Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

Hamel (London Business Sch., cofounder, Management Lab; What Matters Now, The Future of Management) and Zanini (managing director, Management Lab; both, Harvard Business Review), present a concentrated emphasis on the dehumanizing impact of bureaucracy. A bureaucratic structure typically results in only 13 percent of employees feeling engaged in their work, and an estimated $9 trillion in lost economic output each year. The authors present a fascinating new blueprint for organizational design that captures the few necessary benefits of bureaucracy, while avoiding the penalties. They also take readers inside exemplary businesses that have managed to upend the traditional bureaucratic model. This well-reasoned concept is fully developed around the authors’ principles of humanocracy, and includes practical details on how to achieve revolutionary goals with evolutionary means. Also included is their step-by-step guide for getting started, and an explanation of how to scale up this new approach to internal operational design.