官僚体系末路

    如果你一辈子都在积聚、玩弄官僚权力，而且一直根据自己在公司的晋升阶梯上攀登了多少级，在你手下工作的人数有多少，获得的油水有多大，掌握的职权有多广来校准自己的职业发展进程，那么你或许不太敢设想一个领导者需要向被领导者汇报工作的世界。

    当权者通常都不愿意放弃权力。围绕IT“消费化”展开的辩论就是一个很好的例子。员工携带个人设备和应用程序来上班的确会引发令人烦恼的安全性和支持问题。但令人不安的是，许多CIO(首席信息官)似乎把“自带设备上班”(BYOD)这个理念看成一个恼人的技术问题，而不是一个向员工进一步赋权的契机。没错，安全性和开放性这两个概念经常会产生分歧，但需要重新考虑的正是这种假想的权衡取舍。不是把自己视为强制执行者，相反，IT高管和经理们需要把自己视为推动者。

    在网络的推动下，议价能力已经从生产者骤然转换至消费者手中。接下来，权力也同样会以戏剧性且不可逆转的态势从机构转移到个人手中。“自带设备”仅仅是个开始。如果你的组织打算吸引、聘用全世界最有创意的人才，你就必须想一想如何促进“设定自己的目标”(SYOG)、“设计自己的工作”(DYOJ)、“挑选自己的同事”(PYOC)、“核批自己的费用”(AYOE)或“选择自己的老板”(CYOB)这些理念了。

    更笼统地讲，你应该问自己，“如果我拿出进一步优化运营模式或商业模式的决心来重塑公司的管理模式，我可以为组织创造什么样的价值？如果我的团队充分利用大数据、云服务、移动技术和社交网络的革命潜力来摧毁正式的等级制度，同时赋权于每位员工和团队成员，会发生什么事情？我应该从哪里着手？”

    不可避免的是，越来越多的管理和领导工作——确定重点，制定战略，评估表现，分配工作和论功行赏——将被分配到组织的边缘。每家公司最终都将发现（一些公司已经发现），没有管理者的管理是完全有可能实现的。

    如果你觉得这似乎有点想入非非，那么就请看看互联网上风起云涌的社交革命吧。事实证明，互联网是一种近乎理想的社交实验媒介。网络催生的社交技术清单已经给人留下了非常深刻的印象（众包、社交图谱、微博、社交标签、舆论市场、混搭、同伴评定、众筹和社交策展），几乎每天都会涌现出一种全新的社交支持技术。

    与此同时，大多数CIO和CEO依然将这些技术视为一种更密切联系客户的手段（比如，在社交媒体上挖掘景气数据），或者作为一种提高内部沟通效率的方式（部署Chatter和Jive这类社交平台）。在这两种情况下，社交技术都被视为用来强化、巩固现有营销手法或沟通渠道的“附件”，很少有高管能够认识到这些技术的真正用途，也就是一种全面而彻底地替代集权化结构和僵化流程的管理模式的基本构件。

    我们很容易迷失在社交网络，但退后一步，就会发现一些清晰的模式：用户正在发号施令。选择和自由正在不断扩大。社区正在增殖。个人正在追随自己的激情。边界正在消失。隐藏的人才正在被发现。

    If you've spent a lifetime accumulating and wielding bureaucratic power, and if you've calibrated your career progress by the steps you've taken up the corporate ladder, or by the number of people who work for you, or the perks you've been awarded, or the scope of your authority, then envisioning a world in which leaders report to the led may be a bit daunting.

    People with power are often reluctant to give it up. Take the debate over the "consumerization" of IT as a case in point. Granted, vexing security and support issues arise when employees bring their personal devices and apps to work. Nevertheless, it's troubling that many CIOs seem to regard the idea of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as an annoying technical problem rather than as an opportunity to amplify employee empowerment. Yes, the notions of security and openness are often at odds, but it's precisely this kind of assumed trade-off that needs to be reconsidered. Rather than regarding themselves as enforcers, IT execs and managers need to view themselves as enablers.

    The web has delivered a dramatic shift in bargaining power from producers to consumers. What's coming next is an equally dramatic and irreversible shift in power from institutions to individuals. BYOD is just the beginning. If your organization is going to attract and engage the most creative individuals in the world, then you have to think about how you might help facilitate SYOG—Set Your Own Goals, DYOJ—Design Your Own Job, PYOC—Pick Your Own Colleagues, AYOE—Approve Your Own Expenses, or CYOB—Chose Your Own Boss.

    More generally, you should ask yourself, "What sort of value could I create for my organization if I were as committed to reinventing my firm's management model as I am to further optimizing the operating model or the business model? What would happen if my team fully exploited the revolutionary potential of big data, cloud services, mobile technology, and the social web to dismantle formal hierarchy and empower every associate and team member? And where would I start?"

    Inevitably, more and more of the work of managing and leading -- the work of setting priorities, devising strategy, reviewing performance, divvying up work and allocating rewards -- is going to be distributed to the edges of the organization. Every firm will discover, as some already have, that it's quite possible to manage without managers.

    If this seems like a fantasy to you, look at the social revolution that's been gathering pace on the web. The Internet has proven to be an almost ideal medium for social experimentation. The list of web-spawned social technologies is already impressive (crowdsourcing, social graphs, microblogging, tagging, opinion markets, mash-ups, peer ratings, peer production, crowdfunding, social curation), and new, socially enabled technologies are emerging almost daily.

    At the same time, most CIOs and CEOs still look at these technologies either as a means for connecting more intimately with customers (by, for example, mining sentiment data from social media) or as a way to increase the efficiency of internal communication (by deploying social platforms like Chatter and Jive). In both cases, social technologies are seen as "bolt-ons" -- either to existing marketing practices or communication channels. Rarely are they seen for what they are -- the building blocks of a comprehensive and radical alternative to centralized management structures and rigid management processes.

    It's easy to get lost in the social web, but when you step back, there are some clear patterns: Users are calling the shots. Choice and freedom are expanding. Communities are proliferating. Individuals are following their passions. Boundaries are disappearing. Hidden talents are being discovered.