Nobody Is Smarter Than Everybody
My new book "Nobody Is Smarter Than Everybody: Why Self-Managed Teams Make Better Decisions and Deliver Extraordinary Results" is now available. The book highlights three highly successful companies that have embraced a very different management model—the self-managed peer-to-peer network—where no one is a boss and everyone’s voice matters. These companies have discovered this innovative way of organizing the work of people far better than the traditional centralized top-down hierarchy.
The book also spotlights examples of circumstances where organizations have discovered that “power with” is far more potent than “power over.” For example, have you ever wondered why we don’t have commercial airplane crashes anymore? Up until the 1980’s, the U.S. averaged 3 – 4 crashes per year, and suddenly the number of crashes dropped dramatically. While we might be tempted to think the answer is better machines, the dramatic decrease was actually more attributable to the abandonment of command-and-control management in the cockpit and the implementation of a new approach known as Crew Resource Management—a version of the self-managed peer-to-peer network.
The book explains that, despite its longevity and its dominance as the almost exclusive way to organize large numbers of people, the centralized top-down is an idea whose time has passed. The future of management is the self-managed peer-to-peer network. I hope you enjoy the read!