I recently read an interesting book by Gary Hamel called Humanocracy, in which he argues for replacing traditional, top-down bureaucratic structures with more decentralized, people-centric organizations. Ultimately, his goal is to “empower” individuals to innovate and make decisions at all levels, rather than relying on rigid hierarchies.

a sign that says “don’t eat the red”

He introduces two approaches:

  • “Swarm of hacks”: This means encouraging lots of small, grassroots experiments or improvements by individuals or teams, rather than waiting for big, top-down changes.
  • “Roll upward”: Instead of decisions and innovations coming from the top, they emerge from the bottom and move upward through the organization.

I like the analogy of thinking about this as a type of open-source development, where anyone can contribute improvements, rather than a single manager dictating all changes.

I have for some time been interested in the organization of universities. One could, in many ways, argue that universities are already quite decentralized, with lots of “hacking” happening at the bottom of the organization. However, there has been a tendency to streamline university organizations in recent years. So, for universities, it may be that we need to fight for keeping our bottom-up, which is already quite humanocratic from the beginning!