The New Management – Bringing Democracy and Markets Inside the Organization

William Halal of George Washington University wrote this book in 1998, well before the advent of Web 2.0 and even longer before the term Enterprise 2.0 was coined.  I remember speaking to Dr. Halal about the concept of wirearchy back in late 2000 … he was most encouraging, and it’s not hard to imagine why.

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Despite attempts at organizational change during the ‘90’s, the decade was notable for down sizing, top-down control, extravagant CEO pay, and other hallmarks of the Old Management. But a New Management is emerging that harnesses the knowledge lying unused among employees at the bottom of the firm and scattered outside its walls among customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Drawing on hundreds of examples, a survey of 426 managers, technology forecasts, and economic trends, Bill concludes that the New Management is extending markets and democracy to create a self-organizing corporate community operating from the bottom-up and the outside in.

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For those of you who are more deeply interested in the principles of  KM (knowledge management), innovation and ways to "break down" silos of information, enhance idea flow and benefit from employees’ creativity and purpose, I can recommend one of Dr. Halal’s earlier books:  Internal Markets – Bringing the Power of Free Enterprise Inside Your Organization.

I presume there’s a decent fit with these concepts and the ongoing evolution of enterprise search (actually, I don’t presume .. having read the book about a decade ago, and having paid attention to the evolution of enterprise search, I know there’s a lot of value in this book).

Interestingly, in the blurb on his web site about this 1993 book, he highlights the paradox that North American and western European corporations worship free enterprise principles excepting when it comes to running any given organization.

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One of the great ironies of capitalism is that while founded on the liberating principles of free enterprise, most corporations themselves are centrally-controlled, hierarchical systems, not too different from the centrally-planned economies that failed in the communist bloc.

This book brings together case studies describing the creative transformation of progressive corporations into the only feasible alternative to hierarchy – self-managed internal enterprise units forming an internal market economy.

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This (centralised control) is in some cases changing, more and more rapidly.  But it remains an interesting issue … just look at the title of the most recent Fast Company cover article … provocative title, n’est ce pas ?

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How Cisco’s CEO John Chambers is Turning the Tech Giant Socialist

Power to the people — and profits to the company — is a bold tech promise we’ve heard before. If Chambers can pull it off, if he can prove that his model drives innovation at a market-beating pace, he will replace his pal Jack Welch as the most influential leadership guru of the modern era.

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Trust and openness are words you hear a lot in the endlessly optimistic world of Web 2.0, but at Cisco, it seems to be more than a PowerPoint mantra, even to my jaundiced eye. As Mitchell and I settle down to our conversation in an open space not 25 feet from Chambers’s office, I can hear the CEO chatting on the phone with customers.

Mitchell, who is charged with encouraging the company’s rank and file to adopt new technology, is undistracted. "We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know," he says. So he promotes all kinds of social networking at Cisco: You can write a blog, upload a video, and tag your myriad strengths in the Facebook-style internal directory. "Everybody is an author now," he laughs. Blog posts are voted up based on their helpfulness. There are blogs about blogging and classes about holding classes — all gauged to make it easy for less-engaged employees to get with the program

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If I am not mistaken, the issue of centralised control remains one of the core issues in play (remember, the book above was published in 1993 !) when it comes to considering whether and how to engage with or commit to a path towards Enterprise 2.0 architecture, applications and dynamics.

I can only assume that Dr. Halal has watched the growth of the field called Enterprise 2.0 with enthusiasm, interest and perhaps some bemusement.

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Tags: hierarchy, wirearchy, internal markets for knowledge, innovation, new management

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