Unleashing Talent: A conversation between book author Gary Hamel and associate professor and former superintendent Mary Herrmann

Thought Leadership Series

This fifth installment in School Administrator’s Thought Leadership Series captures the thinking of book author Gary P. Hamel in a conversation with Mary Herrmann, clinical associate professor of education at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a former superintendent of three districts in Missouri and Illinois.

Hamel is an American management consultant, a faculty member at the London Business School and a founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago. He co-authored (with Michele Zanini) a 2020 work Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them. His previous books include What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change; Ferocious Competition and Unstoppable Innovation; and Competing for the Future.

In Herrmann’s interview, which focuses on Hamel’s most recent book, the author talked about how to change complex organizations, including school systems, through a bottom-up approach; how to dismantle bureaucracies and unleash the latent genius inside organizations; and the superintendent’s role as an activist and social architect.