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The Mavericks at Work blog reminds us that all the:
co-creation
empowerment
mass collaboration
blogging
YouTubing
MySpace-ing and
Facebooking
in the world isn’t going to help if you don’t already have some very persuasive answers to some very basic questions:
What ideas are we fighting for?
What do we see that the competition doesn’t?
How are we rethinking our business every day?
In the UK, now,
These findings are from the Chartered Management Institute and Remuneration Economics.
What explains the high rate of resignations?
Is it the sense of injustice at the widening pay differentials as women take on more responsibility – younger – for less money than men?
Do women have more choices that they can exercise? They are more likely to take up self-employment than men. They may also be more ‘in-demand’ than men as their skill sets leave them better equipped to work in a modern economy. The ‘skill sets’ in which women generally outperform men include
Or is it because many management hierarchies are still male dominated cultures in which more feminine values linked to the enhanced skill-sets listed above are under valued?
One trend is very clear. Women’s power in a modern economy is increasing. This is driven by their generally superior leadership skills and their influence over just about every major purchasing decision.
This means that organisations that cannot recruit and retain women will be at a significant disadvantage in the marketplace.
“When land was the productive asset, nations battled over it. The same is happening now for talented people.”
Stan Davis & Christopher Meyer, futureWEALTH
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My working life has been spent working with a wide variety of organisations. But they all have one thing in common. Each is trying to make the world a better place. Whether operating in the private, public or third sector they have all been about making things better.
People join these organisations because they:
They want to belong in an organisation where they can grow, make a difference and earn a living.
They need respectful and nurturing management. The salary to them is important – but in the long run it is personal growth and making a difference that they really value. They need management that focuses on helping them to make their contribution.
Many of the organisations I have worked with have struggled in this area. People lose their sense of purpose and identity as they become consumed by delivering ‘the service’ or ‘the contract’. They become more technically proficient at what they do – but their optimism and belief slowly fades away and performance slowly degrades.
This process is driven by an orthodox approach to management that focuses on tasks and fails to engage with dreams and aspirations. The noble goals are transformed into routine. There is a famous story about the floor sweeper at NASA who proudly told visitors that he was working to help put men on the moon. Well, in many organisations this process of ennobling a job is completely reversed. People doing great work, contributing to great goals, become reduced to ‘marketing co-ordinators’, ‘database administrators’ or ‘account managers’. They get absorbed into management systems, balanced scorecards, customer service standards and the other paraphernalia of modern management and they lose sight of what they are all about.
Managing people with passion has to be done differently. It has to keep the sense of purpose ‘up front’.
It has to keep the passion burning.
This is the title of a great post on the Slow Leadership blog. Dave Woods says:
‘I work with a large variety of CEOs, senior managers and key employees. If I ask about the needs and issues within the company, I almost always get the same response: “We need more communication.”
My reaction to that is that it is simply, WRONG!
Companies don’t need more communication. They need more clarity.
- Clarity of the vision of the company.
- Clarity of where the company is going (long term and short term).
- Clarity of HOW the company will get there.
- Clarity of individual roles and how those roles create value toward the vision.
- Clarity of how roles must intertwine in order to achieve extraordinary results.
- Clarity of how the company will hold itself and each individual accountable.’
Dave then goes on to argue that if you look at a great sports team they actually need very little communication from the coach. They know all the plays and they know what they have to do. In short they have clarity. Dave argues that it is not communication that we should be increasing – but clarity.
Amen to that!
However clarity only comes with communication that is frequent, 2 way and relevant to both player and coach; employee and manager. Surely there can be no clarity without communication?
When you watch a great team play what you are seeing is the result of dozens of hours of communication, practice, feedback, delegation and coaching. Typically tens of hours of this ‘management’ go into every hour of play.
Life in most businesses is not like that. There is no practice ground. It is always ‘game time’. And most managers find it incredibly difficult to pull players out of the game to them at all whether to clarify, give feedback, coach or delegate. It is all they can do to keep playing the game – never mind improve.
So I disagree with Dave – and agree with his clients. Most organisations do need more communication. But it has to be effective. It has to focus on performance and improvement. It has to be constructive. It has to keep both vision and values in the front of people minds. And it has to be frequent.
Sounds just like a recipe for 121s to me!
This from the ‘business pundit‘ blog recently:
″A new study shows that 90% of managers think they are in the top 10% at their workplace.
Believe you’re among the top performers in your office? You’re not alone.
According to a new survey, an impossible 90 percent of managers think they’re among the top 10 percent of performers at their workplace.
The number is highest among executives, 97 percent of whom consider themselves shining stars, according to a recent survey in BusinessWeek magazine.”
The sad truth is just how easy it is for most people to get into the top 10% of managers in just about any organisation.
By consistently doing some management basics such as:
the vast majority of managers can massively improve their effectiveness and really stand out as high performers.
It is not about charisma, vision or flair. It not about MBAs, strategy, long hours and inspiration.
It is about consistently doing the basics well.