MIT Sloan Management Review

Henry Mintzberg, the management scholar and professor at McGill University, is someone we pay a good deal of attention to here. Our editor Martha Mangelsdorf interviewed him on debunking management myths and let’s not forget that he was one of the people who predicted the economic meltdown. And now you can view him talking to The Economist about “the paltry nature of oaths, phoney leadership, and nobility that ends in the classroom.”

UPDATE: And don’t forget Minztberg’s talk on “Managers Not MBAs: Debating the Merits of Business Education” at MIT World:

Last month we reported on the BIF-5 Collaborative Innovation Summit. We noted that videos for the talks would be posted and that happened yesterday. Here are two well worth your time.

Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, talked about fixing MBA education so it no longer produces, as The Economist calls them, “jargon-spewing economic vandals.” He spoke in detail about moving the MBA curriculum from shallow to deep, narrow to broad, static to dynamic.

John Maeda, formerly of MIT and now president of the Rhode Island School of Design, talked about how fundamental “hand-based” knowledge is being lost as part of our transition to new technologies and new models.

If these intrigue you, there are plenty more.

Where do you find inspiration? From great management thinkers like Peter Drucker? Political or military leaders? Great artists or musicians? Or, maybe, a gaudy wedding chapel on the strip in Las Vegas?

That last one probably doesn’t rank high on your list. But maybe it should.

In 1972, our neighbors at MIT Press published Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steve Izenour. It was a can of gasoline thrown on modernism in architecture, arguing that what “common” people like is more important than the elevated tastes and predilections of architects. It made not only an economic argument for the lowbrow, but an aesthetic one as well. What is considered ordinary or ugly by elites, they lay out, may be more useful and lasting than the designs their contemporaries considered heroic and original. The book nudged architecture into post-modernism. It is still influential and relevant. Last year MIT Press published a new volume of essays on the book and its impact.

But you’re a manager, not an architect. What does this have to do with managing? Here at MIT Sloan Management Review, we’re firm believers that the future of management is, in part, built on discovering new ideas and seeing how they fit into the work we do on a daily basis. What is most exciting about Learning from Las Vegas and why it’s so inspirational even to us non-architects is that it’s an example of a bunch of smart, committed people looking at the mainstream of their field and shouting, “No! You’re looking at this the wrong way!” Especially in uncertain economic times, when even the acknowledged experts don’t know what’s coming next, it’s important to think twice about what everyone else takes for granted. That’s a profound management lesson. Look around. You never know where you’ll find inspiration for your next great idea.

One of the challenges to successful management or process innovation in an existing business is the array of organizational structures that are designed to keep current processes running smoothly – and, as a result, may resist changes.  In a recent blog post on The Wall Street Journal site, management thinker Gary Hamel offers a case study about an employee empowerment initiative at The Bank of New Zealand that illustrates this point well.

Hamel describes how, when the bank’s general manager for retail banking allowed one bank branch to set its own hours, word spread to other branches — and other managers soon also wanted to set their own branch opening and closing hours, to suit the needs of local markets. The general manager agreed to give the branch managers that freedom.

The challenge?  At headquarters, this change in policy resulted in concerns from HR, risk management, IT and corporate marketing. “While many of the objections [from headquarters functions] were more political than practical, some were well-grounded and soon led to policy adjustments,”  Hamel observes.  For example, to avoid objections from the bank’s union, branch managers were required to get employees’ agreement before changing a branch’s opening hours.

Hamel’s post is well worth reading, and it contains an implicit lesson for would-be management innovators in established companies: Keep in mind that, if you unleash change, institutional forces may resist it — and you may need to compromise with them and work with them.