There are a number of variations to this myth of cause and effect. And it is easily the most pervasive. In its simplest form, it is simply the myth that whoever is standing closest to the problem is obviously responsible for it. An example of this would be management believing that the manufacturing person unable to keep sufficient inventory of odd-sized bolts is obviously responsible for the problem when production is halted rather than the designer who included an obsolete bolt spec in his design. Deming was particularly frustrated with this common management disease.
But the myth is more pervasive than this. As it turns out, cause and effect is typically defined in advance by the system, by context. Peter Senge used to ask who the leader on a ship was. Common answers included the captain who gave orders, the navigator who gave directions, the activity director who set the tone, etc. Senge pointed out that the ship designer is rarely mentioned as the leader even though the designer defines what activities can take place, how sharply the ship can turn, its maximum speed, etc. Once the ship is designed, all other parties are simply tweaking variables within some predetermined range. They are causing various effects, to be sure, but those effects are all within a normal, predetermined range. Getting "effects" outside of that range requires a change to the system, something an employee rarely has the responsibility or knowledge to do.
Management concerned with cause and effect is basically working to maintain the status quo. Transformative leadership changes the context, changes what is possible. Cause and effect is a given once a particular system is defined. Perhaps the biggest myth is to believe that the individual employees within that system can transcend its limits.
- Ron
Friday, December 29, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Management Myths
Unleashing human potential at work and creating the freedom to contribute meaningfully
If you’ve ever gone to a bookstore to find a good book on business leadership or management, the number of titles purporting to unlock the secrets of successfully leading an organization will overwhelm you. Countless recipes for success line shelf after shelf of Borders and Barnes and Noble.
But the worlds described in those books are never where you and I live. We know this from the experiences of our workaday worlds. We live inside corporations where management seems to shower us with countless tribulations and inanities that prevent us from feeling a sense of purposefulness, value and contribution. And they do this in a myriad of ways, everyday, that annoy and perplex us. We see little connection between what we do and what lies upstream and downstream of us. We are given so little responsibility, entrusted with so few decisions, and assigned repetitive, tedious tasks. We seem to dwell in trivial matters, with too much to do, multiple shifting priorities, and little perspective on what matters most or how best to contribute. In fact, if you talk much to other employees, you might conclude that companies succeed in spite of their managements and only because of the heroic efforts of employees to overcome the impediments management streams their way.
What is this all about? Why does this happen? Is management so cloistered and shielded from their own workplace worlds that they can’t see what’s happening? Have they forgotten what it’s like to be a grunt trying to maneuver through a raft of management requests and imposed task priorities just to get their own work done? Or is management just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with their own self-importance and obtaining the next bonus that they focus almost exclusively on their own goals and objectives and pay little attention to how their own company works and the real problems that confound their employees?
We believe that the managements of most corporations simply labor under a set of myths that misinform them everyday, myths that are deeply embedded in their psyches and totally invisible to them. It’s like they’re living in a room where muzak has been playing for two years; after a while, they can’t hear the music playing anymore. These myths have become so deeply embedded into the fabric of the companies' cultures that they are virtually imperceptible.
Our hope for this blog is that if we can make these myths visible to management, they might actually be able to see the folly of some of their behaviors and the underlying beliefs and attitudes that catalyze those behaviors. By doing so, we believe we might be able to unlock the vast repository of human potential, desire and entrepreneurial spirit that lie trapped inside these monoliths of dysfunction and ineffectiveness. At the heart of all of this is our desire to unleash the human spirit and create the freedom to excel, contribute, and feel valuable inside places where people spend an abundance of their lives. If we can do that, we will feel successful.
Toward this end, we ask all of you attending this site to contribute your own insights into this subject of interest. We know that you have endless sources of information and insights by virtue of where you work everyday. We obviously will share our ideas and recommendations, but we are necessarily limited by our own experiences and knowledge. So, together, we may be able to influence and ultimately persuade our corporate leaders to adopt more informed, more rational, and more enlightened and effective approaches to management by letting them see how their current ways of thinking tremendously limit the potentials of their people and, therefore, their organizations. After all, it will only be through harnessing the brains, commitment, attention, and energy of employees that companies can hope to succeed and thrive into the 21st century. And since we’re all in this together, it’s in all of our interest to start to move these corporations toward more enlightened leadership so that our posterity will also have productive places to inhabit, work and thrive. So, let us begin.
- Bill
If you’ve ever gone to a bookstore to find a good book on business leadership or management, the number of titles purporting to unlock the secrets of successfully leading an organization will overwhelm you. Countless recipes for success line shelf after shelf of Borders and Barnes and Noble.
But the worlds described in those books are never where you and I live. We know this from the experiences of our workaday worlds. We live inside corporations where management seems to shower us with countless tribulations and inanities that prevent us from feeling a sense of purposefulness, value and contribution. And they do this in a myriad of ways, everyday, that annoy and perplex us. We see little connection between what we do and what lies upstream and downstream of us. We are given so little responsibility, entrusted with so few decisions, and assigned repetitive, tedious tasks. We seem to dwell in trivial matters, with too much to do, multiple shifting priorities, and little perspective on what matters most or how best to contribute. In fact, if you talk much to other employees, you might conclude that companies succeed in spite of their managements and only because of the heroic efforts of employees to overcome the impediments management streams their way.
What is this all about? Why does this happen? Is management so cloistered and shielded from their own workplace worlds that they can’t see what’s happening? Have they forgotten what it’s like to be a grunt trying to maneuver through a raft of management requests and imposed task priorities just to get their own work done? Or is management just so overwhelmingly preoccupied with their own self-importance and obtaining the next bonus that they focus almost exclusively on their own goals and objectives and pay little attention to how their own company works and the real problems that confound their employees?
We believe that the managements of most corporations simply labor under a set of myths that misinform them everyday, myths that are deeply embedded in their psyches and totally invisible to them. It’s like they’re living in a room where muzak has been playing for two years; after a while, they can’t hear the music playing anymore. These myths have become so deeply embedded into the fabric of the companies' cultures that they are virtually imperceptible.
Our hope for this blog is that if we can make these myths visible to management, they might actually be able to see the folly of some of their behaviors and the underlying beliefs and attitudes that catalyze those behaviors. By doing so, we believe we might be able to unlock the vast repository of human potential, desire and entrepreneurial spirit that lie trapped inside these monoliths of dysfunction and ineffectiveness. At the heart of all of this is our desire to unleash the human spirit and create the freedom to excel, contribute, and feel valuable inside places where people spend an abundance of their lives. If we can do that, we will feel successful.
Toward this end, we ask all of you attending this site to contribute your own insights into this subject of interest. We know that you have endless sources of information and insights by virtue of where you work everyday. We obviously will share our ideas and recommendations, but we are necessarily limited by our own experiences and knowledge. So, together, we may be able to influence and ultimately persuade our corporate leaders to adopt more informed, more rational, and more enlightened and effective approaches to management by letting them see how their current ways of thinking tremendously limit the potentials of their people and, therefore, their organizations. After all, it will only be through harnessing the brains, commitment, attention, and energy of employees that companies can hope to succeed and thrive into the 21st century. And since we’re all in this together, it’s in all of our interest to start to move these corporations toward more enlightened leadership so that our posterity will also have productive places to inhabit, work and thrive. So, let us begin.
- Bill
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