Humanocracy, Updated and Expanded
Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
Published on 26. August 2025
Book
Hardback
432 pages
978-1-64782-637-6 (ISBN)
Description
A powerful new edition of the Wall Street Journal bestseller that helps leaders build radically more human-and capable-organizations.
Now more than ever, we need organizations that are daring, resilient, and creative. Unfortunately, when confronted by unprecedented challenges, most companies and institutions prove to be timid, plodding, and orthodox. The culprit is bureaucracy. With its top-down power structures and rule-choked systems, bureaucracy hobbles ingenuity and innovation. In a time of upheaval, these long-tolerated impediments are fast becoming competitively and economically untenable. Humanity needs and deserves something better.
In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for uninstalling bureaucracy and reinventing management as we know it. In this extensively updated and expanded edition, readers will find new and compelling case studies, the latest research findings, and a wealth of fresh and provocative insights.
Humanocracy is both a manifesto for institutional renewal and a blueprint for building organizations that are as courageous, energetic, and ingenious as the people inside them. Essential building blocks include:
Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of reimagining management as usual
Models: Leveraging the experience of vanguard organizations that have successfully disrupted the bureaucratic status quo
Mindsets: Escaping the industrial-age thinking that undermines the quest to build radically more capable organizations
Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes
Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy-ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox-in your organization's DNA
If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit; if you're eager to build an organization that can outrun change and outperform expectations; if you believe every team member deserves the chance to do something extraordinary, then this book's for you.
Now more than ever, we need organizations that are daring, resilient, and creative. Unfortunately, when confronted by unprecedented challenges, most companies and institutions prove to be timid, plodding, and orthodox. The culprit is bureaucracy. With its top-down power structures and rule-choked systems, bureaucracy hobbles ingenuity and innovation. In a time of upheaval, these long-tolerated impediments are fast becoming competitively and economically untenable. Humanity needs and deserves something better.
In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for uninstalling bureaucracy and reinventing management as we know it. In this extensively updated and expanded edition, readers will find new and compelling case studies, the latest research findings, and a wealth of fresh and provocative insights.
Humanocracy is both a manifesto for institutional renewal and a blueprint for building organizations that are as courageous, energetic, and ingenious as the people inside them. Essential building blocks include:
Motivation: Rallying colleagues to the challenge of reimagining management as usual
Models: Leveraging the experience of vanguard organizations that have successfully disrupted the bureaucratic status quo
Mindsets: Escaping the industrial-age thinking that undermines the quest to build radically more capable organizations
Mobilization: Activating a pro-change coalition to hack outmoded management systems and processes
Migration: Embedding the principles of humanocracy-ownership, markets, meritocracy, community, openness, experimentation, and paradox-in your organization's DNA
If you've finally run out of patience with bureaucratic bullshit; if you're eager to build an organization that can outrun change and outperform expectations; if you believe every team member deserves the chance to do something extraordinary, then this book's for you.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Humanocracy:A Wall Street Journal bestseller
Named one of "The 10 Best Business Books of 2021" by Forbes
Named one of the "Best Books of 2020: Critics' Picks" by the Financial Times
Named one of the "Best Business Books 2020: Strategy" by strategy+business
"Hamel and Zanini may be onto something. Unleash people's creativity and productivity will improve, job satisfaction will increase, and workers in supposedly 'low-skilled' jobs will be free to demonstrate their abilities. If so, the future of work needn't be gloomy after all." - The Economist
"Humanocracy?makes the case for replacing chain of command with chain of trust and radical transparency. It's a prescription for unlocking game-changing innovation and the value of every individual." - Marc Benioff, cofounder, Chairman, and CEO, Salesforce; New York Times bestselling author, Trailblazer
"Anyone trying to reinvent a legacy business should read?Humanocracy. Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini set out a practical view on how to address the transformation challenges many companies are dealing with.?Humanocracy highlights a lesson that has never been more important: businesses are all about people, and the more human we make them, the better." - Ana Botin, Executive Chairman, Banco Santander
"Rarely has the case for dismantling bureaucracy been made as effectively, passionately, and comprehensively. The time to start is now, and the book to read is Humanocracy. Essential to revitalizing our organizations and reinvigorating our economies." - Bengt Holmstroem, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2016 Nobel laureate in Economics
"Humanocracy provides the reader with a road map to helping organizations unleash creativity, energy, and resiliency through leveraging the core of every organization-humans." - Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US Army, Retired; bestselling author, Team of Teams
"Humanocracy is the most important management book I have read in a very long time. This is not just another book about the power of purpose or the joys of empowerment. Rather, it's a detailed, well-researched, data-driven, compellingly argued exposi on the massive costs of bureaucracy in society. Hamel and Zanini offer an equally compelling argument for why it doesn't have to be this way, complete with a practical guide for creating organizations that really work." - Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School; author, The Fearless Organization
More details
Edition
Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Edition type
Revised edition
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
716 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64782-637-6 (9781647826376)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Gary Hamel | Michele Zanini
Humanocracy, Updated and Expanded
Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
E-Book
08/2025
Harvard Business Review Press
€30.99
Available for download
Previous edition
Book
08/2020
Harvard Business Review Press
€48.47
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Persons
Gary Hamel?is on the faculty of the London Business School and is a cofounder of the Management Lab, an organization that builds technology and tools to support breakthrough management innovation. Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the world's most influential business thinker, his landmark books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. They include The Future of Management and What Matters Now. Hamel lives in Silicon Valley.
Michele Zanini?is a cofounder of the Management Lab, where he helps forward-thinking companies become fundamentally more entrepreneurial and innovative. An alumnus of McKinsey & Company and the RAND Corporation, Zanini holds degrees from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the RAND School of Public Policy. He lives in Boston.
Michele Zanini?is a cofounder of the Management Lab, where he helps forward-thinking companies become fundamentally more entrepreneurial and innovative. An alumnus of McKinsey & Company and the RAND Corporation, Zanini holds degrees from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the RAND School of Public Policy. He lives in Boston.