Welcome to the Monthly Newsletter by Amer Kaissi 

Edition #14, January 2021

The book for this edition is Humanocracy: Creating organizations as amazing as the people inside them (2020) by Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini

The main premise of this book is that bureaucratic management principles are outdated and need to be replaced by new practices that put human beings at the center of every organization. The authors call on leaders “to imagine new management models that are as radically different from the bureaucratic template as FaceTime is from a landline phone call.”

Bureaucracy has resulted in organizations that are less resilient, creative, and energetic than the people inside them. We can still capture the benefits of bureaucracy, such as control, consistency and coordination, but intentionally guard against the negative side effects such as inflexibility, mediocrity and apathy. Hamel and Zanini declare: “Bureaucracy is not a cosmological constant. Bureaucracy was invented by human beings, and now it’s up to us to invent something better.”

The authors cite examples of high-performing organizations that have ditched bureaucratic practices and built humanocracies such as Nucor, Haier, Bridgewater, Southwest Airlines, and others. They achieved incredible feats by maximizing contribution, not compliance. They gave their employees a combination of autonomy and upside. They integrated market dynamics into the organization, such as having internal angle investors and collective decision-making. They encouraged employees to integrate their souls with their work. They implemented open processes where employees and customers participate in strategic decision-making in real-time. They encouraged experimentation by making the whole organization a lab where everyone is a maker. Finally, they integrated freedom and control. But control in these humanocracies comes not from rules and procedures, but from a shared commitment to excellence, accountability to peers and customers, and loyalty to an organization that treats employees with dignity.

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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Top Leadership Keynote Speaker. He speaks about leadership, teams and culture.