Humanocracy

“We wrote Humanocracy because we believe, as societies and as individuals, we can no longer afford organizations that waste more human capacity than they use.”

Gary Hamel and Zanini

HumanoWHAT?

You may recognize the name Gary Hamel, a reputed management “guru,” named by the Wall Street Journal as the most influential business thinker in the world. He is an economist and professor at the London Business School and Harvard University Business School. Moreover, he owns his consulting firm and publishes several articles annually in the Harvard Business Review.

But, why has this term made him famous?

Humanocracy is the title of a book he has published with Michelle Zanini, also a writer, consultant, and international speaker.

Humanocracy refers to stopping the waste of talent in organizations governed by bureaucracy. It’s about leveraging the treasure that employees’ skills represent. Focusing on a model centered on maximizing the employees’ contributions to the company.

Bureaucracy is based on control, the slowness of processes, and the existence of a form for everything. Humanocracy, on the other hand, values creativity, agility, interpersonal skills, flexibility, and how people can drive each and every organization forward.

“Creating organizations as amazing as the people inside them”

Times Change

And so do the needs of organizations, as well as the world in general. Pandemic, telecommuting, jobs with very high specificity, new technologies, multidisciplinary teams, evidence of the need for so-called “soft skills”…

Each and every one of these phrases are changes that have occurred in recent years and call for a need to change the model. Moving from a rigid model to one that empowers the individual, that enhances the worker who knows how to do their job well and possesses that “know-how” (that is, all the knowledge acquired throughout their work experience on how to perform their job). A model that does not pose a barrier between each hierarchical level but functions more like a network that simplifies, facilitates, and humanizes processes.

Gary’s 5 Key Points

Without giving away any spoilers about the book, the 5 main points of Gary and Zanini’s work are as follows:

It´s time to kill bureaucracy (it’s time to kill bureaucracy)
There are alternatives to the bureaucratic status quo (there are alternatives to the bureaucratic status quo)
To bust bureaucracy, start with new principles (to end bureaucracy, start with new principles)
Anybody can hack management (anyone can hack management)
Every job can be a good job (every job can be a good job)

It seems that changes are here to stay and that it’s time to respond to new needs not only as individuals but also as organizations.