S3 Ep. 11 Michele Zanini – Firms as socially dense markets

Michele Zanini is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Humanocracy. He is the co-founder of the Management Lab, where together with Gary Hamel, he helps forward-thinking organizations become more resilient, innovative and engaging places to work. Michele was previously a senior consultant at McKinsey & Company and a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. His work has been featured in The Economist, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Michele joins the show to discuss how organizations have become so overburdened by bureaucracy and why new organizational models like those developed at Haier and Morningstar can be seen as socially dense markets. Tune in to this episode as we explore Industrial Age contracts, scalable freedom, the open source software movement and the continued need for management innovation.

A full transcript of the episode can be found on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/michele-zanini-2/ 

Key highlights we discussed:

> Use case of overcoming bureaucracy and the authoritarian nature of organizations

> The benefits of socially dense markets

> Why freedom and control don’t have to be trade-offs

> The cultural reliance on hierarchical organizations

> The need to consider management model innovation for the 21st century 

To find out more about Michele’s work:

> Twitter: https://twitter.com/michelezanini   

> Website: https://www.humanocracy.com/ 

Other references and mentions:

> Simone Cicero, ‘Contracts and the Future of the Firm’, 2021: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/contracts-and-the-future-of-the-firm-3faf6ef27320 

> Ronald Coase, The Nature of the Firm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm 

> Buurtzorg: https://www.buurtzorg.com/

> Apache foundation: https://www.apache.org/ 

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast/

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://boundaryless.io/podcast-music

Recorded on 22 February 2022.