If we simultaneously consider the advent of immediate information in our society, the financial and economic crisis, intergenerational tensions and a ruthless search for talent, we might be inclined to question classical management methods which seem little prepared to face such changes.

 

So, Serge Perez, president of the Les Ateliers Corporate agency, explains in Les Echos, 13th October, how immediately shared and collaborative information, spread by the web 2.0 tools “destroys companies' traditional operating mechanisms.  Links with time, the notion of geographical space, contact with hierachies, the sharing of information... everything is shattered”.

 

The crisis places a huge pressure on HR managers. Pierre Landry, HRD at Regus, explains in Les Echos on 2nd September, that he “has not stopped in the past few months reorganising or re-motivating teams so that they may jointly manage decline in economical activity. No other alternative exists than to get your hands dirty, be pedagogical and especially remain honest”

 

Amaury Houdart, HRD at Logica France, confirms the necessity of re-evaluating management roles: “One of the first roles of the HRD is to encourage communication around the cooperate vision, to organise decision broadcasting and explanations of general management to give a sense of meaning to the changes asked of employees”.

 

Jean-Rémi Touze, HRD at Siemens, speaks of a similar necessity:  “Working on motivation and internal skills enforcement is essential. If you give no sense of meaning to your collaborators input and do not stand by them, more notably during the time of crisis, they will know to remember when growth is again on the horizon”.

 

Giving meaning, sharing information, remotivating, favouring innovation, transforming managers into leaders, organising mutual understandings, recognising emotional intelligence : putting ourselves at the very center of management.

 

Henry Mintzberg, professor at Canada's McGill University has, for quite a while, alerted companies regarding these mutations whilst simultaneously focusing mainly upon the relevance of management training in Business Schools. In the book Managing, his last publication, he believes that management concerns more a social process than brutal and unilateral decisions.  It is therefore just as true to say that the intellectual and training levels of those who are to be managed is increased.

 

For Gary Hamel, founding president of the Strategos cabinet located in Chicago, and guest professor at Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics, also author of The Future of Management, it is a question of reinventing management by adapting it to the information society and to Web 2.0.  Companies must start to ask themselves about managerial innovation.

 

To help us, he has set out 12 principles:

 

- Let the imagine run wild:  The internet is not to stifle anything
- Constantly exchange via chatrooms and forums to try out your ideas
- Let thinkers express themselves
- Forget your social position and education; we are judged by how we contribute
- Recognise natural leaders who put their ideas on the web
- Share your expertise to get recognised and become influential
- Portray a selfless and convincing behaviour
- Choose your approach (blog, forum, open source…) according to areas of interest
- Self-construct your work group depending on your expertise or projects
- Know that information or individual ressources are dedicated to the most attractive projects
- Offer a right to veto to all users if the decisions are detrimental to the community
- Value and recognise cooperation

 

Web 2.0 management implies using social networking sites. It's only the early stages, but is already in use in companies.

 

Thus, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, explains in Business week, according to Les Echos, 27th June, “Via video or 140 characters on Twitter, directors and employees, we must all learn to come into contact with all clients in forums that they frequent, according to formats that they have chosen rather than what we have chosen”.

 

Alain Bentolina, director of R&D MUST (Mutualisation des Savoirs et des Talents – Knowledge and talents sharing) explains in the same way “Sharing knowledge and talents of employees and clients, thanks to social networking, will become the only possible way to distinguish for companies in danger of rendering their products less fashionable just like the views which surround them”.

 

It's quite a big project opening itself up to us because, if Gary Hamel is to be believed, teaching generally provided for the MBA or training programs for managers do not give way to considering the existence of radical alternatives in the way we manage things.

 

Without taking up too extreme a point, certain observers claim that The Future of management announced the end of “classical” management. It is therefore necessary to reconstruct a new management method, at the heart of which, mastery and broadcasting of knowledge and expertise will play an essential role.

 

Instrumenting operational knowledge will become a predominant factor in management approaches of companies which want to both remain human for their employees and clients and ensure a sustainable development.