Usted es me todos: Best of The Issue: Yes, You Can Eliminate Bureaucracy

October 23, 2018

Yes, You Can Eliminate Bureaucracy

From Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review

Bureaucracy is soul-crushing. And yet, we accept that red tape and administrivia are the unavoidable by-products of doing business. There's hope, however, and it comes from an unlikely source: Haier, the world's biggest appliance maker. The Chinese company has done away with standard hierarchical structures and workflows, say Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. In the process, the 35-year-old multinational has managed to pull off what only startups have claimed to do: It has transformed its employees into entrepreneurs who are directly accountable to customers, and organized them into an open ecosystem of users, inventors, and partners. The resulting performance speaks for itself: Over the past decade, gross profits of the core business have grown 23% per year and revenue has increased 18% annually.

In HR, as in just about every other facet of business, data analytics has yet to deliver on its potential. The problem, according to Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor, is that we tend to measure the wrong stuff. Instead of examining employees' attributes, we should be looking at their interactions. The authors argue that individuals' success depends as much on their relationships with one another as it does on such factors as education level and work history.

Finally, our annual list of the best-performing CEOs in the world celebrates the leaders—100 men and (way too few) women—who are standing strong amid the forces buffeting the 21st-century leader: digital disruption, market gyrations, trade wars, activist investors, activist customers, and activist employees. It's never easy to lead a complex organization, but these days it seems harder than ever before. But some CEOs are showing it can be done. Take a look at who comes out on top.

Thanks for reading,
Amy Bernstein

In the Issue:

The End of Bureaucracy

by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon calls it "a villain." Berkshire Hathaway vice chair Charlie Munger says its tentacles should be treated like "the cancers they so much resemble." We're talking about bureaucracy, one of the most frustrating realities of business today. Luckily, there may be a solution, and it comes from an unlikely place: Haier, the world's largest appliance maker.

Better People Analytics

by Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor

People analytics has gotten a lot of hype. Yet most firms lack an understanding of what, exactly, to measure. Many use analytics to examine only the attributes of employees, when people's interactions are equally, if not more, telling. The latter is called "relational analytics," and it can go a long way toward explaining and predicting employees' success.

The Best-Performing CEOs in the World 2018

by Harvard Business Review Staff

Our annual list is back, and the biggest takeaway is its consistency: Seventy of the 100 leaders in last year's ranking performed well enough to achieve the distinction again this year. That's because we measure a company's ability to sustain momentum over the long term, not just on a quarter-to-quarter basis. So who came out on top—and who failed to make this year's ranking?