Margery Kraus, CEO of APCO, recently reminded me about Gary Hamel's 2009 "Moon Shots for Management" article in the Harvard Business Review. The piece was the product of a "conclave" of management thinkers and doers, convened by Hamel's non-profit organization, The Management Lab.

This group identified the 25 management challenges, or "moonshots", including:

  • Ensuring that managerial work serves a higher purpose.
  • Fully embedding the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems.
  • Enable communities of passion.
  • Eliminating the pathologies of formal hierarchy.
  • Reducing fear and increasing trust.
  • Reinventing the means of control.
  • Redefining the work of leadership.
  • Humanize the language and practice of business.
  • Retool management for an open world.

For the past several years, we have all been so focused on turning the economic page that I'm sure few if any of these great questions were seriously posed within organizations. But if you love management, not just the intellectual process, but the practical execution of management, as I do, you will revisit these in 2011 - within your teams, and your companies overall.


Julia Hood
President
Arthur W. Page Society