Management: The New Classics. The Disciplines At The Core Of Today's Management And Leadership

Amongst the challenges that management in the 21st Century has, which are shared, of course, by specific functions such as Communications and HR, this one represents perhaps the best summary I can think of. How can we master each of these four areas and the connection between them? (1) Messaging, Communicating (2) Triggering behaviours (3) Sustaining actions, and (4) Shaping cultures We have been stuck for a long time on the first, and people are reasonably good about it. Indeed, this (1), Messaging, would be the core of Communications for many people. Also, triggering behaviours via our communications is not bad. But we are not sure when and how it happens, Sustaining anything, however, is far from mastered. What we have become is Masters of the One Off (communication, event, Town Hall, off site, powerpoint stack). Beyond sustaining, shaping/creating new cultures, is even more of a question mark. Be careful you know ‘which box you are in’; yo can't shappe cultures (4) remaining in the Messaging (1) area. The problem is that the answers to all these, in isolation or combination, are hardly to be found in the traditional management disciplines. These, and their toolkits, were crafted in a time when business life was predictable and relatively stable. In the new fast moving environment, we don’t have very good toolkits. So we are applying the old ones to the new problems, new pace and new scope of today’s business life. Where to go for an upgrade? There are 10 disciplines that I call ‘The New Classics’. Some are, strictly speaking, far from ‘new’. But they are new for us in management and the communication /HR/other functions. They are not completely off the radar screen, we have not done much about them. IN fact, many people would see them as alien to the kinds of things 'we do' inside organizations. These are ‘The New Classics’. I will mention one single area in each, as an example, from where we can draw immediate learning and applications. It’s just one example of a rich learning from all of them. Behavioural Economics. Born from the failure of traditional economics to explain and deal with irrational behaviour, this new discipline is rich in content. Reframing messages is a big deal in Behavioural Economics. The classical example is the switch from ‘Don’t use towels that you don’t need’ (hotel rooms) to ‘The last people in this room used only one towel’. Caricature as it may sound, the second message triggers significant behavioural change whilst the former does not much. Reframing and triggering behaviours, all in one. Some reframing works, some do not, and we know quite a lot about this, even if we don’t apply it. This is a bad caricature of the whole Behavioural Economics field but wanted to point towards the ‘irrational behaviour’ area (of insights and knowledge), which is a now a New Classic. Many of our HR systems and process are still the equivalent of Neoclassical Economics that assumes rationality and logic. Political / Social Marketing. Segmentation of people inside the organization, other than by performance, is almost zero. We have one single top down vision, mission and narrative that is ‘good for everybody’. Here we go. You would not survive one week in Political Marketing where all messages are segmented. In the US, for example, you don’t talk to a 25 year old about Medicare, and you don’t talk to a 65 year old about job creation. In our organizations, we talk about everything to everybody, for some peculiar views about ‘equity’ and ‘democracy’ which are completely misplaced. Most activity within the organization is tribal. Management in the 21st Century needs to understand that in 2016 'tribal' is not a Polynesian thing. Network Theory. Amongst other things it tells us that a Bell curve, normal distribution in the organization does not exist other than in a HR mind. Everything inside the organization (a network) follows a Power Law distribution. For example, there is a relatively small number of people with high influence and connectivity, and a large number of people with very little influence and connectivity. This cannot be longer ignored. Don’t try to find a Bell curve of influence. It does not exist. Viral Change™ . This is a trans-discipline that explains how to mobilize people: bottom up (not top down), behaviours based (not information based), peer to peer (not hierarchical channels), bottom up storytelling (not top down ‘stories from above’) and Backstage Leadership™ , the art of supporting from the back, not upfront with the powerpoints. Plenty of this here: The Viral Change Mobilizing PLatform Social Movements. Organizational culture is an ‘internal social movement’, or isn’t. So we’d better learn form people who have run these. Key learning: you have to cater for a multitude of motivations, but be very clear about the non negotiable (behaviours). In traditional management, our obsessive ‘alignment’ needs to be redefined. Also, ‘Rebels’ need a cause and a direction, as opposed to the fashionable thinking that having passionate people, rebels and mavericks in a room, will change the company. Yes, but you may not be able to recognise it. Social/Corporate Anthropology. Hardly new. However, life in the organization can be understood in terms of rituals, tribes, identities, kinship and other anthropological concepts. And, suddenly, it all makes sense! Anthropology is the forgotten discipline in management. A beautiful discipline if it were not for the anthropologists who often speak an incomprehensible language. Corporate Anthropology is also a forgotten discipline, more complex than doing a PhD on South Seas tribes to be followed by a post on consumer behaviour for Uniliver. Digital Activism. This teaches us about rapid mobilization and large scale effects. Also about the differences between champions, ambassadors, advocates (and click-tivists), and activists. These are differences that we don’t understand or use well in the traditional view of corporate life, where these concepts have been commoditised. I don’t want more ambassadors. The company is not an Internal  Diplomatic Service. Personally, give me activists, who actually act. But the only time we use the term (other than in Viral Change™) is to refer to employees engaging externally in behalf of the employer. Activists are not ambassadors who click and ‘like’ and say how good my company is. Generation ( and urban) anthropology. There is less difference between a Chinese teenager and a French teenager, than a Chinese company and a French company. In organizations we are still stuck in a rather old ‘cultural (national) distinctions’ and frames which don’t predict much anymore. How you handle Millennials, for example, is today more important than understanding ‘German’s power distance’ Social Media technologies. Digital is not a suit of toys. We need to distinguish between building an audience and building a community, between push and pull mechanisms, and the differences between connectivity and collaboration. Critical Thinking. Two things here: (1) It can be taught, and (2) in the traditional management of organizations we are in very short supply. At the very least is about (a) learning the art of questioning, how to be disciplined in inquiring and (b) avoiding/managing fallacies and biases. It’s a praxis. It gets better and better when practising and when establishing some of these practices across the organization, at a scale. My teams are putting together an executive education/ training package on ‘The New Classics of Management’. Anybody interested could contact me directly at leandro-herrero@thechalfontproject.com ___________________________ Dr Leandro Herrero, is the Chief Organization Architect at The Chalfont Project and also the managing partner of Viral Change Global LLP, both international consulting companies pioneers in cutting edge Organizational Strategy and Large Scale Behavioural and Cultural Change. He is the author of six management books, amongst them Viral Change and Homo Imitans. A psychiatrist by background, he is the pioneer of the Viral Change Organizational Platform, and The Chalfont Project Accelerators, Reboot!, Disruptive Ideas, InnovACTions and Critical Thinking Jump Start. An international speaker, he can be reached via his office at uk-office@thechalfontproject.com Leandro Herrero is also Executive Fellow, Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. Daily Thoughts, are live every day at 08:00 GMT, in www.leandroherrero.com and distributed by free email subscription, still the best way to ensure you don’t miss them. In that site, it is possible to create collections of Daily Thoughts and used them with your teams and colleagues as challenging platform for conversations. If these Daily Thoughts help you in any way, they may also help others. Share them here, or directly with other colleagues or team members.