficult but indispensable cooperation. This produces a concrete context of meaning generating a distinct mode of functioning. In going about their tasks, the people in the different places where the actual work is accomplished (whether this be work-shops, project groups, a research department, administrative units of corporate headquarters, etc.) create separate contexts of cooperation the functioning of which does not emerge by itself. It has to be constructed or maintained from day to day. This cannot be done from the top. It is the indispensable job of these “intermediaries” or “middle-managers” who should better be valued as “context managers”. All top management can do is to prevent the various work-contexts to diverge too much in their trajectories, and that itself is a big, often superhuman job. For the rest, it has to leave it up to the context managers to create and maintain the conditions for effective cooperation within the various work-contexts.

Cooperative trade offs

Managing work-contexts is about creating the necessary cooperation between the different participants, which means creating the conditions for the emergence of the local trade-offs between their divergent, often contradictory “interests”. No enduring cooperation will be possible without such trade-offs. They produce the “rules of the game” being played among the participants and define their respective prerogatives, duties and also privileges. No effective functioning is possible without them.

Favoring the emergence and respect of such local “rules of the game” is the foremost job of any context manager: he or she has to construct and maintain a local, contextual governance. And this is the point where the job might put him or her at odds with managerial injunctions created for larger sectors his or her work-context Is part of. This can happen in many ways.

Understanding the rules of the game

Local “rules of the game” and their underlying trade-offs are subtle things. They are implicit and can only be accepted as long as they remain so. Everybody knows how things are but can pretend otherwise. When forced out in the open and put in writing, their implications become obvious, putting their legitimacy and very existence at risk. The implicit and ambiguous nature of “rules of the game” are necessary ingredients of the governance of work-contexts. Force clarity and transparence on them, and you might endanger their very existence and with it, the cooperation they help to achieve.

Also, the rules of the game are always local and contextual: at least some part of them will be specific to a given work-context and could not apply elsewhere. They are therefore always potentially at odds with the many legitimate efforts of the upper levels of management to rationalize and to keep things comparable in order to benchmark. The legitimate nature of these efforts cannot be contested on a general level, even though a good deal of them might be questioned as to their timing and to their overemphasis on standardization and comparability. Whatever, context managers will always observe these efforts with vigilance, if not distrust, lest their implications and impact destabilize his or her capacity to construct and manage the specific trade-offs on which the effective functioning of his or her context depends.

Criticisms of context managers

There are legitimate reasons for the often criticized “conservatism” of context managers. Even if they are in complete agreement with the projected transformations that present-day organizations are increasingly engaged in, they need time to implement the many brilliant schemes and initiatives implied by these transformations. This is a necessarily complex process whereby work contexts and their managers first gain a practical understanding of the medium-term impact of the prescriptions to be implemented, and collectively succeed in “digesting” them by inventing the new rules of the game enabling them to translate the projected change into enduring contextualized practice.

This is necessarily a difficult collective learning process. Both interactive and iterative by nature, it needs engaged leadership. Context managers can only exercise such leadership if they have the resources and leeway to, whenever necessary, bend the transformative prescriptions so as to adjust for the local trade-offs which will make them acceptable and practicable for all participants. Without such leadership, without such active engagement in the creation of the renewed trade-offs between the participants of a given work-context, there will be no effective implementation.

The need for context managers

No organization can thrive without engaged context managers. They are the only ones capable of breaking down and translating the core purpose of the organization as well as its overall transformative project into digestible, meaningful and implementable pieces of organizational practice. Whether this will happen, depends on their active engagement but also on the resources and leeway they are allowed to have.

Managerial hubris

The myth of the “transparent organization” is just one more example of the managerial hubris so characteristic of managerial thinking, both in consulting and in the upper echelons of corporations. It shows once more that management theory and practice has decided to ignore the basic uncertainty rooted in the freedom human beings enjoy when they decide whether to engage in collective action. The “transparent organization” is the attempt to respond to top management’s fear of the uncertainty of the behavior of those on whom it depends to keep them informed about what is going on operationally. The “transparent” “agile” organization with its drastically reduced hierarchical lines and organizational layers is about regaining control. It stands and falls on the pretense that top management has all the solutions, if only it is correctly informed. However, that can only be true in a fantasy world.

The fragility of organizations

Organizations are solutions for the problem of collective action. They are the best solutions we can think of, but they are fragile. Management has to live up to that fragility and to its implication, the political nature of the act of managing. Cooperation and control cannot be achieved through automatic devices, nor can they be taken for granted. Creating them is a political activity. Autonomy and effective leeway are the necessary ingredients for such an activity. That is true for all managers, at whatever level they practice their art. And above all this is true for the context managers, without whom no organization could function.

About the Author:

Erhard Friedberg is Professor Emeritus of sociology and former director of the Master of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, Paris

After the shock of the first lockdown in 2020, the world has experienced an erratic, difficult and long return to an almost normal situation, with no certainty of being completely out of the crisis. In other words, uncertainty, with its share of surprises, is with us for a long time.

One might have thought that the violence of the shock, which clearly showed the limits of our management tools, would lead to a profound rethink. It did not. After the shock, and despite the persistence of large dark clouds over their heads, organizations and states have gone back to designing action plans on the basis of expert forecasts, without which they seem incapable of conceiving their actions.

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The persistence of predictive tools despite their limitations

For years, we have been invited to “embrace uncertainty”. Despite this, and the evidence of repeated prediction accidents, successive surprises, and radically unexpected changes, almost all decision-making tools have remained anchored in a positivist and predictive paradigm.

These tools are based on a model that consists in identifying a future issue, defining a goal related to that issue (a vision), and then determining the means to achieve that goal. The underlying mental model is that the more important the identified issue is, the more ambitious the action must be, and the more resources must be used. This model underlies all major plans for transforming organizations and states. Any modest action is considered vain and futile. Faced with the magnitude of certain issues, such as climate change, the dominant thinking is that a revolution is needed, with big ideas, ambitious plans and grandiose gestures. But as history shows, revolutions are usually synonymous with disaster, and more harm than good. The repeated failures of major transformation plans, both corporate and political, confirm this.

The three mistakes of predictive management tools

The “revolutionary” approach is a costly dead-end because it makes three errors :

– An ontological error, concerning the nature of the world: that of thinking that the world is a mechanism whose springs we know, and which evolves in a linear way. It would be enough to press this or that “button” to obtain the desired effect.

– An epistemological error, concerning what we can know: having more and more data allows us to anticipate the evolution of the world. A shot of “big data” or an in-depth survey, and we would know what to do.

– A sociological error, on decision-making: that of conceiving it as a solitary and purely intellectual exercise. Let’s gather very intelligent people around a table and our problems will be solved!

These three errors create a fatal conceit, to use the words of the economist Friedrich Hayek, which translates into an arrogant, even hubristic posture of excessive confidence in our ability to control the world. This posture is the cause of its own failure with its share of human suffering and unsolved problems.

One example among a thousand illustrates the impasse that this posture constitutes: the war on drugs in the United States was launched with great fanfare by President Richard Nixon in 1970. Despite the colossal means, about ten billion dollars a year merely in direct expenses, the UN finally officially recognized in 2016 that this war was a failure with disastrous social consequences. Has it stopped after that? It hasn’t.

An alternative approach: small wins

As Richard Straub, President of the Peter Drucker Forum, reminded recently in Harvard Business Review, rather than this arrogant posture, it is better to adopt a totally different mindset inspired by the thinking of Peter Drucker, the “father” of management thinking – a posture marked by humility, such that change should rather be considered as incremental, anchored in continuity; an observation that the turbulence we are currently experiencing only makes more obvious.

A posture of humility, whereby we accept that we are not able to predict the future and that we cannot change a system in a mechanical and authoritarian way, does not mean giving up on change, quite the contrary. It is even the condition for being able to change.

A rich current in sociology, political science and organizational theory has indeed long defended the idea of an incremental approach to change, by small steps and on a local scale. This current has shown how the most complex problems are best solved by organizing a series of small wins that are accessible to individuals, whoever they are and wherever they are. Their succession constitutes a solid foundation that builds up gradually, limiting risks, dissuading opponents and rallying the undecided in favor of change.

Two imperatives for acting with uncertainty

This alternative requires two imperatives to succeed:

– prudence: first and foremost, one must survive in the face of uncertainty and surprises, and therefore organize oneself to avoid certain undesirable futures. It is also necessary to respect what already exists and to proceed in a humble way by avoiding revolutionary radicalism.

– progress: protection is not enough; we must also prosper thanks to uncertainty and the opportunities it opens. It is a question of creating the future we want, and not simply letting it happen; this is the entrepreneurial dimension of transformation.

There is a tension between the two, but it is a creative tension; it is that of any living organism. It must be constantly recreated: an excessively cautious approach leads to immobility, which means death, while a revolutionary approach leads to excesses, undermining the cause.

Rethinking management tools now

As Peter Drucker said, “it is precisely because change is a constant that its foundations must be particularly solid”. And what this foundation must be based on is people. In an uncertain world, changing profoundly, we must abandon the vision of Plato and Saint-Simon, that of the world as a machine piloted by a few great geniuses and underlings carry out the orders. No, we must start with people, training them to think new things, and showing them that they can change the world around them. We must give them the means to act and transform their environment. This is why the key to transforming the world lies in education, what French philosopher Paul Valéry evoked when he wrote: “…the aim is to make you men ready to face what has never been.”

An uncertain world calls for a rethinking of management tools, and in particular the mental models on which they are built. This is a task for researchers and teachers, of course, but also for managers themselves. We must start this work now, and not wait for the next catastrophe.

This article was first published on HBR France and is part of the blog post series on HBR related to the Drucker Forum: https://www.hbrfrance.fr/chroniques-experts/2021/11/40540-bienvenue-en-incertitude-comment-reinventer-les-outils-du-management-pour-eviter-la-prochaine-catastrophe/

About the Author: Philippe Silberzahn is a professor at EMLYON Business School in France and a recognized expert in innovation and entrepreneurship. As a consultant, keynote speaker and management educator, he works with the leadership teams of large organizations engaged in transformation efforts when confronted to uncertainty and disruptions in their markets.

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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Moderator
Johan Roos Chief Strategy Officer, Hult International Business School

Speakers
Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño Executive President, IE University
Patricia Pomies Chief Operating Officer, Globant
Rosanna Sibora Vice President Digital Products & Innovation, Universal Music Group

Setting the Stage

When the pandemic hit, few companies were prepared for the unpredictability of the threats and related challenges that it brought. The completely unexpected need to switch the internal operating system to fully digital within days ruthlessly exposed the flaws and booby traps hidden in many organizations. Operations were not prepared. Staff was not prepared. Management was not prepared. Governance was not prepared. Media discontinuities, paper files, compulsory attendance, undocumented workarounds, and micromanagement became visible as what they are: the legacy debt of an anachronistic business culture that suddenly turned into a very real threat to the business. In many companies, home office was more an incentive-like working model for a small number of employees. All of a sudden, this exotic mode of working turned into the new normal, creating a bunch of unsolved problems for the routines of a legacy business operating system. Managers and employees were thrown into the deep end of a new digital reality where established cultural habits and soft practices lost their impact.

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Technology – Driver or Threat

Looking back on these early days, it is obvious that the problem had different layers. On the one hand is the problem of how to deal with technology. Often digital technologies are seen as purely an IT matter, leading to a lack of knowledge and understanding in the rest of the company. Also dangerous is the glib assumption that “technology or digital tools will solve the problem and make change happen”, overestimating their impact on deep-rooted procedures and habits, as well as their ability to solve the problem of missing leadership. All this can leave an organization digitally unprepared when a pandemic hits. In today’s world technology cannot be delegated, since everyone needs to have the knowledge, the ownership and the skills to make use of it.

Leadership? Leadership!

On the other hand, there are big issues in management and leadership. The pandemic created a situation of great uncertainty, compacting corporate working routines. From one day to the next people became isolated and invisible behind their computer screens at home. They lost the office as the familiar locus for social interaction with peers, managers and leaders.

This presented a huge problem for leaders, as it is difficult to create a safe social space using narrow band communication through digital channels. Capabilities like empathy, listening and awareness of what happens in the team on a daily basis are easily lost in digital operations, yet are must-haves in situations like the pandemic, with teams and leaders daily dealing with uncertainty, anxiety and stress. Such situations call for the full range of human-centered leadership skills, trust and psychological safety – and not for more micromanagement. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic quickly exposed the many organizations lacking these leadership skills and cultures, greatly contributing to record levels of employee turnover throughout the US, for example.

Understanding the Human Side of Business

The session panelists described the different leadership challenges they were facing, and what they did about it in their respective organizations. During the pandemic, the boundaries between private and professional life blurred. While challenging, this situation also offered the chance to better understand employees and to connect emotionally on a much deeper level than in the office: Seeing their living rooms and getting to know their children and families, leaders could build a new depth of connectedness within the team, develop fresh leadership abilities and stronger social skills.

Expanding on these individual leadership skills, leadership development also took a giant leap forward. It is no longer sufficient to manage known risks and to lead people through best practices with superior knowledge. Uncertainty, i.e. not having superior knowledge, characterizes the new business environment in which leadership has to prove its worth. Leadership, and leadership development then, is all about people and continued learning to understand the nature of new challenges and deal creatively and effectively with them. In addition, this has to happen at all levels of an organization, requiring more leaders everywhere. Discovering and developing new leaders can start small, by combining the need for more learning, training and leadership. Globant, for instance, successfully instituted communities of practice to share good practices among peers. These communities set the stage for individuals who were gifted trainers, and who were good at leading others without having formal authority over them. Talented new leaders rapidly emerged from these communities, equipped with exactly the skill sets required for the new business challenges: Leading others without having formal authority, proactively rising to new challenges and easily adjusting to new technology.

Leadership Development 2.0

Bringing newly-forged leadership talent like this into formal leadership development programs quickly exposes their flaws. Existing programs are too focused on management and leading with formal authority. Reforming leadership education in business schools and development programs inside organizations might sound revolutionary– but it is no less than a necessity for the times ahead.

Future leadership development needs to put much more focus on building interpersonal skills, encouraging entrepreneurial opportunism and continuous learning. The path of leadership can only be an individual journey of exploration, constantly taking advantage of new opportunities to grow and learn in real-world challenges. This setup has a far more experimental nature than in the past, and no pre-cut-out career paths. It requires patience and mentors who really care. After all, you cannot become a good leader unless you have a deep liking for people. Nor can one develop leaders without liking them – they are people too.

Today, we need good leaders more than ever.

About the Author: Janka Krings-Klebe and Jörg Schreiner are founders and managing partners of co-shift GmbH, helping companies to transform into business ecosystems. Their latest book is “Future Legends – Business in Hyper-Dynamic Markets“ (Tredition 2017). Both also contributed to “The Power of Ecosystems“ (Thinkers50 2021).

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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Ed Catmull: co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.

Hal Gregersen: senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Moderated by Julia Kirby: Senior Editor, Harvard University Press

The workshop began with Hal Gregersen introducing the polling software Question Burst (questionburst.com) which was used to interact with the workshop participants.

Acknowledging the pandemic and its exponential features, he then told the story of Hungarian biochemist, Dr. Katalina Kariko and her 30 year-long quest to make RNA molecules in the laboratory and get mRNA into the cells of the body. Her work would form the basis for the successful mRNA vaccines that have been so instrumental in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Drucker would have called her a “monomaniac on a mission”.

Gregersen compared Kariko’s story to those of other visionaries like Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce) who, he suspects, saw the world through an “exponential lens” identifying opportunities that others could not. He then illustrated the nature of exponential growth by referring to Azeem Azhar’s book The Exponential Age and what Azhar calls the “exponential gap” between organizations designed for a linear world and exponential growth.

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Hal Gergersen’s opening remarks supplied the frame for Ed Catmull to introduce the concept of a Learning Power Cycle. He began by recounting his experience at the University of Utah in the 1970s. Although computers were big (in all senses) at the time, computer graphics was not considered part of computer science. Catmull, who believed that computer images would one day become part of feature films, could get traction in neither the computer nor the film industries. This was due in part he thinks to the difficulty people have in grasping the explosive potential of exponential growth from its usually modest beginnings. For example, it took Pixar twenty years to produce its first feature film, Toy Story.

Reality is complex. Many exponential activities are in play and the dynamics are unpredictable. Catmull and Gregersen describe this dynamic interplay as the “Learning Power Cycle”. They used the example to illustrate this of machine learning and its origins in neural networks, a concept that had been around for fifty years but sidelined by a lack of computer power. The catalyst for machine learning to take off was the rise of the games industry from it humble origins in the game of Pong (1972)to its explosive growth through arcades, consoles, desktops, handhelds and mobile devices. In 2020 the market was worth $165 Billion. Nvidia capitalized on this growth by releasing a new GPU (graphics processing unit) every six months, creating a positive reinforcement cycle. Out of this emerged the application of GPUs to neural networks, enabling deep learning. A second example is the power of apps on mobile phones, the emergence of which was unpredicted.

The workshop then went to Breakout Rooms. Questions for discussion were:

• What exponential events will or are affecting your organization? Who is seeing them? Who is missing them?
• What is one of the biggest challenges faced by your organization because of these exponential events? How well is your organization responding?
• “What Great Surprises are Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) creating in your organizational industry? How did those Great Surprises come about? How are you and your organization approaching them?

Ed Catmull told the workshop that at Pixar they make it clear to their people that the growth and economic success of their films is not their #1 priority. They intentionally make films (often short ones) that don’t make money to show they have other values, like encouraging people to push themselves creatively. People are often focussed on data to the exclusion of softer sources of information. Pixar tries to create a “classless” organization to enhance the sense of ownership.

Nice quote: “Tenant farmers don’t pick up rocks”

The Learning Power Cycle

The cycle is conceived as going through three phases:

1. Potential Arising
   • First steps in exponential processes seem small and inconsequential
   • They are not intuitive or obvious
2. Realizing Potential
   • The results affect large numbers of people.
   • They affect the environment in a broad sense, good and bad (unintended consequences).
   • Many transformational events are not exponential. (Do not confuse rapid with exponential)
3. Preparing for Transition
   • There is an end to exponential growth.
   • The outcomes are highly unpredictable.

Great companies operate in all three phases simultaneously.

Each of these phases requires a particular mindset to navigate in a dynamic environment:

1. Potential Arising
   • Recognize the implications of exponential change at the beginning of exponential growth – when it is not obvious.
   • Start with a challenge-driven, project-focused mindset.
   • Vote at least one-third of your growth innovation resources to longer-term initiatives that hold the potential for becoming Learning Power Cycles.
   • Learning Power Cycles are neither sparked or sustained by people operating in isolation.
   • Build a broad umbrella allowing uncertainty, noise, and a high volume of small but interesting developments, often unrelated or loosely related. (in Pixar’s case those that fail the “elevator test” i.e. cannot be explained in 30 seconds or even longer).
   • Seek out ideas that have great exponential potential.
2. Realizing Potential
   • Continually modify the processes in almost every aspect – far beyond what the originators could conceive.
   • Beware of the “sweet spot” trap (Innovators Dilemma).
   • Hold long-term and short-term views/approaches simultaneously. (and retain the ability to function)
3. Preparing for the Transition
   • Many look for replacement systems but often make the mistake of only wanting systems that are already far up the exponential curve.
   • Align people around what “might” work when systems are built for them to hold onto something that is working.
   • Are we actively looking for the end of exponential growth?

The session closed with a general discussion around which mindsets were most difficult to master and what questions and insights the Learning Power Cycle and the associated mindsets had surfaced.

Ed Catmull suggested that the secret of creating the right mindsets is to hire people who want to make a difference by working in a company that wants to make a difference. People who will help each other spontaneously without expecting rewards.

Closing Questions and Answers

Question: As a small cog in a large corporate machine how do I get management interested in these ideas?

Answer: In most large organizations management is rewarded for short term results. The challenge is to change that system – there is no simple answer.

Question: What learning, experience or educational design can help me get better at thinking this way?

Answer: Observe what’s blocking you. You still have choices about how you behave. Good role models are really helpful. Read books by and engage with people who think like this.

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)

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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Moderator
Rosanna Sibora, Director, IT Innovation, Universal Music Entertainment GmbH

Speakers
Donald Allan Jr., President & Chief Financial Officer, Stanley Black & Deckerer
Simone Ahuja, Author and Founder Blood Orange, a global innovation strategy firm
Robert I. Sutton ,Professor of Management Science, Stanford University of Engineering
Martin Reeves, Chairman BCG Henderson Institute

Not for romantics – #15 Turning Large Enterprises into Hotbeds of Innovation

“It is an ongoing challenge that never ends”, Donald Allan, CFO of Stanley Black & Decker, replied to Rosanna Sibora’s question about what the biggest challenges are for large companies on the road to harnessing innovation.

10 years ago, Stanley Black & Decker focused only on incremental innovation with a “frozen middle”. “We spent a lot of time helping middle management feel empowered and ‘unfrozen’”. Then they started building an innovation ecosystem consisting of several elements: incremental innovations, a group of employees working on disruptive innovations, another one working on disruptive innovations, called “Stanley X”, and a venture group looking out on start-ups.

“That whole evolution has been driven from the top of the company,” explained Donald. It was 3 people who designed and implemented the new innovation system and made it successful.

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Not for romantics

This panel was not for innovation romantics, with participatory ideas, pure agile principles, or start-up dreams in mind. “The assumption that big companies don’t innovate is suspect,” was the starting point of Bob Sutton from Stanford University. Basically, as a big company wanting to be innovative, you must avoid 2 things: paying people for just talking about innovations and having the idea, everyone has to be involved in innovation. Martin Reeves of the BCG Henderson Institute added that the success of big companies in being innovative has to do with the observed shift from a focus on efficiency to a focus on the rate of learning.

Only Simone Ahuja, founder of Blood Orange, put forward a not so rosy picture of innovative big companies. She thinks that “there is a long way from the idea to execution to innovation”. We do have a lot of “innovation theatre because it is all about change”.

Of course, in this specific panel there was a lot of talk about the examplars of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Disneyland and similar American success stories. “You have to generate a lot of ideas and then kill almost all of them again.” “You need 2 kinds of collaboration, the nice one is the agile get-together. The nasty one is authoritarian decision-making.” Just look at the highly successful Steve Jobs who had set up a permanent authoritarian innovation system at Apple.

The most important factor in this respect, according to Bob, is logical consistency within the company. This means that everyone knows what the game is about, works within the same structure, under the same rules, and, of course, with the right mindset.

The power of imagination is certainly a key factor for innovation. What prevents a company from unleashing this power? According to Martin, there are four things: complacency, the continuation of past successes, a lack of curiosity and introversion. That’s why it’s so important to make sure people stay externally oriented, focused on the outside world.

But how can you drive curiosity?  Openness, diversity, reflection on past and future, empiricism – trying things out and seeing what happens -, dissemination of ideas, codification to scale ideas, humbleness. Martin listed these factors as if shot from a gun. They are shaped by the company’s culture and the precedents set by its leadership.

“The magic happens during the collaboration process, when we build on ideas of others. So, is it possible for organizations to harness imagination collectively?”, asked our moderator Rosanna. Or are imaginations unmanageable, in the sense that we need these genius leaders like Steve Jobs to drive the process? According to his cognitive science research Martin believes that to some degree the process of collective imagination is manageable if you do six things right: openness to surprises, discipline[1], experimentation, dissemination of ideas, codification in scaling ideas and the ability to check your own success.

Simone then was asked about another aspect: Intrapreneurship. She referred to the power of diversity and that everyone can have good ideas. When it comes to innovation, intrapreneurship “moves the needle”. But for that, you have to overcome inconsistencies. Only when you teach people communication and problem-solving skills will they say yes to change.

Take-aways?

It was a panel discussion about the realities in the corporate world. Nothing was glossed over. Sobering for all those who believe in one or the other idea of new forms of work that generate more creativity and innovation.

The one panelist who comes from real leadership practice showed what is always behind successful innovation: hard work. The others, the thinkers, professors, and consultants, joined In sober analysis of the underlying drivers and interconnections. This culminated in the final round query of take-aways in Bob‘s response: “Inspired by Don, bureaucracy is not a bad word.”

Only Simone countered a bit with her take-away stated at the end, “patience in the long run”.

[1] I did not exactly catch what Martin has said at this point

About the Author: Hans Stoisser is an entrepreneur and management consultant with long-standing experiences in various African countries; and has attended all of the previous Global Drucker Forum events.

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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This year we have – we believe – made good progress in moving out of the worst of the crisis cycle triggered by Covid. But we have absolutely no cause for complacency.

To head off social and economic breakdown, governments and central banks have borrowed from the future in unprecedented ways. And during the crisis digital technology has shown both sides of its Janus face: affording huge benefits in the international collaborations that have given us life-saving vaccines at record speed, at the same time as endangering freedom and self-determination in the way it has been used to manipulate attitudes and blur or deny the truth.

Drucker Forum 2021

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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As we emerge from Covid, attention will have to shift from spending to actually earning the advances we have taken. There is only one way to achieve this – broad-based innovation and value creation, which puts a premium on better management than we have ever achieved before. As Peter Drucker proclaimed, only well-managed organizations and institutions can generate a society that is at the same time both high-performing and human. A perfect society is unachievable by humanity, and therefore, whatever the techno-utopians think, deeply inhuman; but a democratic, functioning one is within our reach.

The bottom line is that the human being in all its imperfection and splendor cannot be replaced by technology, as some people would like to suggest. All important issues must be viewed through the human lens first, not from a technology perspective. This is the stand that we want to make in the face of an increasingly technology-centric world. Drucker gives us the legitimacy and the vision for a well-functioning human society powered by effective organizations and institutions​ – and thus also a positive basis on which to bring together technologists and humanists in a constructive global dialogue on a future that must be both digital and human. But always human first. ​Let our conference mark the beginning of this historic process.

The Drucker Forum journey that we have mapped out this year closely reflects these new realities. In June we brought together our community for a virtual Day of Drucker, something we could only do with the aid of digital technology. But the aim was to prepare the ground for this Forum– two days of virtual events culminating in this face-to-face event on ‘the human imperative’.

In this spirit we cordially welcome you back to Vienna for the 13th Peter Drucker Forum, destined to be one of the most important ever.

Richard Straub

Founder and President

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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Coronavirus gifts us a new rite of passage for leaders and organisations. An opportunity to be better, do better and better serve all stakeholders.

The challenges inherent in this new world of work are deserving of us embracing a more progressive, enabling leadership style that puts people first and business second. It is also a necessary shift if we are to truly focus on recovery and start the important transition to a better normal.

Drucker Forum 2021

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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With Covid-19, there is both an intellectual and an emotional case for leaders to step back and reflect on how they can lead their people. Command-and-control, hero leaders have no place in the present or the future. Leadership needs to be inclusive, transformational, conscious, collaborative, and humane. It must be a vehicle by which organisations and their workers can contribute to building a brighter and more sustainable future for everyone.

Prior to the pandemic we were already swimming in a sea of change. We have long known that there is a problem with leadership in that old models are untenably flawed. This, and the backdrop of shifting customer priorities, the blurring of traditional boundaries between employer and employee and the replacement of wealth and status with purpose and meaning, combine in calling for a rethink on how leadership should work.

Facing the storm

As stakeholders push the envelope on ethical credentials and Covid rides roughshod over businesses and globalised markets, we find ourselves exposed to a perfect storm. Economic, environmental, fiscal, cultural, and political crises are colliding and creating the space where pledges and words need to be put into action with a commitment to change things for the better.

Although there is no true parallel in recent history to today’s pandemic’s shocks, the last time the world experienced a milestone of this magnitude, the global economy was plunged into freefall by 2008’s financial market crash. Valuable lessons were there to be learned as the banks found themselves being bailed out by taxpayers but paying a high reputational price as public confidence and trust in financial institutions collapsed.

Issues such as trust and integrity took centre stage as the public blamed the banks and their leaders for the jeopardy caused. As Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, points out in ‘Values’, ‘The global financial crisis was as much a crisis of culture as of capital.’ For Carney, finance had lost track of its core values of fairness, integrity, prudence, and responsibility resulting in a ‘crisis of values as well as value.’

Leadership for the human imperative

Today, as we continue to grapple with the global pandemic, blame is being levelled at the world’s figureheads and senior leaders for not doing the right thing, at the right time, in time. Vulnerability and fragility have played out with huge human and economic costs, reminding us that humanity is very much at the mercy of mightier forces. Although piles of debt and misaligned incentives are not to blame this time, the crisis of values is still making its presence felt. We see with some repeated experiences, that values and purpose still hold an important place in society – and should also do so in business.

Many, though, have been touched and moved by expressions of kindness, empathy, and care as we have dealt with furlough, home schooling, isolation, and remote working. It is this spirit, the human imperative, that leadership styles should embody.

Good leadership must be fair, effective, and impactful if it is to have a meaningful legacy. It should demonstrate care in a world that has become high on carbon and hooked on growing wealth for the few. We need to re-engineer what strong leadership is by listening to our people, our customers, one another and learning from lessons in the past.  

Like the climate crisis, this is just one piece of the challenging jigsaw puzzle we face. Leadership and work need to be decoupled from money, power, and dominance. By cultivating a new mindset of empowering and caring for others and the systems we work within, only then can we be part of the solution, not the problem.

About the Author:

Gina Lodge is CEO of the Academy of Executive Coaching. She has more than 20 years’ experience in management and is an accredited executive coach.

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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The best small companies boast ultra-close relationships with their customers. Using ecosystems can allow larger groups to learn from their example. 

The best small companies are paragons of speed, agility and customer centricity. Decisions are taken quickly in small, close knit, like-minded groups; bureaucracy is cut to the core. Small size, easy access and close contacts with customers allow for maximum agility. 

Some big groups can claim similar attributes. But for most, their biggest bugbear is complexity. Executives find themselves in a bog of protocols and processes that clog up decision making, leaving them feeling stranded in a fast-moving world.

Drucker Forum 2021

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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Change is possible

How then can larger groups gain some of the magic of their more nimble smaller counterparts – particularly in terms of relationships with customers and other key stakeholders? The example of the Chinese economy – where many big companies have evolved to operate in ecosystem models – shows it can be done.

There is a growing consensus that the ecosystem structure used to such success in China represents the future for many organizations around the world that are seeking to reduce complexity and spark collaboration.

In a recent Thinkers50 panel discussion, as part of the Rendanheyi OpenTalk 2021, I shared ideas on the new frontier of ecosystems with Wharton School Emeritus Professor Marshall Meyer and Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn, who both offered insights into what conditions and mindsets were required for ecosystems to flourish. 

Digital platforms act as glue for busy ecosystems

Take Haier, the Chinese consumer goods giant. This is a company that works with a huge number of partners and suppliers, but still seems to function with breath taking fluidity.

If you dive beneath the Haier’s surface, you discover thousands of microenterprises – an army of small businesses operating in chaotic harmony. Each of these microenterprises is faced with similar challenges: How can we tackle the human imperative. How do we communicate with our partners? How do we source materials?

To enable its crowded ecosystem, Haier uses digital platforms with shared services. The group’s COSMOPlat platform, for example, is harnessed to coordinate internal and external interactions, build smart manufacturing solutions and pull in resources. Meanwhile, Haier’s HOPE Innovation platform acts as an open source space for co-creation across its entire network. Through such platforms, Haier can orchestrate its ecosystem of microenterprises, partners, suppliers and customers in a devolved way that reduces complexity for executives and allows the individual parts to breathe and thrive.

Not only in China

When we present such examples as role models in the quest to unleash the benefits of ecosystems, some executives dismiss the phenomenon as something applicable only to China.

In fact, organizations elsewhere already use business ecosystems to deliver value in their own environments.

Bayer Crop Science is a division of the German multinational pharma and life sciences group. It works across a range of disciplines, from selling seeds and fertilizers to farmers to partnering with drone makers and training companies.

It’s complicated, but it has a farming platform, FieldView, which has started to replicate the shared services approach of Haier and other Chinese groups. It reduces complexity for its suppliers, partners and customers through digital technology and data analytics. Farmers in particular – even the most modest sub-Saharan smallholder – can gain access to services and technology that would otherwise be far beyond their reach.

Not only multinationals

It’s not only multinationals that can create and co-ordinate such ecosystems. Mammut is a Swiss mountaineering equipment firm. It’s a medium-sized enterprise in a niche market. Yet it has convened an ecosystem of partners, partly enabled through its Climbax app, which connects the firm and its customers to a social community, including tourism agencies, routing and performance tracking.

All these, very different, examples demonstrate that creating a layer or platform between themselves, their partners, suppliers and customers provides the basic foundation to foster a successful ecosystem.

A platform isn’t enough, though. To succeed as an ecosystem business, you need to have the right mindset, the right approach to leadership, and the right structure and ingredients for your platforms. This is explored more in this MIT Sloan Management Review article, co-authored with my IMD colleagues Howard Yu and Jialu Shan, about embracing microservices and modular thinking.

An ecosystem business is a series of interdependencies between the ecosystem actors. A successful ecosystem business leverages a digital layer or platform to enable those interdependencies between humans that have varieties of tasks to perform. Whether it is staff in sales and marketing, or financial, legal and R&D functions, ultimately it is a series of interactions between them – and customers – that make the organization tick. Application programming interfaces (APIs) help codify such interactions among people, which in turn minimizes coordination complexity. As a result, traditional business processes can turn into microservices, putting the human at the center of the ecosystem business. A far cry from the all-controlling digital platform business, an ecosystem is organized – through smart digital services – around the human.

In an ever-complex world, learning to build and orchestrate a healthy ecosystem of partners, suppliers and customers will enable your organization to continue to grow and adapt in the face of continuous uncertainty.

About the Author:

Mark J. Greeven is a Chinese speaking Dutch professor of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School and former faculty at China’s leading innovation institute at Zhejiang University. He is one of the founding members of Business Ecosystem Alliance (https://business-ecosystem-alliance.org/about-us/). The Rendanheyi OpenTalk 2021 is held mainly by BEA and HMI (Haier Model Institute). He is the author of Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019) and Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2017).

This article is one in the “shape the debate” series relating to the 13th Global Peter Drucker Forum, under the theme “The Human Imperative” on November 10 + 17 (digital) and 18 + 19 (in person), 2021.
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