Under New Management summary

While some stories of lone wolf heroes stand out, behind every star there’s a hardworking team. So, if you’re hiring a new employee, don’t just look for stellar qualifications, make sure they also fit your company.

After all, just because someone was successful at one company, doesn’t mean they will be at yours. In fact, research has found that even top performers who transfer companies don’t necessarily excel in their new workplace. That’s because they need the right team to enable them.

In today’s economy, lots of us think for a living. In other words, rather than using our hands to make a physical product, we write essays or software, analyze systems and teach others. The term for such employees is knowledge workers, and their rise to prominence has a huge impact on the world of management.

That’s because strict hierarchies, schedules and job descriptions are way too rigid for knowledge work, which means managers now need to make all organization temporal. After all, knowledge work, like developing an operating system, is far more unpredictable than manual labor in, say, a textile mill. It’s just too difficult to come up with a strict timetable for a creative pursuit.

Facebook was proud to announce that they’d built the biggest open office ever to exist. Is this the future of work?

Well, when designing workspaces, it’s best to pair open offices with closed spaces, giving your employees a choice in their environment. After all, while open offices are great, facilitating communication and teamwork, a 2005 study by the researchers So Young Lee and Jay Brand, indicates that people in open offices complain about noise and lack of privacy – and they take more sick days.

Everybody knows about Silicon Valley, but have you ever heard of its rival region, Boston’s Route 128?

This tech center was a leader in the field long before Silicon Valley until its love for non-compete clauses hindered its success.

OK, so you’ve already learned a ton about the most innovative management strategies, but two more policies are definitely worth your while. The first is about those dreaded performance rankings.

After all, performance rankings just don’t work the way they should, and you’re better off going with different feedback mechanisms. For instance, most companies rank their employees once a year. It’s a ton of work for little payoff.