Paul Jansen of runandjump ltd writes:
In their book ‘Humanocracy – Creating organisations as amazing as the people inside them’ Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini argue their case as an antidote to bureaucracy. Part manifesto, part handbook, they are on a mission to help eradicate bureaucracy, not only because it carries a significant cost (a staggering US$2.6 trillion per year in the USA alone, in the authors’ estimate), and is increasingly clogging up the arteries of organisations’ ability to grow and innovate. But equally importantly, because human beings deserve better than to be stifled in their development and influence, seen as a resource first and human second, and controlled by rules and regulations rather than being trusted to do the right thing.
So if it is so bad, why is bureaucracy omnipresent? Admittedly, it does deliver to an extent. Replacing it overnight would cause chaos. Most of us accept it as the norm. So, kicking against it requires a special sort of person and a lot of tenacity. Especially as it is complex and interwoven with so many structures and systems, making it hard to get right of.
Case studies
After having set out the case for ‘humanocracy’, that is a system maximising human contribution, and against bureaucracy in part one of the book, part two goes on to provide two case studies of companies that have organised themselves along humanocratic principles. Nucor, the world’s most innovative and consistently profitable steel manufacturer in the USA, has frontline workers who are hands-on involved in innovation and customer relations, as well as the day-to-day production. This bottom-up model, in which the centre is miniscule, operates differently from a typical hierarchical steel manufacturing in five important ways:
• Creativity and productivity are financially rewarded at team level
• Competence and skills are built for the long run and include business fundamentals
• Collaboration is encouraged across business units by creating a community
• Commitment and trust is placed in workers first, management second
• Courage is rewarded, giving workers the confidence to act.
The second case study involves Haier, the much-publicised appliance producer from Qingdao, China, whose unique organisational form consist of a few thousand micro enterprises. Some of these MEs are customer facing, others are production focused, whereas a third category provide support services. MEs are free to work with each other or go outside the company, whatever appears to provide the best value for the customer. In this rendanheyi model the MEs are self-managing business units that have wide-ranging freedoms, through which entrepreneurship and innovation are encouraged. At the same time, an ambitious system of targets and commensurate rewards applies.
Hamel and Zanini are careful not to portray these two cases as examples to blindly copy, but rather draw out some lessons that have wider applicability. They derive the principles of humanocracy, which are further explored extensively in part three: how to make employees more like entrepreneurs, how market principles can be applied internally for innovation, resource allocation and performance, how to build a real meritocracy, the powers of community, openness, experimentation and paradoxes.
Starting points
Illustrated by examples from organisations ranging from Alcoholics Anonymous to Amazon, the various principles are convincingly and extensively delved into, and the reader is given practical starting points at the end of each chapter.
The authors’ ambition to provide practical handholds is the foundation for the final part of the book. Here, a case study of tyre manufacturer Michelin and its programme of ‘responsabilisation’ illustrates the complexities but also the achievability of the transformation of an existing, large bureaucratic organisation into something much more humanocratic. Even if it has taken them 6-plus years.
How, then, to start a process like this yourself, in your own organisation? First, the reader is challenged to put him-/herself under the magnifying glass and asked to consider how human-centric their own behaviours are and what they can change about themselves. If you are a manager of sorts, the next step may be to consider how to get out of the way of your team. Ask them: What am I doing that feels like interference? What am I doing that you could do better?
Rather than confronting the bureaucratic beast head-on, you are encouraged to start running lots of experiments and adopt the behaviours of a hacker. This involves you and your team(s) running short experiments aimed at addressing their priority issues, building on what works and discarding what does not.
Results
This should create a range of positive results and begins to generate a momentum of its own. How to use that to scale up across the organisation is the subject of the final chapter. Key words here are credibility, community and leadership. Credibility and community play a key role in helping to spread the approach of experimentation (the authors love the term hacktivism). And it is a redefining of what it means to be a leader and how you approach organisational change that will ultimately help determine how far your transformation will go.
I really enjoyed this book. Predominantly for its solid content and research-backed data, for its case-studies (which include a fair few examples that were new to me), and for its attempts to provide practical and pragmatic tips. I was actually somewhat surprised about its anti-establishment tone (or rather anti-bureaucratic, but what is the difference really) towards the end. Not quite what I expected from two well-respected scholars associated with LBS, Harvard and McKinsey.
Nevertheless, I subscribe to their call to action, even though I felt that the final part of the book was not as well backed-up by practice as the earlier sections.
I also felt that the authors’ definition of bureaucracy at times was conflated with one of politics. Of course, these are often intertwined, but I just wondered whether a bureaucracy as proxy for control could have been further explored.
In the category inspirational readings for people craving a different approach to organising work, this book certainly ranks highly. No single book will be the ultimate guide to doing this, but its practical considerations will certainly help you to set off on a journey towards creating your own amazing humanocratic organisation.