Wiki Management

September 30, 2013
“A nineteenth-century management model is unsustainable in a twenty-first century world,” argues innovation expert and management consultant Collins. He argues that businesses should use an alternative model of learning, collaboration, and innovation. A subset of vanguard companies already follow a collaborative approach: Wikipedia, Google, Threadless, Zappos, and others. Here, Collins presents the five principles of the vanguard companies and 50 practices they use to encourage mass collaboration (in a “wiki” world) and enhance adaptability. Collins suggests that managers begin by resetting the three M’s: managers (eliminating the sovereignty of the supervisor); meetings (allowing for more effective communication); and measures (for collaboration). Major change is coming to management, not because of organizational specialists, but because of engineers and their practices. Collins stresses understanding what’s most important to customers, encouraging open conversations, focusing on critical performance drivers, holding people accountable to their peers, and remembering that people are the greatest resource of any organization. While these concepts are not all new, Collins writes in lucid fashion, and readers will likely find the book helpful when diving into the subject of collaborative management. Agent: Sandra Bond, Bond Literary Agency.