Paul Martin's Business Update - June 4th 2014

Jun 14, 2014, 12:49 PM

Paul Martin's Business Update - June 4th 2014

It’s been just over a year since a terrorist bomb was detonated at the Boston Marathon and now management lessons are starting to emerge on how the response to the tragedy was handled.

In his latest blog Harvard leadership researcher Eric McNulty identified something called swarm intelligence. Examples of this abound in nature – termites, flocks of migrating birds, for example, working apparently without management leadership and still getting things done.

Similarly in the aftermath of the Boston bombing the alphabet soup of agencies hit the scene, all doing their jobs but without a single commander in charge of everything.

McNulty says it’s time for business leaders to rethink some of their strategies, moving from a command and control style to one where various business units work a little more independently. Basically, the model is one where the team is given an assignment and trusted to be intelligent enough to get it completed. Fewer rules, not more, are better as order – where units work to a common goal - replaces control.

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