What Matters Now By Gary Hamel

“What Matters Now” calls for a deep reflection on where your organization is, and to be.  And as a leader, what you should do now.  This book is divided into five sections: value matters now, innovation matters now, adaptability matters now, passion matters now, and ideology matters now.  Each section contains five articles that offer different perspectives under the same topic.  Each article is packed with relevant case studies to illustrate where the pain points and pitfalls are, the success stories, and how organizations can do better.  Some ideas are so bold that it may require a drastic change in the entire organization in order to make it happens.  It is as though the author is challenging us to aim higher.  Perhaps Hamel is right.  In today’s world, there is no place for an average performing organization.  Our organization has to beat the market or our competitors so as to survive and thrive.

Using the bankers, legislators, and regulators as a case study and recounting the major events happened during recent financial crisis, the author highlights that when a leader sacrifices long term goals with quick payout, people would not see them as trustworthy.  The author appears to feel strongly against corporation’s erosion of moral.  Hamel uses farmers as an example to contrast these highly paid leaders.  Here is the “Farmer’s Creed” for sharing.

I believe a man’s greatest possession is his dignity and that no calling bestows this more abundantly than farming.  I believe hard work and honest sweat are the building blocks of a person’s character.  I believe that farming, despite its hardships and disappointments, is the most honest and honorable way a man can spend his days on this earth …

Would you trust your life with a company’s CEO or would you trust the nurses or the farmers instead?  The author suggests that it is a high time for leaders to regain moral high ground and to embrace what Socrates called the good, the just, and the beautiful.  In short, value matters now.

When it comes to innovation, it should come as no surprise that Apple is used as a case study.  The author examines how Apple becomes one of the most profitable companies in the world today.  Hamel makes a detail listing of Apple’s success, from design innovation to passion within the organization.  Does your company often analysis the trade-offs and compromise?  Or is your organization as unreasonable as Apple so as to transcend trade-offs?

On adaptability, are we changing as fast as the world does?  Under the section of “Adaptability Matters Now”, there is a chapter on how decline can be diagnosed and another chapter on how your company can be future-proofed.  To make a company adaptable, the author has outlined six critical factors: anticipation, intellectual flexibility, strategic variety, strategic flexibility, structural flexibility, and resilience-friendly values.  In my opinion, to achieve this is no easy feat.  It depends on how entrenched your organization are with the existing processes and policies.  The paragraph below sums up the concept.  Ask yourself one question: how close is your organization to the following dream state?

We can dream of organizations that are forever looking forward and jump at every opportunity to better the human condition.  We can dream of organizations where the enthusiasm for change is palpable and pervasive, where individuals, ennobled by a sense of mission and unencumbered by bureaucracy, rush out eagerly to meet the future.  We can dream of organizations where the fearless renegades always trump the fearful reactionaries, where the constituency for the future always outguns the constituency for the past.  We can dream of organizations where the drama of renewal occurs without the trauma of a turnaround.  And, if we’re daring and inventive and determined, we can build these organizations.  That’s what matters now.

On passion, Hamel looks inside the Facebook generation for inspiration.  On how we as a community interact in an online environment where the hierarchy does not exist.  Everyone can contribute, anyone can lead.  No one can dictate or kill a good idea.  Ideas built upon ideas and excellence usually wins.  The author also brings up Christian community as an example, that the Church’s followers are on a decline nowadays.  Lesser and lesser people visit a Church these days.  But does that mean people do not believe in God?  The question is, how to bring these people back to the rhythm of visiting a Church?  The solution lies in the ignition of passion within the community.  When left without formal control and discipline and given a freedom to pursue their goals, people do rise up to the occasion and leaders do emerge.  Smaller groups can be formed and everyone contributes in accordance to their strength.

The last section “Ideology Matters Now” is, for lack of a better word, radical.  If not for the case studies of W. L. Gore, Morning Star, and HCLT, I would not be convinced that self-management works.  Imagine a company that has a flat organization chart.  Imagine the only way to lead is to gather enough supporters around you.  Imagine there is no top down authority, and there are no defined roles.  Imagine everyone is accountable for the decisions they are empowered to make, that anyone can be a decision maker.  Can your organization escape the management tax?  This book spells out the things we should do in order to reach the goal of self-management.  While this model may have its challenges, it has made organizations successful.  I guess, that is all that matters.

What matters now, more than ever, is that you question your assumptions, surrender your conceits, rethink your principles, and raise your sights – and that your challenge others to do the same.  We know broadly what must be done to create organizations that are fit for the future.  The only question is, “Who’s going to lead and who’s going to follow?”  How you answer that question matters most of all.

ISBN-10: 1118120825
ISBN-13: 978-1118120828