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Lyon, France
47, married, 3 marvellous kids. IT Director for the last 15 years for a large multinational company. I believe in coaching, in professional life as well as in private and sports.

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Network Management or network management ?

Don't be confused, I'm not talking technology here, so forget about LANs, switches and protocols. The network we are talking about here is a network of internal and external business relationships, which enable a new way of managing teams within the company.
In the past, management used to be hierarchical, which had the advantage of a crystal clear distribution of power. Efficiency was obtained by a combination of power and energy multiplied by time spent. This made the golden age of productivism.
When the limit was reached, collaborative and participative management arose. Middle management and team members were more involved in decision making. Higher efficiency was gained by more enthousiasm of all the actors who felt they were more considered and made responsible. This type of management is still around and has not reached its limits by the fact that still many companies are not yet there. But the world is going fast and more was required.
A big disruption in the power distribution was introduced by the multiplication of Project teams and delegation of a lot of means to the project managers. This in combination with participative management is currently one of the most advanced ways of managing. Especially true in the IT world where projects are raging due to the high pace of the technology, we encounter more and more of these project driven organizations.
Now what's next ? It's called Network Management, from the idea that these multiple and so efficient teams are linking together in a network of relationships where "the boss" concept is virtual and distributed. A leader in a team can be a simple actor in another team. Teams are extremely efficient by the instant share of information using latest technology. No information is hardly considered confidential and all information is available at the speed of light. This kind of management can only function in very mature organization where the human factor is extremely rich and managers are ready to play this new game. If not, the risk of a fuzzy organization with unclear frontier between roles is high, and then the organization will fall in the hole of non mature managers trying to protect their castle.
Isn't that a little hope in our mad world : human factor is back in management !

For those who want to know more about it : Le Manager Intuitif - Myriem le Saget

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