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The Management Shift
Book

The Management Shift

How to Harness the Power of People and Transform Your Organization for Sustainable Success

Vlatka Hlupic
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Vlatka Hlupic is hardly the first management thinker to argue for ditching boss-centered leadership and spreading autonomy through an organization. She would be just one voice in a popular choir, except that her presentation stands out for its rigorous research and data-driven method of helping companies assess their culture. Hlupic sketches the characteristics of a traditional “orderly” culture built for the industrial age and contrasts it with the “collaborative” mind-set needed in today’s innovation-driven economy. The knowledge workers who are so critical to an innovative workplace distrust hierarchy and thrive when given autonomy. Hlupic shows how the “6 Box Leadership Model,” which she developed over nearly 20 years, can pinpoint the areas where a company can transform its culture. Some may find her methodology descriptions a bit dense, but she argues persuasively that companies must change in order to remain competitive. If you’re looking to make a case for transforming your organization’s leadership culture and want to assess its progress, getAbstract recommends Hlupic’s timely exposition to entrepreneurs, executives, managers, and HR and talent departments.

Summary

Outmoded Management

Companies today face waves of unprecedented change. Markets shift unpredictably and new competitors show up without warning. The global marketplace grows increasingly complex and uncertain. Even the pace of change constantly changes.

To stay ahead, organizations must adapt and innovate. This requires a labor force of knowledge workers, whose creativity drives innovation. These employees need autonomy, permission to fail and try again, and a culture defined by trust, not hierarchy. Yet many organizations still cling to traditional “command and control” structures that are ill suited to innovation-driven business.

Rigid hierarchy and command-centered management spring from an earlier era – an economy focused on making things. Efficiency and “repeatability” were paramount. Those systems weren’t built to respond rapidly to change. Employee satisfaction and engagement suffer in such systems, creating a performance crisis for companies. Only 45% of US workers consider their jobs satisfying, and fewer than 15% report being “strongly energized” by their work. This lack of engagement hurts corporate performance. As of 2014, US firms’ return on assets...

About the Author

University of Westminster professor and consultant Vlatka Hlupic, is the founder and CEO of London’s Drucker Society. She speaks at major conferences and wrote more than 160 academic articles, including Harvard Business Review’s “To be a Better Leader, Give up Authority.”

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