Hamel claims that the discipline of management relies too much on words like "focus," "advantage," "superiority," "differentiation," and "value." He claims that these words are far less likely to invoke an emotional response than words like "love," "beauty," "truth," "honor," and "justice."
I decided to perform an empirical test of this claim. With the help of our 49 CIMBA students in Intro to Management, I asked them to assign a value of 1 to 5 (completely disagree - completely agree) to indicate the extent to which each of these words inspired feelings of passion. The results? Hamel is correct, at least in this sample population. Nearly all of the corporate word - emotional word pairings proved to be different in statistically significant ways. The only exceptions were some pairings with the word "value," which indicates that this word has far more depth and complexity in interpretation than differentiation, superiority, focus or advantage.
You can view the results yourself by clicking here. Send me your comments!
Hamel, G. 2009. Moon shots for management. Harvard Business Review, 87(2): 91-98.
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1 comment:
Horses for courses? Sometimes focus is what we need. At the point where everything has to be done to beat a deadline, people don't want to be distracted.
The issue is really one that Hamel avoids discussion. Managers abrogate meaning and belonging for themselves and relegate everyone else to the sidelines. When managers are no more important than anyone else, we will hear the new structure reflected in language and workplaces will not be so alienating.
What young peope in MGMT101 crave is respect. Sadly because they receive it so seldom, when it is their turn to manage, they may not know how to manage in a partnership with others. It is that reality that we need to prepare them for.
PS can you add the facility to leave my name and blog. At the moment you require me to go to my own blog and log in first. I'll do it once if only to tell you that blogspot traps the unwary on this one, so I'll take the trouble to let you know.
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