Moon Shots for Management, by Gary Hamel, Harvard Business Review, February 2009

Any article by Gary Hamel should be of interest, not least because he has been voted by the Wall Street Journal as the world’s number one business expert, and because his books ‘Leading the Revolution’ and ‘Competing for the Future’ are among the best selling management books in recent times. (Interestingly the ‘top 100’ book, reviewed below, includes the latter but not the former.)

It is true that Hamel’s reputation took a bit of a hammering when he quoted Enron as the modern business model that others should be striving for, but he seems to have survived this setback. This article follows a forum of a group of about 35 experts, claiming to be world’s premier management thinkers, including business school professors, senior management consultants and (surprisingly few) company executives.

Their brief was to ‘re-invent management’ and Hamel’s article lists and describes the 25 ‘Moon Shots’, the term they developed for the key topics and issues that need to be addressed if management thinking is to undergo the required transformation. This feels as if it has the potential to be exciting but, as you read through the list, there seems to be rather too many clichés that are not at all new, for example, expand autonomy, embrace diversity, develop holistic performance measures etc.

My main criticism however is Hamel’s rather lazy approach to the article which is just to list and briefly describe all 25, without any attempt to cluster and structure, and without providing a meaningful conceptual framework, surely what someone with his reputation ought to be able to do. It just reads like a disjointed and overlapping shopping list and this emphasises the cliché ridden nature of many of the ‘moon shots’.

I have made an attempt at a summary as shown below, which will hopefully help those who would like to impress others with a broad awareness of how, according to these alleged gurus, management is to be reinvented. I detected five main themes, leaving out one or two points that are either indecipherable or too much of a cliché:

• Broader holistic goals, incorporating longer term achievement and values, not just those of shareholders
• Need to be more fast moving and flexible, with greater openness of communication channels
• Leadership will need to inspire and create passion among their employees to retain them
  More trust, autonomy and empowerment
• Greater scope for individuals to show innovative qualities outside the organisation structure

As I read the moon shots relating to the last two bullets, I wondered what planet they were on, whether in fact they had reached the moon! Were there any bankers in the room, had anyone heard of the autonomy, trust and innovation that led to the fraudulent bundling and selling of sub-prime mortgages and other complex innovations? Autonomy and light touch regulation have been major contributors to the recession and the banking crisis..

In fairness to Hamel, he does mention this conflict later in his article but rather than suggesting that maybe this part of the work has been overtaken by events, he argues that the problem is more about creating the right incentives and accountability. I wonder.

This article is worth reading - or at least the quick synopsis that is contained in the middle of the text - because it allows anyone involved in management learning to show awareness of the thinking going on in business schools and consultancies. But you might find that, like me and my colleagues at MTP, it is hard to be impressed.