I've never seen the television show Father Knows Best, but given the countless times I've heard it used as a straw man for all sorts of contentious reasons, I think I can say (somewhat confidently) that Father actually does not know best. Similarly, an increasing wisdom in the corporate world is suggesting that the old quaint notion that Managers Know Best is rapidly becoming an all-too easy straw man. Management wisdom, it would seem, is no longer bottled-up in individuals or even in high-brow business schools; but rather it has dispersed out into the world, into the clouds.

Cloud computing

The current issue of Business Week profiles the initiative of Google's Christophe Bisciglia to bring cloud computing to maturity by linking up universities and clusters of computers around the world to capture, store, and share data about just about any and every topic in the world. By storing (easily accessed) information out there in the world on millions of individual computers—in the clouds—the collective wisdom of any one person (or company) that has a need for information/knowledge expands virtually infinitely. For everyday PC users this means that an increasing number of basic applications, Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, Email, etc (and other ingredients in Microsoft's ecology of domination) will eventually be not only downloadable free, but the content of which will be saved and stored in the clouds, and not necessarily on your computer per se. That is, once created and saved in the clouds, you can access these any time and any place (where you are connected to the internet—decreasingly a problem...). What does this have to do with Management, you might ask?

Technology and people

There is an old saying that technology leads and people follow. As an anthropologist writing about business, I would add that the history of Homo Sapiens is in fact a story of technological innovation—hunting technology, fire, agriculture, machines, maritime travel, computers, optics, genetics, etc. The question of which—the technology or the (human) vision for its application—comes first is beyond my expertise. Regardless, or, as we say in Alabama, irregardless, of the answer to this question, it is true that in our recorded history human behavioral systems have been largely created by and thus trail key technological innovations. Right now in time is no exception.

Managing innovation

Paralleling the developments in remote computing, things like Christophe Bisciglia's cloud computing vision, are similar developments in management and, in particular, the management of innovation. Take Procter & Gamble's Connect and Develop program, which attempts to connect P& G's R&D efforts with university researchers, scientists and independent designers throughout the world into an ecosystem where creative and commercial ideas can be brought to fruition as marketable products. In many ways, Google's (and others') cloud computing vision is similar to P&G's: use the network to connect different people in different parts of the world with different knowledge and skills within a shared space (on the network) to address and solve problems and come up with new things and solutions.

Consider the current shift in approaches to corporate innovation, where the principles of customer-centered design have been enthusiastically embraced by companies as different as Kimberly Clark, Intel, General Mills, Starbucks, Pfizer, and Microsoft. At each of these firms consumer ethnographers work on a regular basis to connect with the needs and aspirations of customers, suppliers and non customers, to understand 'what it is they need to be doing.' As the consultancy, Peer Insight, suggests in a recent study, their sample of 40 companies (in the S&P 500) focused intensely on consumer-experience design outperformed the S&P by a 10 to 1 margin between 2000 and 2005. They refer to this innovation advantage as the Design Dividend. In an important respect, through their work with customers, they are connected with the clouds that surround their companies and their industries.

Cloud management

Furthermore, increasingly, through the outsourcing of management learning to business schools, non-profit training companies such as the Center for Creative Leadership, as well as with corporate universities staffed by outside consultants, many companies have already institutionalized the incorporation of outside wisdom and knowledge into their day-to-day work. It is now time, I suggest, to take this process a step further. In light of the 10 to 20 million knowledge workers who now work regularly in Third Place locations (coffee shops, co-working facilities, or periodic co-working communities like Jelly), there is now a ready made Cloud Seeding community to which companies, and their management, can turn for systematic help around certain critical areas: design, advertising, databases, writing, strategy, marketing, etc. Like all those millions of computers, distributed around the world yet connected by Google in its approach to cloud computing, it is now possible for managers in all sorts of industries to reach into the clouds and pull out wisdom, inspiration, and know-how...

We now know, rather clearly, that Managers Don't Know Best...  Perhaps rather than vilifying middle managers, or whacking them altogether, we should consider sending them to Meteorology School and train them to be specialists in Cloud-ology and Cloud Management.

Call it Cloud Management 1.0

The Butcher

Image courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/profile/SexyMama.