Hi, This article is from the Wall Street Journal, On-Line 05/05/08. It is good stuff! Too bad so few people in management positions share and apply these insights...
Quest for Innovation, Motivation Inspires Gurus
Leading Thinkers
Apply Varied Skills
For Global Solutions
By ERIN WHITE
May 5, 2008; Page B6
Managers everywhere these days worry about innovating,
motivating workers and global competition. So it's no surprise that
writers and consultants who tackle these subjects place near the top of
The Wall Street Journal's ranking of influential business thinkers.
Here are snapshots of three who ranked in the top five:
![[Gary Hamel]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BJ693_CJ_Gur_20080502165715.jpg) |
| Gary Hamel |
• Gary Hamel, 53 years old, is a prolific
writer and speaker who has kept his popularity despite falling victim
to a peril of gurudom: His 2000 book, "Leading the Revolution,"
lionized Enron Corp. (The Enron case study was removed from later
editions.)
What's his secret? "He's just got a good sense of the
managerial zeitgeist," says Thomas H. Davenport, who compiled the
rankings. At a time when businesspeople worry that traditional
management techniques are losing effectiveness, Dr. Hamel has written a
book examining new approaches. "The Future of Management," published in
October, uses case studies from Google Inc. and Gore-Tex maker W.L. Gore to shed light on management innovation.
Dr. Hamel spent a year working as a hospital
administrator after earning a master of business administration -- just
long enough to realize he didn't want to deal with the "minutia of
actually being a manager," he says. Instead, he thought it would be
more interesting to think about management. "I didn't want to be in a
career where you had to go to the same committee meetings every week,"
he says.
He earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan,
where he met professor and author C.K. Prahalad. The two teamed up on
research, including well-received business-review articles that coined
the terms "strategic intent" and "core competence." Their 1994 book,
"Competing for the Future," cemented Dr. Hamel's superguru status.
Today, his speaking fees range from $50,000 to well more than $100,000,
depending on the circumstances, he says.
Dr. Hamel says his latest book sprang from years of
conversations with frustrated managers. "It seemed to me that getting
large organizations to be persistently innovative was akin to getting a
dog to walk on its hind legs," he says. "The moment you turned your
back, it was down on all fours again." He argues that long-term success
for companies stems more from the way they are managed than from their
strategy or products.
Of Enron, he says that the company had a "uniquely
entrepreneurial culture" that pioneered concepts like energy trading
and won praise from other observers and CEOs. "Virtually everyone
inside and outside the company was surprised" by the fraud that later
surfaced, he says.
![[Howard Gardner]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BJ694_CJ_Gur_20080502165938.jpg) |
| Howard Gardner |
Mark McDonald, a group vice president at technology
consulting firm Gartner Inc., thinks Dr. Hamel is particularly good at
provoking and shaping debate among executives. "[Dr.] Hamel is very
influential at setting executive mindset about things they should be
paying attention to," he says.
• Howard Gardner, 64 years old, is a
psychologist and professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.
He is best known for his theory of "multiple intelligences." Dr.
Gardner believes there are at least eight types of intelligence,
including linguistic and musical. He's also interested in ethics,
decision-making, leadership and persuasion.
The son of immigrants who fled Hitler's Germany, Dr.
Gardner studied psychology, sociology and anthropology at Harvard. His
breakthrough work came in 1983, when he published "Frames of Mind: The
Theory of Multiple Intelligences."
He didn't focus on businesspeople for another decade.
In 1996, he spoke at the World Economic Forum for the first time and
found he was comfortable chatting with business and political leaders.
A few years later, an editor at Harvard Business Press suggested that
he address the business audience more directly. That led to his 2004
book about persuasion, "Changing Minds."
Much of Dr. Gardner's recent work is grounded in the
workplace. Last year, he edited the essay collection "Responsibility at
Work," which examined factors that contribute to responsible, ethical
workplaces, such as good role models and responsible co-workers. His
book "Five Minds for the Future" outlined skills for future leaders,
such as the "synthesizing mind," which can bring together different
ideas.
![[Thomas Friedman]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BJ692_CJ_Gur_20080502165458.jpg) |
| Thomas Friedman |
Dr. Gardner's popularity beyond academia reflects
managers' desire to understand what makes workers, peers and bosses
tick. Many companies, for example, are trying to boost employees'
"engagement," or emotional commitment to their jobs. Dr. Gardner says
managers often ask him how to change minds "since that is something
that they have to do a lot."
Michael Lee Stallard, president of E Pluribus
Partners, a Greenwich, Conn., consulting firm, is a fan. He first ran
across Dr. Gardner about 10 years ago, when he read "Frames of Mind."
Mr. Stallard tapped Dr. Gardner's notion that people learn differently
when he designed a training program. The training incorporates data,
stories and visual images to reach people with different approaches.
• Thomas Friedman, age 54, is the Pulitzer
Prize-winning foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times and the
author of two best-selling books on globalization, "The World is Flat"
in 2005 and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" in 1999. "The World is Flat"
documented heightened international competition, particularly from
developing countries, sparked by technological change.
With an undergraduate degree from Brandeis and a
master's from Oxford, Mr. Friedman began his journalism career as an
international correspondent for United Press International and has
worked for the Times since 1981. He thinks his ideas help managers
understand a fast-changing environment. "The World is Flat," he says,
"gave people a very simple way to explain a whole complex set of
changes that had really changed the environment in which they were
living and working and playing." The book sold more than two million
copies, according to Nielsen BookScan.
Next up: environmentalism. Mr. Friedman's latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," is scheduled to appear in August.
His popularity among managers reflects their desire to
understand the broader world in which they operate. "The world we're
working in -- and we're all trying to be successful in, and have our
teams be successful in -- is changing so dramatically and so fast,"
says Gartner's Mr. McDonald. "People have a natural desire to look for
some kind of framework or a way of explaining what's going on."
![[Chart]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-AP424A_GURUP_20080504224415.gif)