"You can't build a company that's fit for the future unless it's one that's fit for human beings." Gary Hamel



I was commenting yesterday on how standard management thinking was a thing of the past and this morning I came across this blog by Hutch Carpenter, talking about a session he went to where Gary Hamel was talking about management innovation and enterprise - essentially, Hamel was commenting on how, over the last century, the pace of economic change has increased exponentially whilst business nevertheless still operates on the same old management principles (Taylor, Sloan, McGregor and Deming). You can read the whole thing on http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/2009/08/gary-hamel-on-management-innovation-and.html

Gary Hamel prescribes two strategies for companies in this 'post establishment' age:

• Increased organisational adaptability
• Pushing innovation and decision making out to employees

It's interesting - in many of the creative sector businesses we work with, these two strategies are statements of the obvious - without them, you simply fail. certainly in CIDA, it's our organisational adaptability that has kept us going this far - although our core principles remain unchanged, the company is very different from what we set out as, and certainly miles from any intial concept I had - but it is true that we have adapted as the business context around us has changed. For those of us leading the company, spotting those changes coming, understanding their impact, bringing that knowledge back into the company and exploiting the opportunities that arise from the change, is one of the most important things we do. And we know for certain that the best work we do is when everyone in the company has had a chance to help design and deliver it.

In small creative companies, the normal culture tends to be maverick: people are driven by ideas and ride over anything to get the ideas implemented. Maybe it's because of the personal investment, both intellectual and emotional, that creative entrepreneurs put into every piece of their work that they are more attuned to a changing world. Their inspiration comes from that changing world and instinctively they are pushing the boundaries, always asking 'what if...?' Creativity, i.e. the generation of new ideas, is at the core of what they do and how they think, and usually they surround themselves with people who think similarly, who thrive in the chaos of an ideas driven world, and who respond to the challenges. Successfully exploiting those ideas, however, delivering the innovation that arises from them, is the iron discipline that rides through the whole of the creative sector, through every company that gets its work delivered on time , as promised, to its paying public.