Humanocracy Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

Michele Zanini, Gary Hamel — 2020

In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring. Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book. In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them. Critical building blocks include: Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of busting bureaucracy Models: Leveraging the experience of organizations that have profitably challenged the bureaucratic status quo Mindsets: Escaping the industrial age thinking that frustrates progress Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy—ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox—in your organization's DNA If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit . . . If you want to build an organization that can outrun change . . . If you're committed to giving every team member the chance to learn, grow, and contribute . . . . . . then this book's for you. Whatever your role or title, Humanocracy will show you how to launch an unstoppable movement to equip and empower everyone in your organization to be their best and to do their best. The ultimate prize: an organization that's fit for the future and fit for human beings.

Highlights

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

When benchmarking other organisations we tend to ask , what do they do differently ? But when we're trying to make sense of a company that is different in almost every respect , we need to ask , how does it think differently ?

Page 105

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

Wrongs are wrong whatever their magnitude . If we are not daily struck by the inhumanity of bureaucracy , it's because our outrage has been dulled by time and familiarity . Yet what Thomas Paine said of monarchy in 1776 is equally true of bureaucracy today: "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right ."

Page 62

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Conformity . 75% of survey takers say that new ideas in their organization are met with indifference , skepticism , or outright resistance- a deeply worrying finding given that new ideas are the lifeblood of every organization.

Page 54

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So , let's face facts . Bureaucracy is familiar . Bureaucracy is complex and systemic . Bureaucracy is well defended . Bureaucracy serves a purpose , however poorly . Bureaucracy a self-replicating .

Page 49

On why bureaucracy is so hard to defeat .

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

Like STS , most of these initiatives were ultimately neutered , cloistered , or aborted . And what of today's fads- mindfulness , agile , lean startup , and all the rest ? Will they prove to be similarly inconsequential ? Yes , unless we're honest about why bureaucracy is so hard to defeat- and then adjust our tactics accordingly .

Page 49

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

In our experience , many leaders like Muñoz are frightened by the idea that an organization's faith rests on the ability of team members to use their best judgment . The alternative , though , is institutionalized idiocy .

Page 37

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They all conform to the same bureaucratic blueprint. There is a formal hierarchy , power is vested in positions , authority trickles down , big leaders appoint little leaders , strategies and budgets are set at the top , central staff groups make policy and ensure compliance , job roles are tightly defined , control is achieved through oversight , rules , and sanctions , managers assign tasks and assess performance , everyone competes for promotion , compensation correlates with rank .

Page 17

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

These organizational features may seem innocuous but as will see it's here in the unremarkable landscape of bureaucracy that we find the roots of institutional and competence. Our organizations are less than human because they were designed to be so.

Page 17

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

For now, let's be clear on one thing: bureaucracy must die. We can no longer afford its pernicious side effects. As humankind's most deeply entrenched social technology, it will be hard to uproot, but that's OK. You were put on this earth to do something significant, heroic even, and what could be more heroic than creating, at long last, organizations that are fully human?

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Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

Bureaucracy multiplied our purchasing power but shriveled our souls.

Sugar Perez Alcain@sugiedoo

In a bureaucracy, human beings are instruments, employed by an organization to create products and services. In a humanocracy, the organization is the instrument- it's the vehicle human beings use to better their lives and the lives of those they serve.

This highlight contains a spoiler