I'll sure be first in line to read Prahalad's book. Most corporations haven't woken up to the fact that management is the least productive thing you can do of any human stuff - brands, people, value , measurement, systems etc - unless you are going to go beyond systemising just hierarchy and complete a triangle- above hierarchy is networks across organisations, below it is self- and co-organising so that grassroots innovation such as the customer demands is core. It would be good if brands, which accidentally strayed into being one of the worst command & control short-sighted instruments -guilty on the global scene largely as charged by Naomi Klein - could help other professions go beyond in embraing al 3 subsystems of management transparently - whether they will depends ultimately I suppose on whether anyone bothers to interact with this blog, our book, any of us individually or at the communal meetings we stage around the world about 3 times a year
future orgs

It also depends on management coming out on a little matter of mathematics. Every corporate report I've ever seen fails o'level maths because it nevers does more than add numbers whereas the most valauble models of corporations (in service, knowledge or networked economies) are now multiplicative. To break out numbers separately and petend they add is the most false sort of precision that any class could try to use to enslave other people. It is time for managers who believe in ruling only by addition to have their heads cut off. I'll be speaking about this on the first corporate goverance world congress in Canada next week.

Chris, 2004 Year of Transparency posted by ..., 1:08 AM  permalink