DESIGN TO DISRUPT

Inert, incremental, and without engagement. If the wind
of creative destruction rises even more strongly, Hamel
says, these weaknesses will destroy those existing organizations.
Hamel provides three pieces of advice to address
the core incompetences of organizations effectively:
• Tackle the hierarchy.
A formal hierarchy overweights experience and underweights
new thinking. Instead of hierarchies, network
structures and ecosystems need to become the guiding
principles.
• Kill bureaucracy.
We have empowered employees, but they are not supposed
to interfere with the strategy. We preach innovation
but refuse to dismantle the barriers. We make organizations
flatter, but the hierarchy remains intact. We
are campaigning against bureaucratic rules, but have
failed to oust them as yet. Now is the time to do so.
• Tackle the culture.
In many organizations, bureaucracy is the prevailing culture.
Hamel even calls it an ideology. Bureaucracy is the
technology of control. Crazy ideas of weird people with
exceptional results do not fit in this culture.
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