“Bureaucracy has few fans,” management experts Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini declare in “The End of Bureaucracy” ( Harvard Business Review) . [i] Some call it a “villain”; others a “disease.” I call it a weighty obstacle to any innovation. Fortunately, as I’ve said before, technology flattens everything . That includes organizations and decision processes. This may seem like a challenging proposition for long-standing companies, but it’s an essential first step for fostering an innovative culture that can fuel digital transformation. Removing the silos takes a mind shift: from controlling every layer to “leading like gardeners,” as retired 4-star U.S. General Stanley A. McChrystal says, “creating and maintaining a viable ecosystem in which the organization operates.” So how does a 180-year-old industrial enterprise such as Schneider Electric take this leap? By leading digital transformation from within — not just from the top — with a network of digital innovators committed to ...
