How the Geeks Redefined the Rules of Management

How the Geeks Rewrote the Rules of Management

15 Sep 2023

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The secret to success for many Silicon Valley tech companies isn’t necessarily that they’re ultra-nimble start-ups, or that they’re led by tech-savvy geniuses. In fact, their success often has more to do with a specific type of corporate culture—and it’s a culture that even companies not based on the US West Coast or focused on technology can adopt.

According to Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, business leaders need to think more like geeks, but not the computer-based stereotype you may be familiar with. In his forthcoming book, The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results, McAfee says geeks are nothing more or less than “obsessive mavericks” who are absolutely fixated on finding unconventional solutions to their business’ hard problems. You need them throughout the organization, not just at the top, and you need to entrust them with the power to make real changes.

For this episode of our video series “The New World of Work”, HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius sat down with McAfee to discuss: • Evolving a company’s culture not by focusing on organizational structure, but on company norms • Building organizations that can get things right, even when the person at the top of the org chart is wrong • The delicate balance of human judgment and evidence, data-driven insights.

This interview part of a series called “The New World of Work,” which explores how top-tier executives see the future and how their companies are trying to set themselves up for success. Each week, Adi will interview a leader on LinkedIn Live — and then share an inside look at those conversations and solicit questions for future discussions in a newsletter just for HBR subscribers. If you’re a subscriber, you can sign up for the newsletter here: https://hbr.org/my-library/preferences?movetile=newworldofwork.

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