Steve Denning shares some interesting thoughts on why America has lost its ability to compete. Mr. Denning says it has nothing to do with government, talent, innovation, or globalization – rather he argues the problem is with business schools that are churning out leaders only focused on the bottom line:
In other words, “we have discovered the problem and it is us.” Thus behind the problem of competitiveness lies a concept of management based on short term profits and the stock price that these business leaders learned when they were MBA students at Harvard and elsewhere.
What does he recommend? A paradigm shift:
shift from controlling individuals to self-organizing teams;
shift from coordinating work by hierarchical bureaucracy to dynamic linking;
shift from a preoccupation with economic value to an embrace of values that will grow the firm; and
shift from top-down communications to horizontal conversations.
