Management at the time of social media

For the first time in history it is not profitable to simply think that managers manage and workers work. Creativity and the need for intrinsic inspiration and risk taking demand individual responsibility and rich interaction between interdependent, equal peers. Top-down, one-way communication or separating thinking and acting don’t produce results any more.

In the past we located intention, or thought, apart from or before the action. We assumed a world of cause and effect where the outcomes of our actions can be known before actions are taken. Now we know that intentions arise as much in the actions and outcomes cannot be fully known in advance. This is why a new, different, view of management is required to serve the creative, learning-intensive economy.