Hosted by the Swiss Management Association (SMG), a audience of roughly 100 senior executives met in Zurich for the first Swiss Drucker Forum launch event. The evening’s theme was “rediscovering entrepreneurial management”. Peter Drucker observed: “We know that theories, values, and all the artefacts of human minds and human hands do age and rigidify, becoming obsolete, becoming ‘afflictions’”. This is also true for management. Traditional management is becoming an “affliction” for many organisations. It buries their innate “entrepreneurial competence” (Drucker) under layers of bureaucracy. The interactive panel, moderated by Lukas Michel, Associate Drucker Society Europe, discussed the changes needed if established organisations are to become more entrepreneurial again. Panel members were Tammy Erickson, Executive Fellow […]

But technological innovation can help improve management.   When I stumbled upon Devin Fidler’s recent HBR blog post “Here’s How Managers can be replaced by software” (https://hbr.org/2015/04/heres-how-managers-can-be-replaced-by-software), a loud voice in my head said: “What a nonsense. Here’s one more clueless author contributing to the mass-confusion about the nature and purpose of management.”   I was already turning the page in my Flipboard when something made me go back and actually read the article. And sure enough, what the article celebrates as the iCEO is not much more than an (admittedly clever) algorithm capable of breaking down a relatively simple task (writing a research report) into a well-coordinated series of micro-tasks (data gathering, writing, editing, lay […]