[(As I prepare for teaching the first class of the Business Technology Consulting Practicum, I've been reflecting on how to encourage the students to identify the unique gifts that they have and to consider how they'll bring these gifts to the teams and the projects they choose this year.  It's only fair, I think, for me to pony up my own 'gift' -- and that's that I love to ask questions and lure people into conversations where they can rethink & reframe their work, and then have a renewed energy for it.  So, for my students & co-learners, here's the rest of the story.   (Reposted from Jan. 4., 2010. )]

I love sticking my nose into other people’s business.

There, I’ve said it. It’s true, if a little odd. I think it sometimes embarrasses my family, this interest in other people’s business.

If you ever run in to me at a dinner party, or picking up kids at Tae Kwon Do, or walking to the train, probably the third thing I’ll ask you about (after yourself and your family) is what’s happening with your business.

If I can, I’ll ask you about the direction your business is taking, how healthy (or not) your organization feels, whether you are inspired, and how you’re trying to make a difference there.

I’m not so much interested in whether that accounts receivable issue is under control again (although I can talk about strategies for that) or whether it really makes sense in this climate to take on extra debt to invest in a new laminating technology (although I can pose tough questions about that too).

But I can- and will – talk about your strategy, your boss, your employees, your big picture, your enterprise perspective, or even your own hopefulness about your new direction, if you’ll let me.

People often find my favorite line of inquiry a little surprising.

I imagine that people are surprised because, while we often want to talk with our friends about how ‘work’ is going or what’s up with our careers, it’s not often that someone asks us about the mood in the company, about our views of leadership, and about how our organization is being authentic or not.

And, some people seem surprised when questions like these come from a woman.

Especially when I meet someone new (as I did at that New Year’s Day brunch last week, when we were talking about the threat of content farms to the magazine industry) I feel like I need to mention that I have a PhD from a business school, that I’ve taught MBA students and execs for years, and that I work with organizations and managers to establish strategies for aligning their actions and their purpose. As much as I hate to think it, sometimes new acquaintances assume that I’m your stereotypical work-from-my-home-office mom with a blog who “writes” and “consults”, and who has more to say about PTA fund-raising than about the motivational effects of various programs for re-pricing employee stock options.

And thus, sometimes people are surprised when I start to stick my nose into their business.

But, once we get past that possible implicit barrier, here’s what I usually discover:

• Most people quickly warm to the idea of talking about their business.

• They are actually delighted to have someone to listen to them talk it out, to bounce ideas off of, and to ponder alternative perspectives. Once they get going, they can unfold some pretty sophisticated concerns, and they do enjoy looking closely at the big picture.

• People secretly want to talk about their business, and just don’t get asked to do it often enough.

The best part? Sometimes I can even ask a question that helps people reframe the situation in a way that feels more hopeful, in a way that helps them see how they can make a difference. That’s actually my favorite part.

I am not quite sure why we don’t talk invite ourselves to talk with each other about our businesses, more often. It’s fun, really it is.

So forgive me if at first I seem nosy, asking you about your business.

I’m not trying to drum up another consulting gig (though, I’ll be here should you need me). I’m curious. I just want to know more about your business.

I’m pretty sure you’ll have fun telling me.

Photo: Wake up and smell the flowers from nualabugeye on Flicker

It’s too easy to overlook great business books.

Even with sites like 800-CEO-Read, authors’ own promotional activities, and reviews by thoughtful & prominent business bloggers, many terrific books languish on Amazon’s shelves.

Of course, I may be a little — shall we say undisciplined — in the ways that I come by my books. Recommendations from business people and savvy management faculty, gifts from colleagues, publisher’s newsletters, and even solicitations from PR firms bring books to my doorstep. Not to mention, the quick trigger of Amazon 1-Click.

Even granting the serendipity and the idiosyncratic set of interest graphs that bring books to my attention, I do take notice of “Best Business Books” lists. And, I notice that some of my favorite books never seem to be on these lists.

So when I saw that 800-CEO-Read listed Amazon’s Best Business Books of the year (so far), I wondered again:

Where are those great business books that I’ve read this year?

I tweeted that thought, and Lucy Nixon challenged me to put together my own list.

Before you check out the list, note that the books aren’t ranked. I don’t believe that one is necessarily better than another– it depends on the kind of ideas you need to inspire you. And, I won’t pretend that this list is “definitive”. By definition, a definitive list is finite– it assumes an objective authority and a scarcity that, in the world of ideas, I simply don’t believe in.

6 Terrific Business Books That Deserve Your Attention

Giving Voice to Values: How to speak your mind when you know what’s right, by Mary C. Gentile.

If we could do one thing better as organization members and business people, it would be to learn how to speak our truths to power, especially when they are relevant to the (work) situation at hand. We talk a lot about values– what they are, how has them, etc. but how about putting your values into practice?

Gentile’s book is not so much a ‘how to’ as a ‘how, what, when, where and why-to’. Starting assumptions that masquerade as simple premises help you anchor yourself in your truth, and then the exposition in the chapters helps you understand how to take action. Want to learn how to be a leader? This is the book to imbibe and enact.

No Excuses: 9 Ways Women can change how we think about power , by Gloria Feldt @gloriafeldt

We all want to be influential, and to make a difference. Sometimes though, after too much resistance to our change efforts (and to our authority) we give up. Heck, some of us even give up before we try. Thus, we stay in a place of power-less -ness. We fail to use the power that’s available to us.

Feldt explores our resistance to power, and give us four steps to taking power, while approaching the entire concept of power differently. It doesn’t hurt, either, that Feldt’s perspectives and personal experience are profoundly feminist. Thus, from the very first page, the explicit goal of using your power is to liberate, not to control, yourself and others.

Note: Men might pass by this book, thinking that it’s for girls. It’s not; it’s a book for for leaders.

The Whuffie Factor: Unleashing the power of social networks to build your business, by Tara Hunt @missrogue

Hunt’s book absolutely did not get the spotlight and broad respect it deserved when it was published two years ago. Yet, her arguments and ideas have been picked up and repeated by many social media gurus — often without the soul and the subtleties Hunt brings from her entrepreneurial, business-building experiences.

While ostensibly The Whuffie Factor is about creating strong relationships with customers and creating great customer-community experience, it’s really (in my mind) all about why you should found your business on kindness, generosity, meaning, and mutual respect.

Artistry Unleaded: A Guide to pursuing great performance in work and life, by Hilary Austen.

Mastery, originality, knowledge, experience, and enigmatic problems. Yum. Perhaps the best left-brain approach to the right-brain’s territory that you’ll ever read.

The ideas are dense, and the concepts sometimes feel esoteric, until you take a deep breath and let the wisdom seep it. I know I haven’t really absorbed the wisdom yet, but I keep going back to pages 176- 178, where Austen outlines “What true artists know that the rest of us need to learn”, to remember how to reorient myself.

The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy, by Nilhofer Merchant. @nilofer

Nilofer is an HBR blogger and and an inspiring twitter presence who is probably best known for her practice of “Murderboarding”. Murderboarding is not quite the opposite of brainstorming, but it is the step that whittles lots of ideas down to the chosen one.

For people full of possibilities, that one practice might be enough to recommend this book. But Nilofer’s exploration of the steps and connections critical to collaboration that is ‘strategic’ can be used on challenges big and small.

Different: Escaping the competitive herd , by Youngme Moon

Different is nominally a book about marketing, about developing product and brands that are distinctive, compelling, and meaningful.

I read it as a treatise on organizational identity and distinctiveness– obviously, my own lens. But any manager or organization member could be inspired and appropriately reoriented by using Moon’s ideas to reconsider what’s “meaningfully different” about their product, service, skill set, organization, personal brand, team, organizational vision– you get the idea.

6 Books– Not a Cop-out, But a Beginning

When I started this post, the title was “10 Books …” but I realized that 6 might possibly be enough to tempt you as you gather pleasure reading for your summer vacation.  And, I have a row of 25+ other great books on my windowsill, all of which deserve more attention and blog posts of their own. So, I’ll do another set in a few months.

In the meantime, if you have books to recommend that deserve our attention, please add the below. Oh, and send me a copy. ( grin)

Do you ever have a good idea, but find yourself unable to execute it fully because the technology simply isn’t available? And, then, just a few short years later the technology appears and you squeal “Where Have You Been All My LIFE!”?

I’ve been having that relationship with the concept of hashtags.

A hashtag is a keyword, indicated by a hash symbol # that anchors the keyword to other information (in the manner of a bookmark) and allows that information to be searched and found by other people. Hashtags are metadata — data about data– that help us recall, locate, filter, and aggregate more granular data. The hashtag #favoritejaneaustenquotes helps you find any tweet in which someone mentions– you guessed it– her favorite Jane Austen quote.

With hashtags, you can find blog posts, tweets, and all manner of online data related to the idea captured by the hashtag. You can see who’s talking about something, what they are saying, and what it means to them.

Hashtags make conversations searchable — in real time, and historically. Hashtags also help us find other people who are interested in the same ideas.

Hashtags cohere conversations on social networks (like twitter) since people can locate, watch, and contribute to conversations by using the relevant hashtag(s). (A great example of the is #prstudchat – a weekly conversation for students of public relations.)

What are Hashtags really for?

Back in November of 2009, Baratunde Thurston shared a funny and provocative presentation at the Web 2.0 NY Expo: “There’s a #Hashtag for That.” Baratunde was riffing on the fun people have creating satirical hashtags and corresponding Twitter accounts (e.g., @swineflu, #swineflu) and using these as memes to provoke creativity,  commentary and conversation across Twitter.

When I watched Baratunde’s talk, I wondered:

– What if we each had our own hashtag? Not a satirical one, but an authentic hashtag?
– What if we created and routinely used a hashtags to capture and communicate who we were, and what we cared about?
– What if we intentionally used these hashtags to communicate not only to other people, but also back to ourselves?

In addition to being meta-data that tell us what’s going on where, hashtags can also work at the personal, cognitive level.   Online in the digital world, hashtags can work like mantras — like those words we choose each January to help us focus our goals for the year. As simple short reminders, hashtags can help us focus our efforts. Hashtags can help our selves pay attention. Hashtags can remind us what is important.

How can we use hashtags as tools for our “selves”?

We can also use hashtags as more than reminders of features, ideas, topics, attributes, sentiments and/or actions. We can actually use hashtags to create meaning, individually and collectively. Here’s how.

Hashtags Help Us Name “It”.
When you give a feature, idea, topic, attribute, sentiment and/or action an name, you make that thing visible to yourself and others. You show yourself and others that the concept exists. You create meaning by naming something previously unnamed.

For example, there’s an experience/sentiment that I have often, that doesn’t have a name. I’m currently on the hunt for a descriptive & evocative hashtag to capture it.
“It”, right now, is “ the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support. “ Now that I’ve described this experience, you can recognize it. But if I could name it by hashtagging it, we could do even more with the concept.

Hashtags Help Us Claim It.
When we use a hashtag, we can make that thing our own. We can use the hashtag to note for ourselves (and others) every time that we’re feeling it, doing it, sending it, verbing it. And, when we attach a hashtag to our communications and our actions, we help people understand what we are experiencing, what we are trying to convey, and that this matters to us.

Hashtags Help Us Fame It.
When we use a hashtag, we not only name (capture) and claim (attach to us) a concept, we are also then able to promote that idea. We can share the idea, we can propagate the idea, and we can meme the idea.

You may not have thought of “the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support” but as soon as I have a good hashtag and use it, you can spread that idea wherever you want. Because we’ll all be able to recognize it and share it.

Being a Hashtag

Naming, claiming and faming are all good — but they do not quite make the idea a part of you. To do that you actually have to “be” the hashtag. You have to take the whole idea one step further into your self.

To “Be” a Hashtag you have to activate it– you have to make that idea real in your words and your actions.

We may actively try to be or do something that’s important to us, without getting the kind of response we hope for. Even though we think actions speak louder than words, those actions aren’t always easy to interpret. When you use a hashtag next to an action, you give other people the meta-data to understand what you are doing.

• Why do you keep tweeting about getting women on tech panels?
  Because you are all about #morevoices.
• What are these ten quotes about honesty?
  You are reminding yourself (and us) that you’re working to be your #trueself.
• Why have you just sent a #ThursdayTxs to that follower?
  Because you care about being @thoughtful, and you are showing this in your action.

In your relationships with others, being a hashtag makes your actions easier to interpret. You are more effective (especially with people who don’t know you well), because people know how to see you. You are more trustworthy, because people can see what you do and what you mean, and they know they can count on you for this.

Even more important, being a hashtag helps you enact that quality, that idea, more often. And the more often you enact it, the more it becomes a part of you. The more you “be” it, the more you become it.

I had a very busy session online this afternoon between a school play and a conference call, where for forty minutes or so I was tweeting and emailing four different tweeple about three different projects. With each interaction, I was _having_ “it”:   “the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support”.

But even better I was _being_ “it” — I was giving it back. I was intentionally responding to my colleagues in a way that sent “the energy of purpose and support” out to them and right back to me. And it was great.

And it was “me” — doing what’s important to me.

Now, if only I could find a hashtag for that.

Images:What the Heck is a #Hashtag & 3 Steps to Set Up Your Own Hashtag, Hashtag Heart by Drew Olanoff on Flickr

Every MBA student is pressed for time. Balancing demanding priorities, like classes, learning teams, job hunting, and family, while also getting some sleep, leaves little time for cruising the web looking for insightful posts.

Lucky for you all, I can recommend 5 terrific blogs that can help you link what you’re learning in your MBA management classes with what’s happening in the real world.

I have a particular bias about what’s important for managers and leaders to pay attention to, after 10 years of teaching MBAs and twice that consulting in organizations. My bias is that finance precepts, operations formulas and pricing strategies are plentiful, easy to find and easy to put into practice. In contrast, wisdom about leadership, management and organizations is more rare, harder to find, and more difficult to put into practice.

What I’ve been discovering in the blogosphere are a number of writers – some academics, some consultants – who have a knack for raising important leadership and management questions, either by applying these questions to current business,organizational, and cultural events, or by examining the events themselves for insights. There are at least 2 dozen generalists, and probably another 2 dozen topical specialists, who raise important leadership & organizational issues day in and day out on their blogs. Here, I want to recommend five of these blogs to you.

Neither “top blogs” nor “the best” blogs, but terrific

These aren’t “the best” blogs or the “Top 5 Blogs”. Categories like “the best” feign objectivity and an established, concrete criterion, neither of which exists. Moreover, these categories are unnecessarily limiting– there are in fact a lot of “top” blogs that are “the best”.

There are some blogs, however, that stand apart because of the ways that their authors delve into leadership and management questions from distinctive and (dare I say) authentic standpoints, giving you a take on issues that is so unique you won’t find it anywhere else.

Let me recommend 5 blogs that are terrific enough that every MBA student should be reading them.

5 Blogs Every MBA Student Should be Reading

• Work Matters, by Bob Sutton
• Positive Organizational Behavior, by Bret L. Simmons
  
• Management Craft, by Lisa Haneberg
• Edge Economy, by Umair Haque
  
• AuthenticOrganizations, by CV Harquail

Work Matters, by Bob Sutton

Bob’s blog is one of the most popular management blogs, and for good reason — Bob is one of those rare academics who is simultaneously killer smart, funny, self-effacing and kind, qualities that come out in his topic selections and his writing. His “No Asshole Rule” is the best known of his many books and research articles. While the “No Asshole Rule” is ostensibly the focus of the blog and the topic that draws readers initially, it’s Bob’s curiosity and relevance that gets readers to stay and participate.

Some posts to sample:
The Accuracy of First Impressions: An amazing old study about “thin slices” of behavior
When Layoffs are Immoral: Randy Cohen in The New York Times
Wal-Mart and Girl Scout Cookies: Thin Minty-gate

Positive Organizational Behavior, by Bret L. Simmons

Bret is a lucid and lovely writer, a thoughtful teacher, and a dynamic citizen of the world. His blogging ranges widely across management and leadership topics, often following his teaching, and always imbued with that kind of uncommon common sense that makes even the most esoteric question matter. Bret’s posts combine insights from his personal leadership and management experience with the analytic rigor of his scholarly training. Take one part Air Force officer, one part McDonald’s Corporate Manager, a Phd and an sense of purpose and -viola – you’ve got Positive Organizational Behavior. Follow @drbret on Twitter.

Some posts to sample:
The Courage to Participate in Transformation as a Leader
The Stepford Organization
My Advice to New MBA Students

Management Craft, by Lisa Haneberg

Word for word, no management blog is more useful on a daily basis than Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg. Lisa is both a professional writer and a management consultant; her skill at both is part (but absolutely not all) of what makes her usually short posts so powerful. What really sets Lisa’s work apart is her focus. Each post has a point, each question is provocative, each recommendation is useful. Follow @LisaHaneberg on Twitter.

Some posts to sample:
Topics Your Management Training Programs Should Address, But Likely Don’t
10 Ways to Manage Your Mistakes
10 Questions Every Leader Ought to be Asking

Edge Economy, by Umair Haque

Umair is a writer with a strong vision and an even stronger moral and intellectual compass. He writes provocatively about the role of business in society, innovation, and radical management. His blog is hosted by Harvard Business School press, so it has the imprimatur of “The Establishment”. But make no mistake– Umair’s out to change business as we know it, for the better. Read Umair’s blog if you want to think right now about questions that will only occur to other managers months (or years) from now. Follow @umairh on Twitter.

Some posts to sample:
The Case for Constructive Capitalism
How to Build (and Use) Thick Power
What Would a Fair-Labor iPod Cost?

AuthenticOrganizations, by CV Harquail

Reading Authentic Organizations will give you regular opportunities to think differently about leadership & organizational challenges.  Questions of authenticity — about how organizations can align identity, action and purpose — cut across so many facets of organizations that these questions are relevant to discussions about strategy, reputation, branding, marketing, HR, social responsibility, and of course leadership. We get to go beyond theoretical discussions to consider in real life how our collective and individual desire for authenticity can lead us to contribute to our organizations, our cultures and our society.  Follow me @cvharquail on Twitter.

Some posts to sample:
Wal-Mart Knocks Off the Girl Scouts
What’s your *personal* ROI as a Brandividual?
Organizational Identity, Employee Branding and Political Contributions: Should you care if The Body Shop leans Republican?

What blogs do you think MBA students should be reading?

I’d love to hear what blogs you think MBA students should be reading, and why you recommend these blogs, so that we can share your recommendations.
I’ll be recommending more blogs in future posts, so sign up for AuthenticOrganization’s RSS feed or email newsletter to stay up to date.

Here’s a post in honor of my friend Ian Ayres, a law & economics scholar who celebrates a big birthday today. Ian is constantly challenging academics of all stripes to stretch their thinking by asking themselves hypothetical questions. His favorite rhetorical tactic always seems to include two words: Why Not? Ian eschews any line of thinking that keeps us engaged in the same old ways of solving problems. "Why not," Ian asks, "just think about it differently?" "Why not" come up with different way to look at the question, so that you can be inspired to find new ways to attack a problem?

Ian is so committed to this tactic that he literally (co-)wrote the book on it: "Why not?"

In honor of Ian, I’ll literally take a page from his book and use it to get a different insight into the problem of mass layoffs. Instead of thinking like a management expert and sticking with the management expert’s evidence-based argument against layoffs , "why not" think like an economist?

Why not … think less like "Chainsaw Al" Dunlop, and more like John Maynard Keynes?

(n.b. For those non-management types out there, "Chainsaw Al", born Albert John Dunlop, is a professional corporate downsizer. His other nickname? "Rambo in Pinstripes".)

What happens if we think about layoffs the way Keynes might?

If we take the perspective of an economist like Keynes, we can see more easily a subtle market dynamic triggered by mass corporate layoffs. This feature becomes prominent only in  situations like the one we’re in now, where so many organizations seem to want to shore up their stock price by laying off workers. And, you can see this feature of layoffs only if you think like an economist.

What does an economist like Keynes see when looking at mass corporate layoffs? S/he sees that:

Corporate layoffs during a national recession trigger a business & organizational-level cycle that contributes to The Paradox of Thrift.

The Paradox of Thrift

The gist of Keynes’s Paradox of Thrift is that, if individuals save money during a recession, there is not enough money being spent by these individuals collectively to power an economic recovery. The private virtue of an individual saving his or her money becomes a public problem when everyone does it. What seems good for the individual is actually bad for the collective.

What we’ve got right now, with organizations left and right laying off their employees to cut costs, is a corporate-level situation analogous to the individual vs. collective dynamic in Keynes’s Paradox of Thrift. Instead of the ‘private virtue’ of individuals being thrifty, the ‘private virtue’ of corporations is prioritizing the company’s stock price. Ultimately, the public problem is the same– not enough spending by organizations to fuel a collective economic recovery.

Adding insult to injury, while thrifty individuals build a balance in their savings accounts, corporations that execute large layoffs don’t get much of a bump in share price — especially over the long term – even in the best of times. In these current times, it’s hard to believe that executives’ actions are having much of a positive impact on share price at all. [[Think about it... Exactly how many CEOs made bad decisions on Monday, and exactly what did these CEOs "do", that caused the Dow to plunge on Tuesday? But I digress ...]]

How to address The Corporate Paradox of Thrift?

Instead of taking for granted the myths about mass layoffs as a cost-saving strategy, organizations should look for and experiment with alternatives. For reducing payroll costs, consider "’flexible downsizing", across the board paycuts, and restructured benefits packages.

Organizations could also look for actions analogous to the ‘saving while spending’ recommendations for thrift-minded individuals to help the collective avoid The Paradox of Thrift. Specifically, organizations should look for ways to invest now (by keeping their workers employed) and then focusing these workers on cutting costs by improving work processes.

Any of these alternatives avoids the "Us versus ‘Used to be Us’ " dynamic, where the status quo is sustained for some, while all costs are born by the rest. For example:

As Cisco announced yesterday, "Instead of major workforce reductions to control costs, Cisco is focusing on reducing expenses by $1 billion by the end of fiscal year 2009." (Alas, that’s in addition to laying off 5,000 workers. More on that tomorrow.) Unfortunately, this "cost cutting" is to be achieved by deferring spending and canceling business trips … not by improving Cisco’s overall processes. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and should save some jobs.  For more examples, check out Cali Yost’s Downsizing Flexibility Champions: Alternatives to Layoffs Honor Roll over at FastCompany.

It’s complicated.

I’m not an economist, and I don’t play one online, so I don’t know the full extent of macro-economic issues that are triggered by mass layoffs … and what complexities await us if many organizations choose the same alternatives to layoffs. Certainly, nation-wide wage cuts may lead to "debt deflation", and improving processes that require cash investment now to reduce costs over the longer term may lead organizations to take on too much debt (if corporations can find anyone to lend to them). It’s a complicated picture.

Or is it really that complicated?

Why not . .. take a look at this (now infamous) chart and ask, is this really our best of bad alternatives?

Why not … see these mass layoffs as being caused by a callous lack of creativity, rather than as the "inevitable" result of executives making ‘hard’ choices?

Why not … conclude that apologists for layoffs are actually just bad economists?

Rarely am I inspired by the Harvard Business Review.

Despite Harvard Business Review’s efforts to revamp their print edition (with a zippier format, hip graphics and bite-size summaries) and to expand their online initiatives, HBR has always felt behind the times. Even when HBR has addressed issues critical to my own research or summarized the research of my friends and colleagues, reading the Harvard Business Review has always left me feeling more anxious than inspired about the future of organizations.

But the February 2009 issue is different.

This month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review contains The Only HBR Article You Need to Read. That article? Gary Hamel’s Moon Shots for Management.

Moon Shots for Management is a Valentine to progressive managers everywhere .

The article lists 25 challenges that make up the Agenda for Management Innovation, an effort to reinvent management as a concept and practice and to create new ways of mobilizing and organizing our collective activity. The list was culled from conversations among 35 "veteran academics, new-age management thinkers, progressive CEOs, and venture capitalists" at a conference sponsored by MLab , a research/practice institute co-founded by Gary Hamel & Julian Birkinshaw.

[The list is in its own post, after this one.]

The 25 goals on the list compose "a roster of make-or-break challenges — management moon shots– that should focus the energies of management innovators."

Scanning the list, you’ll note that not a single item is new.

If you track conversations about sustainability , complexity , innovation, social networking , organizational democracy , employee engagement , social responsibility, non-profit for-purpose business , reinventing management education , changing the world, positive organization scholarship , or for that matter any other progressive organizational issue, you’ll see something from your focus area represented in this list.

What is new, though, is that these 25 items are all on an agenda TOGETHER .

Looking at the whole package of challenges encourages us to imagine working on the issues closest to us, those within our span of influence, in ways that allow our focused efforts to generate multiple values streams. That is, working on any one item with the big picture in mind can move forward several goals at once.

Imagine the future of organizations if we saw these items not as a laundry list of things we "ought" to do, but rather as description of what we could do. Talk about Saving the World at Work !!

Wouldn’t it be great to work in organizations where we "Empower the renegades and disarm the reactionaries" ? (#16)

How about working at non-profits and for-profit companies that "Enable communities of passion" ? (# 22)

Even #4, "Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy" looks possible!
(I acknowledge that this one is somewhat ironic, coming as it does from HBR, a bastion of capitalist, "free-market" privilege. But I digress).

Just two things are missing from this article: (1) recommendations for how to put this agenda into action and (2) a concrete invitation to join in the work. But I hope expect that the folks at MLab have a plan. I look forward to seeing the plan unfold and to finding ways to link my work to this agenda.

For starters, we’re all invited to to the HBR site to participate in a survey where we can rate the importance of these 25 items (to our company) and report on any progress our organization has made towards each of these challenges. Then, you might check some of the links in this post to find out more about MLab and read about the progressive organizational movements that have helped to generate and sustain enthusiasm about these challenges.

And, just because this article is The Only HBR Article You Need to Read, don’t imagine that reading it is enough. You should also:

(1) Go to the HBR site (if you can get behind the pay wall),
(2) Print out/download a copy of Moon Shots for Management
(3) Share the article with some colleagues & friends, (or, send them a link to the list, using the ShareThis button)
(4) Talk about it, think about it, and then …

What’s next?

1. Ensure that management’s work serves a higher purpose.
Management, both in theory and practice, must orient itself to the achievement of noble, socially significant goals.

2. Fully embed the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems.
There’s a need for processes and practices that reflect the interdependence of all stakeholder groups.

3. Reconstruct management’s philosophical foundations.
To build organizations that are more than merely efficient, we will need to draw lessons from such fields as biology, markets, democracies, and theology.

4. Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy.
There are advantages to natural hierarchies, where power flows up from the bottom and leaders emerge instead of being appointed.

5. Reduce fear and increase trust.
Mistrust and fear are toxic to innovation and engagement and must be wrung out of tomorrow’s management systems.

6. Reinvent the means of control.
To transcend the discipline-versus-freedom trade-off, control systems will have to encourage control from within, rather than constraints from without.

7. Redefine the work of leadership.
The notion of “the” leader as a heroic decision maker is untenable. Leaders must be recast as social-systems architects who work to enable innovation and collaboration.

8. Expand and exploit diversity.
We must create a management system that values diversity, disagreement, and divergence as much as conformance, consensus, and cohesion.

9. Reinvent strategy making as an emergent process.
In a turbulent world, strategy making must reflect the biological principles of variety, selection, and retention.

10. De-structure and disaggregate the organization.
To become more adaptable and innovative, large entities must be disaggregated into smaller, more malleable units.

11. Dramatically reduce the pull of the past.
Existing management systems often mindlessly reinforce the status quo. In the future, they must facilitate innovation and change.

12. Share the work of setting direction.
To engender commitment, the responsibility for goal setting must be distributed in a process where share of voice is a function of insight, not power.

13. Develop holistic performance measures.
Existing performance metrics must be recast because they give inadequate attention to the critical human capabilities that drive success in the creative economy.

14. Stretch executives’ timeframes and perspectives.
Discover alternatives to compensation and reward systems that encourage managers to sacrifice long-term goals for short-term gains.

15. Create a democracy of information.
Companies need holographic information systems that equip every employee to act in the interests of the entire enterprise.

16. Empower renegades and disarm reactionaries.
Management systems must give more power to employees who have their emotional equity invested in the future rather than in the past.

17. Expand the scope of employee autonomy.
Management systems must be redesigned to facilitate grassroots initiatives and local experimentation.

18. Create internal markets for ideas, talent, and resources.
Markets are better than hierarchies are at allocating resources, and companies’ resource allocation processes need to reflect this fact.

19. Depoliticize decision making.
Decision-processes must be free of positional biases and exploit the collective wisdom of the entire organization.

20. Better optimize trade-offs.
Management systems tend to force either-or choices. What’s needed are hybrid systems that subtly optimize key trade-offs.

21. Further unleash human imagination.
Much is known about what engenders human creativity. This knowledge must be better applied in the design of management systems.

22. Enable communities of passion.
To maximize employee engagement, management systems must facilitate the formation of communities of passion.

23. Retool management for an open world.
Value-creating networks often transcend the firm’s boundaries and can render traditional power-based management tools ineffective. New management tools are needed to build complex ecosystems.

24. Humanize the language and practice of business.
Tomorrow’s management systems must give as much credence to timeless human ideals such as beauty, justice and community as they do to the traditional goals of efficiency, advantage, and profit.

25. Retrain managerial minds.
Managers’ traditional deductive and analytical skills must be complemented by conceptual and systems-thinking skills.