Our second keynote speaker did not disappoint. Julian Birkinshaw delivered an inspirational presentation on the evolution of management. However, before Julian's eagerly anticipated contribution, we gained a valuable insight into the KIM supplier and media market from:
- Mark Bootherstone, European marketing director of Dow Jones, who gave a fascinating insight into how his organisation is moving forward and beyond the search box in researching and delivering news relevant to its subscribers.
- Jeremy Bentley, the managing director of Smartlogic, outlined the indexing challenge which unstructured corporate data poses to organisations today and a look into the innovative techniques vendors must address that challenge with.
- Lynn Collier, director of archive and compliance solutions at Hitachi, gave an overview of how her organisation has adapted its R&D to meet the new global challenges it faces. The separate business unit R&D functions of this transnational corporation have been networked to link and apply innovation across its seemingly unrelated areas of business.
The premise of Julian’s speech was that management should be reinvented before it consumes managers.
Julian described variety as the lifeblood of progress yet management is very limited in the variety of practice it applies. To illsutrate, Julian gave some interesting and different management models which go against the grain of convention:
- TopCoder, a software development organisation which tenders projects through its global network of freelance developers. The best solution is then selected and the successful developer is rewarded financially and additionally gains repute and recognition from his peers.
- Happy Computers for its unique management and recruitment policies in which CVs were completely disregarded in favour of bringing applicants in to participate in training sessions. Applicants are selected on the basis of their performance during these sessions.
Julian then proposed his framework for the rethinking of management in light of the technological and human drivers of today and the foreseeable future where:
- Objectives would move from being goal-driven to oblique, a move described as the cornerstone of long term profitability. Oblique goals give the organisation a direction in which to work as opposed to an outcome based vision - so what happens if you achieve your goal? Two contrasting mission statement examples were provided:
| Exxon Mobil | <> IKEA |
| “We must continuously achieve superior financial and operating results while simultaneously adhering to high ethical standards." | <> “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” |
- Individual motivation would be managed intrinsically instead of extrinsically where the discretionary human attributes initiative, creativity and passion would be accommodated. This is contrary to sole reliance on the contract-able (outsource-able) attributes of employees such as obedience, competence and diligence which are associated with high staff turnover. To illustrate, Julian emphasised two factors which are and will increasingly impact on the management environment. One is the widespread expectation of generation Y that the workplace should be less restrictive of social activity and the other focuses on the new challenges to KIM that new “Web 2.0” technologies will pose. Julian further highlighted that the most committed employees also tend to be the ones whom spend the most time on non-work related social matters, using W2O media, during work hours.
- Management will shift from a bureaucratic to an emergent focus which would simplify co-ordination and processes by allowing them to shape themselves into models which work best for a given organisation.
- And decision making would draw increasingly from collective wisdom which is more reliable than individual wisdom alone. An argument anecdotally supported by reference to Who wants to be a Millionaire? where the expert (call a friend) was right only 65% as opposed to 91% of the time when the audience was consulted.
The message that I got from Julian's presentation is that despite what the management FAD of the day is - the principles of an organisation's management structure and processes should be formed as a result of an iterative process - and one size does not fit all.
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