So what's the underlying reason why our management systems and
processes are not working so well?
Well, let's just briefly go back in time.
Let's go back 150 years to the Industrial Revolution.
We could go back further in time.
You can go back to the Ancient Romans and Egyptians if you like, but frankly,
we don't know quite so much about how management was done in that era.
We know a great deal however, about the Industrial Revolution,
how management systems were created in that era.
And if you think about what happened in that period in
the latter part of the 19th century.
The first big factories were created in places like, like Manchester and
Liverpool and so forth.
Big textile mills and so forth.
And the problem that management was created to solve in that era was how do
we routinize and standardize the process of production?
This was the earliest efforts at mass production.
And people were taken out of fields,
people were taken out of individual crafts and trades.
And they were put onto assembly lines.
>> And the intention of the management systems that were,
that emerged in that era was to routinize production.
Was to sort of organize complex work processes and was to get if you like the,
the, the obedience, or the diligence out of people who were working on those lines.
They were manual laborers.
What we needed was them to do a good job.
And so what we did was we,
our, our fore-bearers created management systems which were all about control,
all about trying to ensure that people do their job diligently.
And so, that's where all these notions around bureaucracy and standardization and
hierarchy and extrinsic rewards came in.
All of these are concepts we're going to deal with in subsequent modules.
So, that was the, the problem that management was created to solve.
Now, we leap forward in time to the challenges that companies face today.
And we've already hinted at this in an earlier segment but
let me just remind you.
What are the challenges?
One of them's around Agility.
Organizations distinctly have to become more nimble to be able to keep up
with the changes in the world.
Organizations push innovation.
They have to learn to cre,
be more creative, to come up with a steady stream of new products and
services, in order to meet the changing demands of their consumers.
They have to become more engaged, and they have to try to find ways to make the most
out of the basic underlying skills and motivations of their people.
They also have to potentially think much more about issues of purpose.
So, these are the challenges.
Only when you compare those challenges to the problems that management was
created to solve in the first place, we can see a real mismatch.
And that is the mismatch that this course is really exploring in
a great deal of detail.
So here is a little kind of teaser for you.
Look at this next chart on the screen.
Julian BirkinshawProfessor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
