Cristian Mitreanu's Blog

Reinventing Management: A Unified, Top-Down and Bottom-Up, Approach

I recently entered the competition "The Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge: Creating Inspired, Open & Free Organizations" -- part two of the Harvard Business Review / McKinsey M-Prize for management innovation at the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX). Started by Gary Hamel, the MIX is "an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century." His talk "Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment," which is embedded below, details the context of this undertaking.

My entry "A Unified, Top-Down and Bottom-Up, Approach to Business Management" points to the "fundamental theory of business," which I developed over the past several years. According to the MIX requirements, the entry is structured as a "hack" ("a hack can be as seemingly basic as a better way to run meetings or as high-stakes as a complete overhaul of the compensation system — as long as it turns the tables on management-as-usual and offers up a pathway to progress on one of the moonshots"). Here are a few excerpts from it:

SUMMARY

A new perspective on human nature, particularly on human needs, allows us to develop a dynamic model of the organization and an integrated top-down-bottom-up approach to management. Some of the major benefits of the resulting holistic inside-out-outside-in view include expanding the boundaries of the organization, bridging the gap between plan and execution, and increasing the owner's power in the management process.

MOONSHOT(S)

- Make direction-setting bottom-up and outside-in

- Reinvent the means of control

- Rebuild management's philosophical foundations

PROBLEM

"As a society, we were simply advancing toward understanding how to successfully perform increasingly larger sets of activities over increasingly longer periods of time. Unfortunately, what should have been a natural progression of our general understanding of business was diverted by historical circumstances on a dead-end road of knowledge. The quest for a fundamental theory of business was replaced by the quest for a theory of sustainable competitive advantage. Consequently, every effort to understand what it takes for a company to achieve enduring success was hampered by limitations inherent to the concept of strategy." This quote from my 2009 essay "A Wake-Up Call for the Business Nation" provides a high-level overview of the problem.

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SOLUTION

As indicated above, the solution presented in this hack is a theory of (understanding and doing) business that provides a more comprehensive and realistic explanation of how organizations fundamentally work. 

[...]

PRACTICAL IMPACT

Some of the major benefits that the new theory brings to the business world include:

PROVIDING A MORE COMPREHENSIVE AND REALISTIC "BIG PICTURE"

As mentioned in the hack's title, the new theory provides a unified, top-down and bottom-up, approach to business management. It also allows us to see businesses holistically, integrating the inside-out and the outside-in perspectives.

[...]

CHALLENGES

Some areas, where potential barriers to adoption might lie, include:

1. RESEARCHER'S CREDENTIALS

"Who's this guy?," many will ask. And rightfully so. History is chock-full with examples of individuals who have taken advantage of those who lacked information. Furthermore, over the past few decades, providing advice in the business management area has become a very lucrative field. 

[...]

FIRST STEPS

First StepsA few steps that could be taken immediately (in ascending order of impact and required resources):

1. PROVIDE WORKSHOPS ON THE NEW THEORY OF NEEDS

"If you understand cause and effect, it brings about a set of insights that leads you to a very different place. The knowledge will persuade you that the market isn’t organized by customer category or by product category.  If you understand the job that consumers need to complete, you can articulate all of the experiences in that job," said Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School in an interview with Inc. magazine.

[...]

Your comment, vote, or any kind of support for this entry would be highly appreciated.

Waking Up the Business Nation

What if the world of business has been stuck in the wrong mindset for the past half century? Here's a quote from my new initiative "A Wake-Up Call for the Business Nation:"

“Keynes's impact on the business world was even more profound. His view that an economy, as a whole, does not necessarily abide by the same laws as do individual transactions has created a lasting rift between business thought and economic thought. While the field of economics has continued to search for a more insightful economic worldview, generally focusing on a macro perspective, the business world has remained trapped in the post-war mindset. The apparent perfect fit of the discipline of corporate strategy, backed by Keynes's macro-micro divide, has gradually diminished the importance of an historical perspective, ultimately leading to a business world in which few question the discipline's very existence, and even fewer see the Keynesian underpinnings.”

Make sure you join the discussion.

UPDATE 7/24/2009: The essay/manifesto quoted above was part of a proposal sent to several potential investors for the first time on March 9, 2008 in an attempt to raise capital for one of my business ventures. For the public at large, it was first published on September 11, 2008 as part of the initiative announced here. And later, it was published as a RedefiningStrategy.com article on June 19, 2009.

UPDATE 6/21/2010: The discussion "A Wake-Up Call for the Business Nation" was deleted. Nonetheless, the essay/manifesto remains available at RedefiningStrategy.com/WakeUpCall.pdf.

Online Presence Humanizing

Putting a human face on a web-based initiative is a relatively new trend. And I am talking about the abundance of casual photos of the individual or team behind the initiative. Sure, lawyers and real estate agents have been using photos as part of business for decades. But to call those photos casual would be quite a stretch.

As it is often the case, technology is to blame. The proliferation of broadband and the emergence of the so-called web 2.0 technologies have been the main drivers behind this trend. However, there is a more subtle, yet better, story behind all this -- the personal business is rising (see more on this here).

This being said, I too decided to humanize my three-year-old online presence (RedefiningStrategy.com went live in May 2004). So, a new, artsier website, CristianMitreanu.com, went live today. Check it out!

The Future of Small Business

In January, Sillicon Valley's Institute for the Future released the first installment of an interesting study on the future of small business. Sponsored by Intuit, the study is fittingly entitled the Intuit Future of Small Business Report™. Here is an excerpt from the press release that summarizes their findings:

"The report identifies three major trends: the changing face of small business, the rise of personal business and the emergence of entrepreneurial education. Those trends led to five major findings:

• Entrepreneurs will no longer come predominantly from the middle of the age spectrum, but instead from the edges. People nearing retirement and their children just entering the job market will set the bar as the most entrepreneurial generation ever.
• American entrepreneurship will reflect a huge upswing in the number of women. The glass ceiling that has limited women's growth in traditional corporate career paths will send a rich talent pool to the small business sector.
• Immigrant entrepreneurs will drive a new wave of globalization. U.S. immigration policy and the outcome of the current immigration debates will affect how this segment performs over the next decade.
• Contract workers, accidental and social entrepreneurs will fuel a proliferation of personal businesses. Economic, social and technological change -- and an increased interest in flexible work schedules -- will produce a more independent workforce seeking a better work-life balance.
• Entrepreneurship will be a widely adopted curriculum at educational, trade and vocational institutions. As a result, artists, musicians and others not traditionally exposed to business education will learn not just their trade but small-business management skills as well."

The other, upcoming two installments will examine the technologies that will propel the small business sector and how small businesses will affect society and the economy through 2017. More information is available at http://www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness/. It’s worth a look.

What Is To Become of the Business Book?

In the press release (PDF format here and HTML format here) announcing my book "Spointra and the Secret of Business Success," I identify some major developments in the business book space.

"We are an increasingly busy global society, and finding time to read a book can be difficult. Book reviews and executive summaries have become the norm. However, the lack of time is not the only culprit. This trend is also encouraged by a few negative developments in the business book space. First, the most obvious problem is that many business books simply repackage old ideas without bringing anything new. Second, not only can many books be distilled to a few pages, but they are built upon an initial article or paper without providing significant improvements. Third, many books use cherry-picked business cases or examples in order to hide flaws or limitations in the presented concepts. Finally, the most important problem is the generalized neglect of what I call 'executive serendipity,' which refers to seemingly-ingenious business decisions that actually occurred accidentally. Although this phenomenon plays a major role in business, many books tend to ignore it because most theories are rational, which means that they are based on the assumption that every result has intent behind it."

Obviously, I see these developments as problems and, therefore, opportunities. The choice of format for my book was a direct response to them. So, what is to become of the business book? Here are some of my thoughts, which I expressed in the same press release:

"Our book requires slightly more time to read than a review or an executive summary, however it provides ten times more fun... assuming that the fun associated with the review or summary is greater than zero," continues Mitreanu. "Its layout allows the reader to make her or his own judgment with regard to the validity and practicality of the theoretical concepts. And speaking of fun, another reason for using the graphic novel format is the fact that books as the sole vehicles for disseminating ideas are increasingly irrelevant in our highly networked world. A successful business book must do more than just deliver an idea... which, if valuable, will spread over the Internet anyway. 'Spointra and the Secret of Business Success' is a high-quality hardcover that can also serve as a coffee table book, allowing for easy access and brief, thought-stimulating immersions in its storyline."