People who get it #1: Gary Hamel

My friends Jeff Mackanic and David Burney both recommended that I read Gary Hamel’s latest book, The Future of Management, which was named the best business book of the year by Amazon in 2007. I was absolutely blown away. The whole way through, I was like, “tell it, brother!”

The basic thesis of the book? The management model developed in the late 19th and early 20th century and integral to the success of the industrial revolution is starting to show signs of wear. It is being replaced by a new model, embodied by companies like Whole Foods, Google, and W.L. Gore (the makers of Gore-Tex); all three are highlighted in the book.

Red Hat, and the open source movement in general, are another perfect case study of this new management model. Concepts like the meritocracy of ideas, transparency & openness, collaboration, authenticity, and a whole host of other ideas that have made Red Hat successful appear over and over in the book.

Hamel mentions open source a few times, but I’d love to sit down with him some day and discuss the ways we’ve applied many of the same principles at Red Hat he sees defining the future of management.

Turns out there was a big get together of some amazing minds on this management stuff not too long ago. Henry Mintzberg, Kevin Kelley, James Surowiecki, Tim Brown from IDEO, John Mackey of Whole Foods, and a bunch of other interesting thinkers were there. My invitation must have been lost in the mail… But that’s OK, because there are some really interesting videos that show what happened at the meeting here.

Go check ’em out, you’ll find some amazing ideas…