Time to ask a blunt question: is management part of the problem, or part of the solution? If it is true that the financial crisis is too good an opportunity to waste, and that "we must not go back to business as usual", then managers will have to start doing some things differently. But which things? And how radically should they change their act?
Some business leaders will feel that they are simply too busy to stop and worry about how they manage. Impatience with abstract agonising over management can provoke the traditional cry: "Why can't everybody just shut up and get on with their work?" Maybe we can leave worrying about management to another day.
But this will not do. As a book, Reinventing Management, published this week argues, the recent collapse of a few financial institutions was merely an extreme example of more general failure. The time has come, said the author, Julian Birkinshaw, a professor at London Business School, to reinvent management altogether.
Prof Birkinshaw said, we should recognise that businesses also have management models.
The problem is, the models that many employers use are failing. "The harsh reality is that today's large business organisations are with notable exceptions miserable places to spend our working lives," he writes.
"Fear and distrust are endemic. Aggressive and unpleasant behaviour is condoned. Creativity and passion are suppressed."
There is evidence to support his critique. When the economist Richard Layard published his book Happiness in 2005, his research revealed that managers were the last people most of us want to spend any time with. In fact, most people would rather be alone than with the boss.
Why has the vital practice of management become so discredited? Prof Birkinshaw argues that we have lost sight of the basic point: that management is about "getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives".
He provides four examples of differing approaches. The "discovery" model reflects what a company is like in its start-up phase. In this period management is likely to be relatively informal, and even vague about how work should get done and to what end. Google began life using the discovery model, and to some extent still does.
Greater efficiency
But when a company grows and matures, it seeks to make its processes (and objectives) more formal. It strives for greater efficiency. Prof Birkinshaw calls this the "planning" model. McDonald's is a classic example of a business that is managed along these lines.
The "quest" model allows employees great flexibility in the "how" of what they do at work, but is highly specific on the end purpose.
Goldman Sachs is a business that embodies the quest model. And the "science" model is its mirror image: very specific on technical practices, less precise on ultimate aims. Some "professional service organisations", such as Arup, the engineering group, have adopted this model.
Companies are moving away from a bureaucratic structure to one that is more self-organised, Prof Birkinshaw said. Hierarchy is being replaced by the wisdom of crowds. Rigid alignment working towards a common goal is loosening, with more oblique approaches becoming popular.
And extrinsic motivation bonuses or the threat of punishment will in time be replaced by intrinsic motivation, Prof Birkinshaw said.
The reward will be inherent in the work itself.
— Financial Times
