Givaudan Schweiz AG
Humanocracy
A review of

Humanocracy

Creating Organizations As Amazing As the People Inside Them

Michele Zanini and Gary Hamel • Harvard Business Review Press • 2020

Workplaces for Workers

by Allan Schweyer

Management Lab co-founders Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini outline a case for workplace democracy: transferring authority from managers to individual workers and small teams. Compelling case studies lend credence to their call for radical change.

Management thought leader Gary Hamel has long argued bureaucracy destroys profits and productivity. For decades he’s been rocking the corporate boat, insisting managers develop new work paradigms to enhance their competitive advantage. Here, he and co-author Michele Zanini, a former senior consultant at McKinsey, portray bureaucratic methods as holdovers from the Industrial Age: Leaders micromanage employees, suppress and steal their ideas and bury them in rules and administrativia.

The typical medium- or large-scale organization infantilizes employees, enforces dull conformity and discourages entrepreneurship.Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini 

Exemplary organizations, Hamel and Zanini believe, implement principles and structures to contain bureaucracy. These cutting-edge organizations invest in employee development, and they listen to and leverage the creativity of every worker – hourly, blue-collar, contract and professional. As a result, these firms innovate, achieve growth and pay their workers well.

Comment on this review or Start Discussion

  • Avatar
    Sign in to share your opinion
  • Avatar
    F. J. 2 years ago
    Seems like quite a few similarities with 'A Radical Enterprise' by Matt Parker. A lot of this sounds good in theory, but in practice organisations are ridden with politics and leadership scuffles, so a huge amount of senior sponsorship, empathy & open-mindedness is required to democratise a company.