How to move beyond bureaucracy, not waste talent, and innovate faster | Michele Zanini & Gary Hamel

I mean, undoubtedly, this is the most important human technology of all. Like, there's nothing that's, you know, you can't there's no recent patent, nothing including AI, which may be a tool here, but there's nothing that's as important as our capacity to figure out how do we come together to do things collectively, in ways that are highly efficient and highly impactful. And so that literally sets the outer boundaries on human accomplishment, whether that's running a Baltimore school system, you know, whether it's putting Starship, you know, getting a mission launched to Mars, whatever it is. I hate bureaucracy. Don't you? What if the way we manage companies, the very systems that built modern business, have now become our greatest liability? My guests today are the authors of a new book called Humanocracy. Gary Hamill is one of the world's most influential business thinkers, a visiting professor at the London Business School and the creator or co creator of so many management concepts you've heard about. The next time you hear someone talk to you about core competencies, that's Gary. His co author, Michele Zanini, is his longtime collaborator at the management lab and himself a former McKinsey consultant. Together, they're the authors of Humanocracy, a book that makes the case for organizations built on human contribution, not bureaucratic control. In our conversation, we trace the history of management. Few people today realize how important a human invention it was. It powered railroads, global corporations, and even governments. But also why those same structures have now become liabilities. They're dangerously out of step with today's world. We also talk about how bureaucracy wastes more human potential than it uses, why engagement at work is at historic lows, and what companies can learn from the outliers who've dared to reinvent themselves. And we explore the question at the heart of Humanocracy. What would it look like to build organizations designed not just for efficiency, but for adaptability, creativity, and resilience? I hope you enjoy this conversation with the authors of Humanocracy. Gary Michele, thank you so much for making time for this. Well, pleasure to be here. So, Gary, I wanna start with you because one of the things I've noticed is that people treat management ideas like they weren't invented, like they just always existed once they become broadly accepted. And they don't appreciate how much of a contribution those ideas are. And, you know, you've you've obviously widely known as one of the the top management thinkers and strategy thinkers in the world. And I even had forgotten that the term core competencies was one of your earliest, papers. So talk about the invention of the term core competencies, a word that I think phrase most people just view as, well, it's just just the thing that's always existed. You know, we've always had core competencies. But, no, it was an idea that had to be invented. Talk about that. Well, yeah. I mean, that's one in …