“Management is the art of getting things done through people,” said Mary Parker Follet, pioneering organizational theorist. She made this statement as Classical Management Theory was being developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and business leaders were looking to squeeze more productivity out of maturing Industrial Age organizations. If the number of management and leadership books stuffing Amazon’s endless aisle are any indication, we have yet to master the art even 100 years later.
Now, as we look to the future and move further into the Information Age – Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave– the art of management will get more challenging. As we noted in our recently published Navigating the Top 9 Future of Work Disruptors: A Guide to Creating Your Custom Action Plan, significant changes are coming to the workforce.
