Why Managers Should Think More Like Hackers

In 2004, I sat down in my boardroom with our strategy documents and started to dissect them. There were lots of familiar and comfortable terms. We had to be innovative, efficient, customer centric, web 2.0 and all that this entailed. Alas, I suspected these common “memes” were repeated in the strategy documents of other companies because I was pret... See more

But that assumption, that centralized systems don’t know what they’re doing, is delusional. These tech companies are fucking smart. They are led by nimble (and paranoid) leaders, with a ton of money and other treats to hand out, who have no problem understanding the importance of disrupting themselves (see Facebook).

As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest.

These projects, Victor says, are just “nibbles around the edges” of his larger obsession: how the media in which we choose to represent our ideas shape (and too often, limit) what ideas we can have. “We have these things called computers, and we’re basically just using them as really fast paper emulators,” he says. “With the invention of the printi... See more

Management systems have been designed to provide reliability and efficiency, not adaptability and agility. Many of the tools and practices of modern management are geared towards solving problems and eliminating deviations in processes, behaviors, and practices. Because of this framework, management training and leadership development is often focu... See more

I define “creative risk” as the wild ideas in our mind’s eye that we would love to pursue, but don’t because the cost (time, money, reputation...) is too much to bear. As a result, we play it safe in the form of making sequels in Hollywood, emulating successful campaigns in advertising, and “staying in our lane” or what we’re comfortable with in ou... See more