Stumbled upon this great blog post by Gary Hamel in the WSJ. Extremely relevant if your business is a service business run by first-level employees.

It’s based on the work of Vineet Nayar at HCL Technologies (HCLT).

It’s now all documented in this great book Employees First Customer Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down

If you thought I was sometime being a bit extreme in challenging existing ways of doing things, have a look at following recommendations:

• We must destroy the concept of the CEO
• Employees First, Customers second
• Exalt those with hierarchical power rather than those who created customer value
• Turn sober-suited executives into rabid management heretics
• “reverse accountability.” Managers should be accountable to those in the value zone
• Give every employee a detailed set of financial metrics for their own team and other teams across the company
• A non-censored censored “U&I” site, taking also the dirty questions
• Install a web-based “Smart Service Desk” and SLA’s with powerful corporate departments, like HR and finance, who often seem more interested in enforcing blanket policies than in making life easier for employees.
• Rate the performance of any manager whose decisions impact their work lives, and to do so anonymously
• Crowdsourced review of divisional business plans
• Employee First Councils: to help employees connect with team members who shared similar interests and passions

The last two concluding paragraphs are enlightening:

The world has become too complex for the CEO to play the role of “visionary-in-chief.” Instead, the CEO must become a “management architect”—someone who continually asks, “What are the principles and processes that can help us surface the best ideas and unleash the talents of everyone who works here?” Today, as never before, the world needs leaders who refuse to be seduced by the fatal allure of the familiar.

It really is possible to change the management DNA in a large, established company. When you dig into “Employees First” you’ll learn that it’s possible to reinvent management without blowing up the existing management system, without having a detailed master plan at the outset and without taking inordinate risks. If you’re a would-be management renegade—this means you’ve just run out of excuses.