Stop managing

If you like the occasional blinding flash of the obvious there's a book out - Management rewired: Why feedback doesn't work and other surprising lessons from the latest brain science by Charles S. Jacobs. Basically takeaway is that the annual performance review is for the birds, and boss pressure is of dubious value. When I was involved in running companies I always found employees telling about their latest work successes and solutions like new algorithms or graphical UIs at lunch. Not bragging to a boss but discussing and getting much ahhs and ooohs from their peers. Peer strokes and peer pressure is good. Simple as that, it's pretty obvious and we know it. But alas most management experts don't for whatever reasons. Another issue is motivation. How come the military see their crew risk life and work long and hard hours? How come small startups have employees working nights and days without complaining? They have simple and clear goals, goals that are easy to understand and for some to get aligned with - purpose and belonging that at the end will entice us to give our utmost. What would be a common denominator for these obvious facts? Transparency. Let your peers see what you do and allow you to see what and why all is happening. Simple, obvious and presumably easy to implement even in a cubicle farm. Except of course, that current enterprise systems and even E 2.0 stuff are designed as tools for specific organisational and process silos. And as we all know, sitting inside a silo hampers transparency big time. So, silos away and let the sun shine on the workers again.

Comments

[Ric]

"annual performance review is for the birds, and boss pressure is of dubious value" - and right there you have two major reasons for my decision to leave the cube farm ... well said, Sig!

[James Dellow]

Nice post. There is some already established theories around this... I think you've picked up the difference between what I've seen described as membership behaviour, organisational citizenship behaviour and task behaviour. You say "annual performance review is for the birds, and boss pressure is of dubious value" and this is reflected in the fact that I think they mostly motivate employees towards task behaviour only.

[sig]

James,

good point that. When mulling over the theory suggested I end up thinking "hey, it must be simpler than that", yes even "hmm, sounds like another self-fulfilling-analysis by the management theorists".

Simpler as in two things:

1. We need daily and frequent strokes, so annual or even bi-monthly or whatever is for the birds.
2. Strokes really only works if coming from somebody we respect. And respect does not come from positions handed out by somebody else, it comes from actual behaviour. I.e. we might respect a boss but it's not automatic.

Another thing is that "management theories" never challenges the assumption that "management" should exist at all - thus any theory from that camp must be taken with a handful of salt.

Their task is to make "management better" and not "make business better". If the latter was the purpose, then one should always start with a challenge of all assumptions, including the mere existence of the old frameworks (aka management) wouldn't you think?