Michele Zanini

Americans' satisfaction with big business cratered in 2021

Gallup just published the results of its annual poll gauging satisfaction with various aspects of American life, including its institutions. Not surprisingly, the numbers are generally lower relative to the January 2020 batch. What's striking, however, is the collapse of satisfaction with the size

Managers and Administrators Employment Tracker

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Management Data

2020 was a very good year for the managerial and administrative class

The latest occupational data suggests that bureaucracy's footprint in the US economy has never been greater.

Changing how we change

The promise of digital tools for organizational "hacktivism"

Employees can now aggregate their influence, skills and passion to form powerful horizontal coalition for proactive change. How can we encourage this happens at scale?

Management Economics

Top economists don't think large executive salaries reflect current contributions to firm performance

Executive compensation has less to do with current contribution to firm performance and more to do with efforts to move up the corporate ladder.

Management Data

In investment in workplace training declining? Evidence from the UK

Despite the reskilling hype, large-scale survey data from UK shows training days and spend are in decline.

Management History

Mary Parker Follett on Community, Creativity, and Control

Mary Parker Follett's perspective on the creative power of collaboration, how to effectively manage interdependence and diversity, and the nature of influence and authority in organizations that are more relational than hierarchical.

Mgmt Throwback Thursdays

Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics model

For this week's Management #ThrowbackThursday, I bring you Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics model. Developed in the 1970s, it challenged the prevailing attitude that jobs should be simplified to maximize

Video

Build Change Platforms, Not Change Programs

Traditional approaches to change are bureaucratic at their core--and that's why they fail. We need to a new model for organizational change, one that's bottom up & horizontal, embraced, and emergent.

Book

Freeing the Human Spirit at Work

The experience of the post-bureaucratic rebels testifies to a single luminous truth: an organization has little to fear from the future, or its competitors, when it’s brimming with self managing “micropreneurs.”

Leadership

Large-company CEOs spend 3% of their time with customers

So much for the notion of the CEO as the "seer in chief"

Learning from the Vanguard

Southwest Airlines: Freedom to Delight the Customer

Frontline teams at Southwest Airlines know they have the freedom to do whatever it takes to serve the customer. It’s this freedom, rather than a set of protocols, that allows Southwest employees to create memorable moments.

Toxic Assumptions

"When we take away all decisions from employees, they no longer feel accountable"

This is taken from Peter Cappelli's new article in the September-October edition of the Harvard Business Review. “When we take away all decisions from employees, they no longer feel accountable.

Changing how we change

Changing How We Change

You can't evolve to a post-bureaucratic model using a bureaucratic approach to change.

Book

Introducing my new book, Humanocracy

I've spent the last 5+ years writing a book on creating good jobs and resilient organizations. Here's a quick summary and overview

Changing how we change

Harnessing Everyday Genius

How Michelin devolved to its frontline teams the power to make a difference

Book

Fully Human: An Excerpt from Humanocracy

This is a brief excerpt from Humanocracy. We hope this preview will inspire you to join a cause that has never been pressing: building organizations that are fit for the future--and for human beings.

Learning from the Vanguard

Haier: Entrepreneurship at Scale

How a Chine appliance maker is reinventing management for the digital age

Leadership

Re-thinking leadership

It’s time for a radical rethink of leadership and leadership development.

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