The Future of Management

Posted on by Eric

HELLO WORLD!

As some of you might know, I am the producer for an event called The Leadership Summit (http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2009/).  I help produce this satellite telecast for the Fort Wayne, IN area.  It’s a great event and features some really, really amazing speakers.  Here’s just a few that I am looking forward to this year:

  • Carly Fiorina – former CEO of HP – always has challenging things to read – if you are a women in leadership, then you MUST read her book – Tough Choices: A Memoir.
  • Patrick Lencioni – His incredible book – Death By Meeting – is another must read!
  • Jessica Jackley – she is the fouder of Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer online micro-lending website.  It’s an amazing site and an amazing idea to help alleviate global poverty!  Can’t wait to learn more form her.
  • Tony Blair – yeah, THE Tony Blair – retired Prime Minister for Britain.
  • Chip and Dan Heath – these are the Made to Stick guys.  The have a regular company in Fast Company magazine.  They are funny, smart, and incredibly insightful
  • Gary Hamel – This may be my most looked forward to speaker at this year’s Summit.   Here’s a little bit from his write-up: Gary Hamel was ranked as the #1 Business Thinker of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal and called “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” by Fortune. Impressive, right.

I have started reading his book: The Future of Management.  Every year, I try to pick one speaker that intrigues me and then grab his or her book form Amazon and read it before I hear them speak.  I find that this really helps me gain a lot from listening to them.

Well, Gary’s book has really got me thinking about what it means to lead, to manage, and to develop a business in the modern era.  His basic point is that most of our management principles haven’t changed much over the last 70 or so years.  He says that management – how we marshall resources – is WAY overdue for some serious innovation.  Sure, we’ve gotten better at management.  But, we haven’t had any major, radical, game changing innovations on how companies are managed.

Then, he goes on to talk about 3 companies that are different.  Companies that have styles of leadership and management that are RADICALLY different: Google, W.L. Gore (you know Gore-Tex fabric) and Whole Foods.  Just reading these three case studies is worth the whole price of the book.

Right now, I’m just finishing up the third case study and can’t wait to read the final third of the book!  I’ll keep you posted.

Check out the book and let me know your thoughts: