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Written by McKinsey principals Bryan and Joyce...So here is my synopsis or understanding of the subject matter presented...
Organizational design is today's key to unlocking the opportunities of the 21s century…Why? It's all about mind power!
Companies can consciously design and build organizational interventions that can dramatically improve their ability to ‘mobilize mind power’ - to create greater wealth in the organization. The size of the potential opportunity (to build greater wealth and profits) justifies that the CEO and top-tier leadership devote a large % of their total capacity to this intervention. Today’s corporations are now under-performers as they struggle again to adopt to the new global business environment. Why is this? The authors discuss this further...
Most Organizations Still Operate Under Old Organizational Models-
The goal is to free talented people from the unproductive complexity that has been designed into today’s corporate organizational model.This unproductive complexity is a function of the organizational model being used today, but that was designed for the industrial revolution of the early 1920’s, not for today’s digital age or 21st century technology.
So, what causes this unproductive complexity?
Vertical Hierarchies create a traffic jam or organizational gridlock...these result in organizational constraints Silos create impenetrable walls that block collaboration and the flow of individual intellectual property (IIP). Then, the idea of horizontal matrices was developed to circumvent the existing hierarchies, this resulted in more managers, more reporting, more agendas and convoluted relationships. Add to this, intermediate layers within an organization such that the front line and front office are so far apart they never engage, reducing opportunities to collaborate, demobilizing mind power.
Most People In The Workforce Today Want New Organizational Models -
Today, the majority of workers are ‘thinking-intensive’ people vs. labor intensive people. Look at how students come into the working world relying upon social networking sites for their life style. Here they define thinking intensive workers as those that apply the use of subjective judgment and problem solving (intangibles) techniques to produce greater efficiency, scale and wealth. Labor intensive workers rely upon the application of labor, capital, energy, materials (tangibles) to produce greater efficiency, scale. It is easy to understand how our workforce has changed!
Intangibles in the 21st Century are the source of wealth production since the production of tangibles is being constrained by the environment, resource restrictions, global competition, rising wages, lower standards of living, etc.
By enabling 'the liberation of talented people' from dysfunctional organizations, releasing the organizational complexity, it seems possible to harness the collective latent mind power. The authors go on to explore in detail 9 different means of attaining the goal.
Find it on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Mobilizing-Minds-Creating-Century-Organization/dp/0071490825
