The Future Of Work: 2018's Top Articles
2018 has been an inspiring year for “The Future of Work”. While employee engagement numbers continue to be painfully low, there appears to be a growing interest in creating better workplaces.
Executives, managers, and employees seem more eager, now, to free organizations of bureaucracy, bad management, stifling hierarchy and an utter lack of purpose. As explorers of radically engaging workplaces, we share with you our top picks of the 2018 articles.
Here are this year’s must-read articles. Enjoy!
Top picks for 2018
The articles we chose are well researched, balanced, and insightful - vital content to fuel the global movement for better work. They inspire us.
The End of Bureaucracy - Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini
Haier. In 2018 we visited Haier’s headquarters in Qingdao (China) several times. We wanted to learn the details of their remarkable workplace transformation.
This well-researched piece is the best we’ve seen on Haier. It gives a clear understanding of how the world’s leading appliance manufacturer challenges conventional wisdom in extreme ways.
Check out the full article here
Is holacracy the future of work or a management cult? - Aimee Groth
Holacracy is the management approach that’s both loved and hated. Its evangelists speak of it as the holy grail. Its detractors make it sound like the “Scientology of Management”.
There seems to be little middle ground – and that’s exactly why we love this article by Aimee Groth so much. She eloquently describes the role of Holacracy’s founding father, Brian Robertson. She also reports what organizations with experience of Holacracy have to say.
Her powerful piece can be found here.
10 Components That Successfully Abolished Hierarchy (In 70+ Companies) - Lisa Gill
This story is also remarkable. It’s about a Spanish company’s radical approach to busting bureaucracy and killing artificial hierarchies. Lisa Gill’s writing skill created an inspiring guest post for the Corporate Rebels blog.
This post was widely shared, and rightly so. It was nominated for Best Written Contribution Award by the European Organization Design Forum.
Trending in 2018
As part of these 2018 reflections, we want to share our most prominent blog posts of the year. Among a long list of case studies and best practices, these opinionated pieces caused a stir.
How Real Leaders Melt The Iceberg of Ignorance With Humility
Similar images of the ‘Iceberg of Ignorance‘ have been around for decades. Today they have spread like wildfire on social media, to become one of the most shared legends of popular management culture.
The article describes how challenging it is for executives to understand front-line issues. At the same time, it gives insight into how leaders can melt the Iceberg of Ignorance. The article went viral when published, and was read in more than 150 countries. See for yourself what the fuss was about.
Bursting The Bubble: Teal Ain't Real
Once in a while we feel the need to write about something that’s been niggling at us. This post is one. It expressed a discomfort we had about so-called ‘teal organizations’.
The feeling had grown just as rapidly as the sales of “Reinventing Organizations”, Frederic Laloux’s highly influential book. Our feeling stemmed from its dogmatic interpretation by some readers.
This blog was loved and hated. Many commented, including Frederic, and strengthened the debate around ‘teal’. So don’t just read the post itself. Make sure you dive into the eloquent comments that follow.
Article and comments can be found here.
Mass Incompetency In Business: The Way We Promote People Is Dead Wrong
In 1969, Laurence J. Peter described an interesting phenomenon. It became known as “The Peter Principle”. According to Peter himself, it goes like this: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
While the book Peter wrote in 1969 was satire rather than research, a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review showed that, sadly, the Peter Principle is very much alive today.
When we published this post it was widely shared on social media. One of the main reasons: it was recognizable to many.
