Gary Hamel on the OTHER hierarchy

Feb 9th, 2008 | Leadership | 0 Comments

I’m on a bit of a Hamel kick at the moment, so here’s more from him:

Professor Gary Hamel says Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs is not enough to analyse how we work anymore. In a recent podcast for the Times Online, strategist and author of The Future of Management, Professor Gary Hamel, explains how we need a hierarchy of human capability.

Here’s the existing stack of human capability that Hamel says most management is based on:

Intellect

Diligence

Obedience

You can see how this hierarchy fits in with the old needs of scientific management (Fordism, industrialism, a hierarchy in which people at the bottom do what they are told to do by people who supposedly know more at the top).

Now, says Hamel, you can buy Obedience, Diligence and Intellect from anywhere for almost nothing. With a global workforce to draw on, millions of them highly educated and motivated, these three levels are no longer enough to create a high-performing organization.

The three higher levels we need to add to the stack, to move on from old-style management and define ‘the future of management’ (the title of his latest book, which Amazon editors ranked as the best business book of 2007) , says Hamel, are:

Calling/Passion

Creativity

Initiative

Without adding those three levels, you are not going to create any value whatsoever, he argues.

This is a 20 minute podcast that starts off talking about the internet but quickly moves away from the internet to the more wide-ranging future of management.

Don’t be put off by Prof. Hamel’s slightly shrill voice (he’s shouting a bit and has a curious accent that seems to be a combination of Louisiana Bayoux and East Coast academic). Give yourself a minute to adjust to it, as he’s the best strategy thinker of his generation, in my opinion, and comes out with some inspiring insights that will help you think differently.

I particularly like this podcast, because his riff on ‘the democracy of ideas’ about halfway in , exactly describes how The Leadership Hub works. And he says this is critical to the new model for management and leadership that we all need to move towards.

Here’s the link to the podcast:
Gary Hamel on The Future of Management