University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Humanocracy
Video

Humanocracy

Creating Organizations As Amazing As the People Inside Them

Gary Hamel
NBF, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Visionary
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

In this enlightening webinar hosted by the chairman of the Nordic Business Forum, Hans-Peter Siefen, author and management consultant Gary Hamel shows why being a top-down, hierarchical company is a liability in a fast-paced, networked world. He points the way toward creating change from within and nurturing an environment of creativity. Hamel discusses companies – even large ones – that have rethought their core principles, unravelled their innovation-choking bureaucracy and maximized the creative human contribution within their organizations, one “hack” at a time.

Summary

Traditional top-down power structures and the bureaucracies that keep them in place are inadequate in the face of quickly evolving threats and challenges.

The Covid-19 virus “moves faster than bureaucracy,” so it’s proven to be a test of resilience for individuals and organizations. In the face of the pandemic, communities, governments and organizations came together, learned and shared information quickly. Countries that have been the most successful controlling the pandemic include South Korea, which had experience dealing with the MERS virus; Vietnam and other small countries that are able to make quick decisions; and countries like Germany where states could take action without waiting for a centralized bureaucracy to intercede.

By contrast, then-US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar neglected to tell then-President Donald Trump about the looming crisis because, “like many, many even senior leaders, he was afraid to deliver discomforting information to his boss.” The US also saw denial, in that Trump waited another few weeks to declare the pandemic an emergency. The United States isolated itself by insisting on developing its own test...

About the Speaker

Gary Hamel founded Strategos, an international management consultancy, and authored Leading the Revolution, The Future of Management and What Matters Now and co-authored Humanocracy with Michele Zanini and Competing for the Future with C.K. Prahalad.   

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