But has futurism been here before? In the 1950s and 1960s in western Europe, there were projections of what the world would look like by the Year 2000 (remember that?), and plans based on such projections were not always effective. The new inventions of the day, principally in the realm of transport, dominated thinking. So we had architects’ drawings of super-highways, urban roads, space-rockets and smaller flying vehicles.

By the early 21st Century, however, it was clear that the dominance of technology in such planning had caused harm. Communities had been torn apart by urban motorways. In some cities exhaust fumes posed a direct threat to human health, to say nothing of carbon emissions and climate change. Many cities are now reversing those errors: introducing pedestrianised zones, creating more green spaces, banning cars – trying to let communities breathe again. Such initiatives do not only improve health and the environment, but tend to boost economic development and reduce crime.

Are we making the same mistake again in the 21st Century? Are too many plans based around what technology can do, rather than what people need?

A truly radical idea to help the future work for us is for research on technology, and on the human community, to be much more closely coordinated. This should be based on unifying concepts that technology ought to serve people, while observing timeless ethical principles of: first, do no harm; never use people as a means to and end, and so on.

An examination of the evidence base for effective human organizations and other communities points clearly to the need for a step change improvement in our leadership and management. As I have set out in my book The Management Shift, this can be summarized as a shift:

• From a controlling mindset to an empowering one,
• From setting rules to establishing principles,
• From issuing instructions to creating teams,
• From overseeing transactions to building alliances,
• From a focus on short-term profits to serving all stakeholders.

Collectively, business schools and the wider management community have not fully modernized the business model, as I wrote in an earlier blog. There is still the cultural bias of referring to people as ‘resources’ and to people management as ‘the soft stuff’, as though organizations do not comprise people. Application of the rich evidence base on maximizing employee engagement and collective intelligence is applied patchily, at best. The most dynamic employers create meaningful careers for staff, reward them well, and pay attention to collective morale and engagement. Not only do such employers provide a more human working environment, they also tend to perform better – including on financial measures.

Slow implementation of such research findings opens up the risk that technology will be badly implemented.  Much every-day experience often bears this out. For example, customer service automation is often badly implemented, creating a short and inappropriate list of options for the frustrated consumer.

We often have intelligent IT, but unintelligent organizational design. The separate ‘silos’ of the conventional corporation mean that technologists, the personnel function, customer service managers and marketing department are at arm’s length apart from each other – or even further. If website programmers are not communicating well with product designers and the marketing folk, preferably co-creating technology, services and products together; and if morale in the workplace is poor, the customer experience is unlikely to be thrilling.

Meanwhile, an ever-present fear is that ‘Big Data’ will rapidly become ‘Big Brother’ – snooping on us as workers and consumers and compromising our privacy, seeking to trick the unwary customer, rather than engage them in a lasting relationship. The surest defence against this is to maintain a relentless and principled commitment to nurturing the human community, and honouring timeless ethical principles.

A lesson from corporate scandals – LIBOR-rigging, horsemeat passed off as beef, illegal phone-tapping – is the primacy of ethical conduct. It is a glaring omission that management has never developed its own ethical code, similar to doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. It may be impractical to have everyone with managerial responsibility formally registered, but a move towards a more formal statement of intent to avoid fraud, deception, cruelty, exploitation and so on would be a liberating initiative – especially as we see how such enlightened practice actually helps the business perform better.

If technology is mis-used, through snooping on staff and customers, there is a risk of backlash against all technology, and a rise in people opting out of social media altogether.

What would be even more revolutionary than Big Data, etc. would be a Copernican shift in management thinking, in the spirit of Peter Drucker and other enlightened thinkers. This would replace the current misanthropic obsession with company structure and data, with a philosophy based on an understanding of real human communities, and how businesses can profit by serving them.

This philosophy will not only get the best out of people, it will get the best out of technology. Along with the urban motorways of the 20th Century, we need to ditch the cold, hierarchical corporation of silos, separation and obedience.

About the author:

Vlatka Hlupic is Professor of Business and Management at Westminster University, CEO of the Drucker Society London has advised major international organisations and is a management consultant.

Though he approved of all these developments, he struck a cautionary note:

“Does this flurry of activity add up to more than a bunch of scattered conferences and white papers? Are we actually witnessing the beginnings of a social movement?”

This raises a challenge for those of us who write about the commercial and social benefits of shared value/management shift/conscious capitalism and so on. Do we constitute a movement? Or are we just a loose connection of academics and consultants who communicate principally with one another?

We have an impressive evidence base. The weaknesses of short-termism, and the strength of the case for an alternative, were discussed by the Drucker Institute just over a year ago on this blog. I can demonstrate to the most sceptical audience that returns on investment and corporate longevity are improved by making the shift to an empowering style of leadership, where employees throughout the organization are rightly seen as the source of all value.

But I have come to the conclusion, after around 20 years of research and related work in this field, that we cannot rely on good evidence seeping into the corporate world. We have to think more deeply and act more persuasively.

Think more deeply, because it’s not enough just to condemn speculative activity, corporate short-termism and management by the bottom line; we have to understand the cultural narratives that sustain these ways of operating. And act more persuasively because, given that these practices are supported by entrenched beliefs, we have to win over hearts and minds, not just present evidence and write papers.

Rick mentioned the Global Drucker Forum. At the most recent event, held in Vienna in November 2014, I got talking to Gary Hamel and others. It was the time of the launch of my own book The Management Shift. I floated the idea of a petition and manifesto for enlightened management. I am delighted to report that Gary enthusiastically supported the idea, and promised to support and publicize it.

Since then, in consultation with other thinkers, I have drafted a Petition and Manifesto in two parts – one for employers and business schools, the other for Government (initially, the UK Government).

Of course, there isn’t likely to be a single policy change that can have a dramatic effect.

At the level of an organization, my research shows that the best management teams attend to all key aspects of management. I have distilled this into six broad dimensions, hence my ‘6 Box Leadership Model’. Three relate to people: Individuals, Relationships and Culture. Three relate to processes: Strategy, Systems and Resources. For more details, go to the website: http://www.themanagementshift.com/.

The management shift involves different mindsets and behaviours as well as strategies and policies. It follows, therefore, that a social movement for better management also involves many dimensions, and engages people and institutions emotionally as well as intellectually.

In our Manifesto for Humanizing Management, we have recommended six dimensions of reform:

1. A company is better understood as a dynamic, behavioural entity than as a structure.
2. Management can now move towards being more solidly evidence-based.
3. The quarterly accounting statement needs supplementing with a range of quantitative and qualitative measures at least equal in priority.
4. Careful selection and education of managers at every level is a priority for high-performing organizations.
5. Employers that define and articulate their purpose and values, and seek to uphold them, have a greater chance of becoming high-performing and resilient.
6. In high-performing organizations, innovation is understood as being the responsibility of the whole organization, not just the research & development department.

If you would like to know more about this fledgling movement, please contact me at: vlatka@themanagementshift.com. Do let me know your views about how we can best publicize this message and begin to effect lasting positive change.

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A blog following the Global Peter Drucker Forum 2014. An opportunity to share experiences and learn from one another in the context of The Great Transformation.

There is a hope that we can get out of the current economic crisis by embracing emerging management practices based on collaboration, autonomy and decentralization (which were all promoted by Peter Drucker), and by changing a mindset from the one that focuses on personal gratification to another that seeks to find a deeper meaning of work that is greater than any individual aspirations, and that is focused on making a positive difference for individuals, organisations and society.

In my own endeavour to make this world a better place, I have founded the Drucker Society London, one of the twenty Drucker Societies operating around the world. The aim of the Drucker Society London is to promote responsible management practices based on Peter Drucker’s ideas. One of our core activities is to teach young people self-management and entrepreneurial skills based on the Drucker’s Future Leaders Programme. I am delighted that we plan to teach workshops based on this Programme to WBS undergraduate students as a part of Employability module sometime next year.

If anyone would like to join the Drucker Society London and help us to make a difference for the future generations please contact me on hlupicv@wmin.ac.uk.
Professor Vlatka Hlupic

This post was first published on http://blog.business.westminster.ac.uk