Less management, more value
April 05, 2013
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have experienced a couple of hypes and a succession of disastrous pseudo-landings combining a blend of illegal wars, financial crises, and expensive dinners in which the attendees were subtly or forcefully struggling about avoiding the bill and setting up others to pay for it. We have a collection of epic moments: Beijing's Tienanmen; Moscow's Red Square defense of democracy; the Arab Spring; the students asking for better education in Chile; and the British astonishingly - jaws loose - observing Murdock's news empire pinching mobile phones and bribing their officials.
In these years there were also some incredible events: the silicon integrated circuits powered Internet achieved 100K hosts twenty four years ago and over 904 million hosts yesterday; we've entered into a new geological era: the anthropocene. We are clouded, mobile, and earth-bound. Not a molecule of this was managed, it simply happened. All of this was carefully managed: it happened by neither chance nor fate. Everything was a wave of translations and trials of strength in a vast pluralistic network. Value has been produced, destroyed and distributed.
This is the world in which we "manage" a vast value-chain that delivers value to multiple constituencies. Some of them humans, others non-humans; some beautiful and powerless, others tyrannical and grey. The people that manage are people engaging in conversations through their natural voice. Are they task-controlling freaks? Decision makers? Team leaders? Agile-lean teams? Game players? Everything at once?
We want fewer people managing, and more people playing and adding value in value games. More people putting their life in everything they do, less people selling their time.
Game architecture and game mentorship are becoming the essence of management. That's what we did with SSE Onshore Renewable Energy in Scotland and it works!
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