*received for free from netgalley for honest review* had this one for awhile and just got around to reading it! it was interesting but hard for me to read for long periods. would recommend though

An interesting examination of the effect of bureaucracy on business, decentralization, and the importance of treating employees like humans - which really shouldn't be an innovative or shocking suggestions, but if you pay any attention to big business (especially in America), then you know why it is.

An interesting and thought-provoking book.

HUMANOCRACY

Early on while reading Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, I waited for the other shoe to drop and half expected authors Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini to go to bat for holacracy.

To their credit, they didn’t. What they offer instead is an insightful book on organizational structure and development, albeit one whose premises I agree with more than its fundamental conclusion.

What concerns Hamel and Zanini is how to make organizations more human-centric; that is to say, more suited to give every person opportunities to thrive. It’s a real concern. More and more workplace surveys demonstrate how disengaged employees feel from their work. Indeed, no matter how talented a person might be, on average it’s only a matter of time until that person becomes weighed down by routine, procedure, and protocol. Thus, it seems that there is less and less room for genuine creativity and initiative in the modern workplace despite many organizations paying lip service to the same.

The solution is what Hamel and Zanini dub “humanocracy,” structure and ethos that maximizes human contribution to organizational objectives. Such, they envision, helps align what employees want to do and are capable of doing with the corporate objectives of the organizations to which they belong.

Humanocracy, or the human-centric organization, has the following characteristics (at the risk of oversimplification):


A sense of ownership among members of the organization.

Openness to experimentation.

An appreciation of the power of markets to aid in decision-making and resource allocation.

Meritocracy.

A sense of community.

The readiness to embrace paradoxes, and thereby walk the middle ground between seemingly impossible trade-offs.
Obviously, adopting practices consistent with these tenets is much harder in practice, and Humanocracy presents cases of companies that have succeeded along some dimension or other. Taking things further, however, Hamil and Zanini make the radical suggestion that a truly human-centered organization must necessarily discard bureaucracy completely.

To my mind, this is where things get problematic.

The trouble with bureaucracy, as Hamil and Zanini characterize it, is that it is a structure premised on control for the sake of the organization. Hence, it is necessarily opposed to what humanocracy is supposed to accomplish, which is enabling and encouraging individuals to be their best selves within an organization. The one views people as tools to be used as by an organization for its purposes, while the other stems from an understanding that the best way for an organization to meet its objectives is to leave it to people to determine the means to achieve these. 


A reasonable distinction? Perhaps. But it’s also a false dichotomy that presumes that all bureaucracies are necessarily bad (or even evil). While it’s true that bureaucracy taken to an extreme can develop undesirable characteristics—take government as an example—that has less to do with the underlying structure and more to do with how that structure is managed or implemented.

At its core, that’s what a bureaucracy is: a structure based on specialization so that there can be order within an organization. In that sense, nearly every organization has some form of bureaucracy. And while it’s true that Hamil and Zanini cite a few that seem to have “exploded” bureaucracy wholesale—like the steel manufacturer Nucor or the tomato processor Morning Star—these may just be exceptions that prove the rule, as it seems exceedingly impractical at best to insist that the next best management practice is for all companies to abandon their structures in toto.

After all, not everyone can afford to be like Zappos, that shining light of holacracy, nor would like to be.

Hamil and Zanini make several compelling points about corporate structure in practice in Humanocracy but arguably take their conclusions to an untenable logical extreme. Ultimately, organizations adopt structures suited to their cultures and that allow them to meet their objectives. What matters therefore is not whether an organization is bureaucratic or not, but how to ensure that its chosen structure retains those characteristics that will keep it human-centric—leaving it to each one to determine the best way forward.

This book presents a very good case against bureaucracy. Full of insights supported by comprehensive data, this also provides a very good alternative: humanocracy.

This is the first time I’ve encountered the word humanocracy. But applying the meaning used for democracy, I could assume that this means human power. Now this concept does not necessarily taken with political undertones as it applies to states. Rather the book explains the concept as it applies to business organizations in particular.

Several examples were given by the authors to illustrate how the philosophy of humanocracy looks like in action. These cases serve as a proof that companies can do away with the present bureaucratic set up as time goes by.

One thing I realized from reading this book is how the nature of bureaucracy brought about the many things we dislike in our workplaces. Examples are delays brought about by several layers of approvals, unrecognized talents, leadership apathy, unproductive competitions, lack of creativity, feeling of jot being listened to, and more.

While bureaucratic ideals may serve some benefits for the past centuries, this book argues that it cannot stand the present dynamic changes we are experiencing today.

I got a digital review copy via NetGalley.

Gary Hamel has been one of my favorite authors and management guru’s. In his most recent book Humanocracy, he lays out the case against bureaucracy and instead argues that we need to embrace what he calls “Humanocracy” as in build human centric organisations. He chronicles some interesting experiments being done worldwide with different management philosophies and based on them, posits some principles which when put in use can lead organisations to become a lot more human centric and can address the shackles that bureaucracy has on most organisations.

What is the book about:

The first third of the book is about the pitfalls of bureaucracy and why we need to move away from the management philosophies of the industrial age and get ready for the information age, where the human capital is as important, if not more, than any other kind of capital.

One of the things he says really struck a chord with me.: "Humans are resilient; Organisations are not!"

I totally agree with this line of reasoning. As a species, we are a resilient lot. However, as most of has have heard enough number of times, more and more organisations are dying faster and faster.

The second third of the book is a case study about two organisations which have been successful in rethinking their management of their businesses. The authors talk about how Haier (with their focus on creating an ecosystem of micro enterprises) and Nucor (with their intense focus on employees (Building people not products). Both the companies have clearly found their own niche on how to operate and manage their businesses and the authors do a great job in breaking down their business operations and culture for us to learn about how they run these businesses.

The last section of the book talks about the principles of building human centric organisations and all of them makes great sense. Looks simple but the trick is in getting the implementation right. The authors address this part by having a clearly laid out step-by-step instruction at the end of every chapter detailing a specific principle and at the end of the book by summarizing what the overall action plan could look like.

The principles that the authors talk about are

1. The Power of Ownership

2. The Power of Markets

3. The Power of Meritocracy

4. The Power of Community

5. The Power of Openness

6. The Power of Experimentation

7. The Power of Paradox

The authors also provide examples of organisations that are already living one of these principles already within their organisations {Svenska Handelsbanken, Vinci, Morning Star, Intel, Bridgewater, Alcoholics Anonymous, Southwest Airlines, 3M, etc}.

Ease of reading:

All in all, I thought that the book as a good, easy read. The flow was logical. The examples were concrete. There were just enough data points to make the case and enough explanation of what the data points meant. Some interesting details, specifically about how Haier & Nucor work. Overall, I thought that the book was extremely easy to read.

What I loved about the book:

I have been an ardent believer in human potential. My blogs in the past and my books are a testament to that. So, when someone comes out and says that it is time we rethought how we manage organisations and instead of limiting human potential via bureaucracy, can we allow the full potential of humans to shine, I love it. What is even better is that they showcase that this is no longer just a concept or a vision but is possible and show us how someone has already done this and has been successful in releasing human ingenuity. The case studies were just awesome.

What would I have done differently:

This is one of those books where it is difficult to find something that could have been done differently. There is only one thing that I can think of that the authors could have done differently. If I were writing this book, I would not have used up the amount of space that they used up to prove that bureaucracy doesn’t work and why it is important to look at ways to run our organisations without allowing bureaucracy stifle innovation. All of us know the pitfalls. So, I would have reduced the time and space in the book in that section and instead focused more on the other sections, maybe even leave everything else as it is, thereby making the book leaner.

In Conclusion:

In conclusion, it is my strong belief is that even if every organisation were to just pick one of the 7 principles that they share in the book and double down on that and bring it alive, we would already have a significant breakthrough in moving towards a human centric organisations and the businesses will benefit as a result.

I also believe that this book could not have arrived at a better time than now (covid19) because it is in such crisis, is such fundamental & significant change in management possible to pull off.

As they say, the best time to have planted a tree was 10 years back. Next best time is now!

The best time for having read and implemented the principles in this book was a couple of years back (which would have prepared us to be able to respond to the current crisis much better). The next best time is now!!!!

— This is a <<5>> star book for me.