MANAGING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
by Nick Hixson, Drucker blog moderator

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IN AN AGE OF INCREASING DIGITALISATION AND AUTOMATION WHERE DO MANAGERS FIT INTO THE WORKFORCE, AND HOW WILL MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES HAVE TO ADAPT TO THE NEW WORKING LANDSCAPE?   So are we managing, or just coping, in the fast-emerging digital age?   Bloggers have brought visions of dystopic societies where we are ruled by machines; worries concerning the disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the workforce when machines take away jobs; and questions regarding how developing countries may suffer most from the loss of low skilled jobs to autonomous contraptions.   These are reasonable concerns, and mirror the worries that many had during the rise of the Industrial Age, with Victorian machines changing the face of the countryside; […]

The capitalist world. Inclusive for everyone or excluding most?
by Denis Jaquet

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The world starts to understand. It was almost too late and it’s not even yet enough, not big enough, not fast enough. We understand that the way capitalism works now is simply a route to failure and exclusion instead of cohesion and unity. This stupid idea that a company should be able to increase its profits day after day kills organizations, long term investment, and respect for people. The fact that consideration for profit became stronger over consideration for what profit brings to the world is not only stupid but criminal. Profit is not a goal. Profit is a way and a consequence. When profit becomes a goal, the world loses and a few people […]

Peter Drucker and the Two Faces of Technology
by Rick Wartzman

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In discussing his new book, Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, the journalist John Markoff pointed out how polarizing the subject of automation and its effect on employment tends to be.   “You can go from the International Federation of Robotics on one side, which argues that we are on the cusp of the biggest job renaissance in history, to Moshe Vardi, a Rice computer scientist, who argues that all human jobs will be obsolete by 2045,” Markoff observed. “Which group is right?”   If Peter Drucker were around, I don’t think he’d hesitate to serve up an answer: Neither.   Drucker, who had watched this struggle play […]

Developing Mastery in a Digital Age
by Kenneth Mikkelsen and Harold Jarche

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As Juan Manuel Fangio exited the chicane before the blind Tabac corner in the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix, he stamped on the brake. It was a counterintuitive reaction for a racing driver exiting a corner. One that likely saved his life. By slowing down he avoided ploughing into a multi-car pile-up, which was out of sight. In racing folklore, Fangio’s evasive action is considered a miracle. But why did he slow down?   The day before the race, Fangio had seen a photograph of a similar accident in 1936. As he approached Tabac, he noticed something different about the crowd – an unusual color. Fangio realized that, instead of seeing their faces, he was seeing […]

THE CHANGING RULES OF TRUST IN THE DIGITAL AGE
by Rachel Botsman

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During a recent stay at the Disney Swan hotel in Florida, I confess I did something in the bathroom I have done many times before. I used one too many towels and carelessly left them on the floor. It’s not something I’ve thought much about before: I leave the hotel and who’s to know? But something struck me as I walked out the door. I would never do this as a guest staying in a place on Airbnb. I behave differently because of the reputation system in place that means not only do I rate hosts but they rate me. Trust lies intimately between the perceptions of the two users.   We can point to […]

Networks are not Communities
by Henry Mintzberg

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If you want to understand the difference between a network and a community, ask your Facebook friends to help paint your house.   Social media certainly connects us to whoever is on the other end of the line, and so extends our social networks in amazing ways. But this can come at the expense of deeper personal relationships. When it feels like we’re up-to-date on our friends’ lives through Facebook or Instagram, we may become less likely to call them, much less meet up. Networks connect; communities care.   Marshall McLuhan wrote famously about the “global village,” created by new information technologies. But what kind of a village is this? In the traditional village, you chatted with your neighbor at […]

The End of Expertise
by Bill Fischer

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What if what you know didn’t matter anymore? What if knowledge became a commodity? What if everyone could be an expert?   Far-fetched, you think? Well, in fact, the what if is no longer speculative; it is here already. Talk to people in such professional service industries as: private banking, auditing, consulting, even engineering, and you begin to hear concerns about the commoditization of professional knowledge. A consulting civil engineer [the field in which I was first educated, and still find so deliciously complex] admitted to me that much of what you need to know in that field is on line, and that their corporate clients were a new breed who didn’t so much want what […]

Staying Alive
by Simon Caulkin

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In Don Siegel’s 1956 film shocker Invasion of the Bodysnatchers a California doctor becomes convinced that his patients are being taken over by alien replicants. They look the same; they’re just strangely emotionally absent. As those around him morph into their affectless lookalikes, it’s the frantic doctor who seems insane. ‘Relax, don’t fight it,’ he’s advised – can’t he see that it’s easier, simpler – better – to live in a world without unruly emotions – all the messy downsides of humanity?   Invasion has been interpreted in different ways, which is the beauty of imaginative human creations. Viewed today, however, one reading suggests itself above any other: the threat to human-ness is not communist […]