Hack:
Avoiding Management schizophrenia

By Olivier Lavergne - Technology Services Engagement Manager Europe at Hewlett Packard

December 1, 2010 at 12:58am

Moonshots

Humanize the language of business

Increase trust, reduce fear

Expand the scope of employee autonomy

Summary

How often did I hear managers tell me that the way they had to behave did not reflect who they were any longer, their behaviour was dictated by the system they were in, it was coming from the top down. This is what I call Management schizophrenia. We cannot be one person at home, a loving mom or dad with our children, and another person at work, a manager, like it or not, it is the same person we are talking about.

Problem

As a manager we have a key role to play in explaining and showing by example to our employees that we are not victims of the system, we are part of it instead and we always have a choice. We have a role to play in adding personal meaning to the company strategy and to what is coming from the top down. This has to be done at each and every level starting from the top at the CEO chair down to the Individual Contributor, otherwise the message gets diluted and loses meaning at every step in the cascading process.
As a manager, we also have a key role to play in helping our employees strike the right work/life balance. Too many of them are looking for guidance when it comes to defining work priorities. As they do not dare to ask, they try to do it all, the quality of their overall work suffers, they slowly burn out, their motivation erodes because they do see that the quality of their work is not even in line any longer with their personal standards and as they feel as victims, they start slowly to disengage because they believe they are trapped and abused by the system they are in.
As a manager, we finally have a key role to play to coach them in the process of being autonomous and thoughtful when it comes to setting priorities for themselves. They are in the best position to make that kind of decision, they must just feel prepared and empowered to do so.
I read once that every manager has a responsibility to ensure that any decision is always taken at the lowest possible level where it still makes sense to have that decision taken. This is very much in contradiction with the XX century centralized management style of "Command and control". This means that we as managers must learn in the process to let go and build as much flexibility in the system as there can be. The system is as open and flexible as we want it to be because at our modest level and for what happens under us we manage the system, we are the system and we are perceived that way by the employees that report to us...

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