Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What fuels long-term business success? Not operational excellence, technology breakthroughs, or new business models, but management innovation--new ways of mobilizing talent, allocating resources, and formulating strategies. Through history, management innovation has enabled companies to cross new performance thresholds and build enduring advantages.

In The Future of Management , Gary Hamel argues that organizations need management innovation now more than ever. Why? The management paradigm of the last century--centered on control and efficiency--no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success. To thrive in the future, companies must reinvent management.

Hamel explains how to turn your company into a serial management innovator, revealing:

The make-or-break challenges that will determine competitive success in an age of relentless, head-snapping change.
The toxic effects of traditional management beliefs.
The unconventional management practices generating breakthrough results in "modern management pioneers."
The radical principles that will need to become part of every company's "management DNA."
The steps your company can take now to build your "management advantage."

Practical and profound, The Future of Management features examples from Google, W.L. Gore, Whole Foods, IBM, Samsung, Best Buy, and other blue-ribbon management innovators.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. ix)
• Acknowledgments (p. xiii)
• Part I Why Management Innovation Matters
• 1 The End of Management? (p. 3)
• 2 The Ultimate Advantage (p. 19)
• 3 An Agenda for Management Innovation (p. 37)
• Part II Management Innovation in Action
• 4 Creating a Community of Purpose (p. 69)
• 5 Building an Innovation Democracy (p. 83)
• 6 Aiming for an Evolutionary Advantage (p. 101)
• Part III Imagining the Future of Management
• 7 Escaping the Shackles (p. 125)
• 8 Embracing New Principles (p. 147)
• 9 Learning from the Fringe (p. 185)
• Part IV Building the Future, of Management
• 10 Becoming a Management Innovator (p. 215)
• 11 Building the Future of Management (p. 241)
• Notes (p. 257)
• Index (p. 265)
• About the Author (p. 271)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Though this authoritative examination of today's static corporate management systems reads like a business school treatise, it isn't the same-old thing. Hamel, a well-known business thinker and author (Leading the Revolution), advocates that dogma be rooted out and a new future be imagined and invented. To aid managers and leaders on this mission, Hamel offers case studies and measured analysis of "management innovators" like Google and W.L. Gore (makers of Gore-Tex), then lists lessons that can be drawn from them. He doesn't gloss over how difficult it will be to reinvent management, comparing the new and needed shift in thinking to Darwin's "abandoning creationist traditions" and physicists who had to "look beyond Newton's clockwork laws" to discover quantum mechanics. But the steps needed to make such a profound shift aren't clearly outlined here either. The book serves primarily as an invitation to shed age-old systems and processes and think differently. There's little humor and few punchy catchphrases-the book has less sparkle than Jeffrey Pfeffer's What Were They Thinking?-but its content will likely appeal to managers accustomed to b-school textbooks and tired of gimmicky business evangelism. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This outstanding, clearly written book by a highly acclaimed management consultant, professor, and writer is very important reading for all managers. Hamel explains how managers can create organizations that are innovative, creative, humane, and successful. Rather than espousing orthodox management systems that emphasize achieving efficiency through controls, this very practical book outlines the specific steps managers can take to create new, innovative management systems that are adaptable to change. The analysis is excellent, with many illustrations and examples of companies that have prioritized establishing innovative, creative cultures, including Whole Foods, Google, W. L. Gore, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Whirlpool, Visa, Best Buy, and IBM. The author also provides examples of companies that were innovative but lost it. To create management systems that can meet the challenges of the 21st century, Hamel recommends such things as having a mission, goals, and teamwork; bottom-up, continuous planning with high participation; flat organizational structures with decision-making authority pushed far down; accountability; providing much information to employees; making positive assumptions about people with high trust, low fear; egalitarianism, realizing that innovation comes from anywhere in the organization; and generous rewards based on performance. Summing Up: Essential. Public, academic (lower-division undergraduate and up), and professional collections. D. W. Huffmire emeritus, University of Connecticut

Booklist Review

Hamel, an academic, with coauthor Breen, aims to help readers become twenty-first-century management pioneers who reinvent principles, processes, and practices to create long-term corporate advantage through adaptability and creativity. Hamel and Breen tell us, We must figure out a way to coordinate the efforts of thousands of individuals without creating a burdensome hierarchy of overseers; to build companies that liberate human imagination while keeping a tight rein on costs; and to invent organizations where discipline and freedom aren't mutually exclusive. Essential building blocks for making management innovation an organized capability include the courage to lead by tackling tough problems and identifying and then eliminating deadwood management practices so that innovation can thrive. The authors coach us through the steps needed to develop our vision of the future of management but decline to share their predictions. However, we get strong clues about their thinking in their tributes to the Web, noting that it is going to turn our smoke-stack management model on its head. An excellent book.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2007 Booklist