Wiki Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and Collaborative World

disciplines that have served as the framework for leading and managing large organizations. This framework dates back to the late nineteenth century, when mass production was radically transforming the ways people worked and the major challenge for managers was how to effectively coordinate the tasks and activities of the large numbers of workers in their new factories.

Management, as most of us know it, was invented to guide business leaders in building and preserving sustainable business models and maintaining highly efficient operations. Its disciplines were designed to support the core values of top-down hierarchical structures: planning, control, and efficiency. Accordingly, in the commandand-control management model, the fundamental work of the manager is to plan and control, and productivity is synonymous with efficiency.

The managers of the vanguard companies, however, loathe command-and-control management. In fact, they are quite proactive in making sure that as their organizations grow, they do not inadvertently slip into traditional management practices. Instead, they have created a different management model that is based on a completely different set of fundamental disciplines. This alternative model is designed for adapting and innovating rather than preserving and maintaining. Its disciplines support the prime values of learning, collaboration, and innovation. Thus, the fundamental work of the manager is not to plan and control but rather to be the catalyst for collective learning and collaboration.

And productivity is seen more as a function of innovation than efficiency.

The managers of the vanguard companies see little value in making traditional business models faster or less expensive. The real value is in creating the new business model that will render the old model obsolete. That’s why, when the vanguard managers