This is part 2 of “Teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”, a series on different ways to align an organisation. You will find the part 1 of the series here
In the first part we looked at an organization that is drifting without clear direction, led by the customers’ requests.
In this second part we are looking at an upper manager who decides to take the matters in their own hands, by deciding what should be done and how.
Management by Taylorism
Situation: Some mission/vision, no strategy, a manager decides all
The boss: “We don’t need a strategy, I will tell you (all) what to do”.
In this case, a manager has taken the stance that they know exactly what has to be done and will tell what everyone should do. The employees in this environment are not valued for their brain but rather for their hands.
Successes:
As a manager, you will always know what your employees are doing.
As an employee, you never have to wonder what you could be doing, “management” will tell you. The alignment to the manager’s vision is perfect.
It’s easy to get promoted, do exactly what your manager tells you to do and how they tell you to. New features and product come out regularly, fulfilling the management desires.
Difficulties:
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” -Steve Jobs
Telling pro-active, creative people what to do and how to, will make sure that they flee your organization at the first chance they get. This naturally leads to higher employee turnover and having constant juniors to train.
The remaining long term employees lose any initiative, leading to not doing anything, unless specifically told to. This means you need a large amount of the manager work has to be micro management of their employees or work slows down to a crawl. Of course one way to deal with that issue is to give your orders to a middle management, who will then in turn execute the micro management. Welcome to old school military!
Think of it that way: You have a one brain organization; hopefully that is a very mighty brain.
This alignment type is likely to stray close the the Westrum organization model of “Pathological”. With this model usually comes fear, threat, witholding of information, modifying of information to make it look better , … (You can read about the Westrum organization model below, in the “Read more” section)
Possible ways to improve:
As an employee: It’s very difficult position to be in. Usually it’s just easier to leave to another place. If you stay too long in such an organization, your pro-activity disappears, along with it goes your self-esteem and then it gets really hard to get out. I think one way to improve the situation would also be to bring forward data, validating or not the manager’s intuition. Beware though you might be tagged as a trouble maker and find yourself on an ejectable seat.
As the manager: I have not been in this position, so I’m not sure what could be a good advice there. I think the first step would be to get an external (business) coach to support you in the moves you are intending to try.
Employee experience:
Words you are likely to hear: “I’m just here to do my job”, “I’m not paid for that”, “It’s not in my job description”
Employees gets detached, and just do the bare minimum. With remote work possibilities, they are likely to do what they are told to and spend the rest of the workday on other things that actually matter to them (work or not work activity). Any decision as small as it is, requires the manager input, who is then becoming a bottleneck when they need to approve the purchase of a 10€ book, give their input on the last piece of software and read all the meeting notes people took.
Management by committee, an additional flavor to this alignment style
A flavor of above that I have encountered, is management by committee. It’s very similar looking but rather than 1 person deciding, a small group makes every decision.
Added positives: The members of the committee have a wider understanding of the situations now and can now oversee more areas where a single person couldn’t. If the people are different enough you are likely to reach better decisions.
Added difficulties: Decisions are slower as the group needs to agree with each other. If the leader is still not ready to hear other’s opinions, you will end up having this group just for shows.
Read more
“Missionaries versus Mercenaries” by Marty Cagan
In the next post: The management recognizes the need for common objectives and forms an early strategy. —