Holiday Wish
More people are negatively affected by management malpractice today than at any other time in history, owing to population growth and the enormous influence that organizations have upon peoples’ lives. Overcoming management malpractice requires the wisdom to see it, the courage to expose it and the determination to prevent it. My hope and prayer for the holiday season and the coming new year is that we will see the beginning of the end of management malpractice in the workplace.
Taking Responsibility: How Far Have You Gone?
Who are the people in your organization who don’t accept responsibility for their actions? Are they easy to identify? Why are they failing in their accountability? Has your organization failed to promote the value of assuming responsibility for individual actions? Do you accept responsibility for your actions? Always, sometimes, or only occasionally? What can you do to improve your ability to hold people accountable for their actions, performance and results? Do you assume responsibility for identifying, exposing and preventing management malpractice? If not, why? Do you think it’s someone else’s responsibility to expose management malpractice in your organization?
You can avoid the management malpractice of asking others to take responsibility for their actions or inactions when you or your organization fail to do so by continually reviewing and modifying your own behavior. Everyone fails to take full responsibility for his or her actions and inactions from time to time. Admit it. Make admitting your failure to take responsibility part of your culture, but never let such admissions become acceptable reasons or excuses for a pattern of negligence and poor performance. Taking responsibility for your actions and inactions is a learned behavior that can only be improved through constant practice, and practice requires an environment where mistakes can easily be admitted, addressed and corrected.
The Joys of Diversity at Dell
Dell Computer Chairman Michael Dell understands the value of diversity in organizations, as evidenced by his creation of a highly flexible work environment and a highly loyal customer base. His company — ranked number one on Fortune’s 2005 most admired companies list — is a $30 billion powerhouse that embraces much more than the traditional, narrower definitions of diversity; it nurtures an undying commitment to diversity of thought, leadership, skill set, style, and solutions. Diverse opinions, radically different approaches to work, multiple points of view, and a wide-ranging array of talent are encouraged and embraced at Dell. One of the company’s leading practices is its open meeting format, in which any idea or any issue can be raised by anyone at any time.
The company’s unique organizational culture — characterized by some as having the most change-oriented, adaptable workers in corporate America — has nurtured diversity as the primary means to rapid change, adaptability, versatility, market responsiveness, and superior competitive performance. Not surprisingly, the greatest beneficiaries of Dell’s enlightened approach to diversity are its customers. The company’s legendary approach to “better customer solutions” not only mirrors a wide variety of customer needs but also a broad spectrum of worker styles and capabilities. The result? Effective management of diversity at Dell — driven by customer interests and nurtured by management — has led to attracting and keeping more customers.
What stifles the promotion of diversity in your organization? Do you believe that greater diversity can create greater value? If not, why not? What can you do individually to promote diversity in your organization? Is there too much uniformity in your organization? How can you fight uniformity without appearing disloyal or negative? Have you considered the cost of uniformity or the lack of diversity in your organization? Can you think of an experience in your organizational life when diversity was encouraged, extended, and celebrated? What were the results?
You can avoid the malpractice of pretending to value diversity while promoting uniformity by educating yourself about the true benefits of genuine diversity. This will allow you to adopt the right mindset for fostering diversity and realize that a widened perspective increases innovation, strengthens teams, improves performance, and motivates employees. Do more than merely comply with affirmative action and workplace diversity laws, regulations, and guidelines — go the second, third, and fourth mile by actively promoting diversity for the sake of diversity, because diversity produces greater results than does uniformity. Diversity truly does have the power to create greater value. Try it.
Google, Google, Google!
Google, the fastest growing tech company, with revenue growth of 437,115 percent in the past five years, raised almost $2 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) and topped $1 billion in revenues after only five years of operation. What led to such success? A vision “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” according the company’s Web site—a vision developed by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a Stanford University dorm room. The Google vision produced a “new approach to online search that . . . quickly spread to information seekers around the globe.” Today, Google is the globe’s leading Internet search engine offering “an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.” As with all great visions, when successfully implemented, Google became a household word through word of mouth. Thousands of satisfied users told their friends and family about the incredible service. Today more than 100 million users log on to Google every month, and thousands of advertisers utilize Google’s AdWords program to promote their products and services online. It is one of the top five most popular sites on the Web, offering user interfaces in ninety-seven languages and serving more users outside the United States than inside.
Even its name is visionary. The word Google comes from the mathematical term “googol” for a 1 followed by 100 zeros, playing on the company’s vision to organize and make easily accessible the enormity of information available on the World Wide Web. Here’s what cofounder Larry Page says about the company’s vision: “The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” And that’s exactly what he and the other 2,000 employees at Google are trying to create. It won’t be easy; it’s admittedly a “far-reaching vision requiring research, development, and innovation to realize.” But Google is, as it states on its Web site, “committed to blazing that trail.”
Supporting this bold and inspiring vision are ten things that Google has found to be true:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.
While these so-called truths are valuable, they are not written in stone and they certainly are not the company’s vision, which will continue to require new learning and new discovered or created truths. Google’s vision to create the perfect search engine, from original conception to ongoing shaping and implementation, is real, unadulterated vision, the kind that inspires hundreds of millions of people and raises billions of dollars in capital. Hopefully, Google will keep up the good work—everyone benefits from its information and vision—including thumbing its nose at Wall Street, as the company did in its auction-style IPO, which fetched the highest share prices ever. Not surprisingly, Wall Street needs more vision and less certainty as well.
Want A New Business Model for Christmas?
Berkshire Hathaway, six times on the Fortune most admired companies list over the past twenty years, is a holding company that owns a diverse range of service, manufacturing, retailing, and food businesses including property and casualty insurance, carpet, bricks and concrete blocks, clothing, retailing, diamonds, flight training, newspapers, candy, farm equipment, consumer finance, industrial coatings, restaurants, engineering software, furniture retailing and leasing, footwear, and more. The company’s operating culture is simple: operating decisions are made by managers of the business units—Berkshire Hathaway claims to have superior CEOs running its businesses—while investment decisions and all other capital allocation decisions are made by chairman Warren Buffet in consultation with vice chairman Charles Munger. Buffet and Munger delegate everything to managers operating the businesses, almost to the point of abdication. There are 172,000 employees in the Berkshire Hathaway family of businesses, and only sixteen of them work at headquarters.
The operating managers enjoy enormous freedom. They don’t have to put up with institutional constraints or regulations, they’re not controlled by history or industry commitments, and they don’t have to dance to the demands of shareholder constituencies or Wall Street—they just have to make good short-term and long-term operating decisions that keep Berkshire Hathaway’s long-term performance above that of the S&P 500 index. They then dispatch the excess cash from their operations to headquarters for investing by Buffet and Munger. Over the past thirty-nine years Berkshire’s average annual growth in stock value was 22 percent, compared to S&P’s 10 percent, with an overall gain of 259,485 percent compared to 4,743 percent. Last year’s net worth gain alone was $14 billion.
By all measurements, Berkshire Hathaway’s performance has been nothing short of amazing. The company’s secret? There is no doubt whatsoever about what matters most: beating the S&P index by investing in the right businesses and trusting talented management with operating decisions. Berkshire’s investment/acquisition criteria are as clear and specific as you could ask for, straight from its Web site, so that all qualifying businesses can apply, if desired: “1) large purchases—at least $50 million of before tax earnings; 2) demonstrated consistent earning power—future projections are of no interest to us, neither are turnaround situations; 3) businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt; 4) management in place—we can’t supply it; 5) simple businesses—if there’s lots of technology, we won’t understand it; 6) an offering price—we don’t want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown.”
Berkshire Hathaway makes it perfectly clear to operating managers, potential acquisitions, and shareholders what matters most to the company. There is no doubt or questioning or uncertainty, and politics and manipulation are kept to a minimum. Such behavior does not thrive or survive in the Berkshire system. Now this is a business model worth wishing for!
Why Don’t Employees Perform?
Employees don’t perform because their supervisors malpractice management. Look at the evidence around you, examine the published data — the message is always the same: In organizations where the majority of employees are actively engaged in their work, producing high levels of performance and results, management malpractices are quickly identified as problems, exposed as unacceptable behaviors and prevented from recurring through open dialogue and zero tolerance. Of course, management malpractice exists in every organization, even in the best companies to work for, but it gets sqashed in the best and runs rampant in the worst. Where do you and your organization reside along the management malpractice continuum — squashing or running rampant? Why don’t your employees perform? Here’s a list of reasons why employees don’t meet the performance expectations of their supervisors from Administaff:
1. Employers fail to communicate to employees why their work is important.
2. Employees do not receive timely feedback about their performances.
3. Supervisors fail to acknowledge individually how employees are affected by their work assignments.
4. The work environment contains physical and/or organizational performance obstacles.
5. Documentation sources are poorly designed, inaccessible or non-existent.
6. Employees lack the job aids necessary to guide correct performance.
7. Performance expectations are unclear or unstated.
8. Employees lack authority to do their jobs.
9. Doing the job correctly is punished or ignored.
10. Employees do not know how or have forgotten how to do their jobs.
“Interestingly,” says Charles Ginn, Director of Performance Improvement at Administaff, “only the last reason on this list calls for additional training….Dealing with the causes behind poor employee performance takes time, effort and a willingness to change whatever is not working regardless of how long you have been doing it that way. The increased productivity and enhanced job performance will be well worth the temporary discomfort.” Do you believe it? Do you believe that eliminating management malpractice in your organization will increase the performance of your employees? Your answer will determine the performance of your people. Even if you find the above list too oriented to a command and control working environment, the principles still apply. If you want your employees to find their own paths, solve their own problems, create new environments, innovate and make things happen, you still have to pass along the vision, the expectations, the boundaries or lack of boundaries and the definitions of value creation and superior results. To not do these things is management malpractice.
Are Executives Victims?
Executives are victims of management malpractice more often than you might think. Don’t believe it? Check out Career Coach Meg Montford’s Website to get more of the story. Here’s something from one of her recent blogs, “According to a recent survey of 147 employed executives by ExecuNet (executive job search and employment network), 67% are not satisfied with their current jobs — up from 55% in July 2005 — and of those who are not satisfied, 78% plan to change companies in the next six months….The survey gave five main reasons: 1) Poor company culture; 2) Limited opportunity for advancement; 3) Lack of challenge or personal growth; 4) Compensation; and 5) Boss is not a good match. Dave Opton, founder of ExecuNet, summed it up this way: ‘Companies have neglected retention for too long and now that the competition for talent is heating up, many are responding with too little, too late.’ The executives that responded to this survey had been on their jobs an average of 6 years and earned around $171,000.” Imagine that, the very people who have the most ability and opportunity to eliminate management malpractice in organizations are running away from it just like everyone else. Maybe, if our situation and the surveys keep getting worse, we’ll finally decide to identify, expose and prevent management malpractice right where we are. Doing so may become one of the most sought after executive skills of the future.
Resignation? Or Revolution?
In our Discussion Forum, Jason posted a recent article from Forbes.com entitled “Loving the job you hate”. The article reports the following disheartening statistics: Around one million people call in sick per day, 87% of employees in the U.S. don’t enjoy their job, the nation spends an estimated $150 billion a year dealing with problems born of job dissatisfaction (i.e. “the treatment for stress-related problems, absenteeism, reduced productivity and employee turnover”). The culprit? Management malpractice. The article suggests 10 ideas for making the best of one’s bad job situation. After all, as author Jane Boucher (How to Love the Job You Hate: Job Satisfaction for the 21st Century) puts it, “Most of us can’t just quit our jobs.” Here are the ideas the article proposes:
“1. Communicate. Let the boss know your achievements and problems.”
“2. Do Something for Yourself. Take on a project that’s dear to your heart or set aside time for what you do best.”
“3. Improve a Bad Relationship.”
“4. Delegate. Never allow process to trump the result.”
“5. Seek Feedback.”
“6. Tackle Tough Assignments First.”
“7. Have A Little Fun. Work isn’t play, but it doesn’t have to be mind-numbingly serious all the time.”
“8. Encourage Teamwork. Doing more with less demands increased productivity.”
“9. Body and Soul. Pay attention to your physical and mental health.”
“10. Get a Life. Take the time to do whatever it is that you’re passionate about.”
Though I’m very happy to see the problem of job dissatisfaction getting this kind of coverage and I think these suggestions are valuable, I wish for more radical solutions. The attitude of this article strikes me as rather hopeless. It sounds like, “Make the most of the job you hate because nothing is going to change anytime soon.” As usual, I’m afraid, all responsibility is placed on the shoulders of already burdened employees. This is not acceptable. This is what we at managementmalpractice.com want to change. Let us carry some of your weight. Have us send a memo to your boss, get your organization anonymously named on our Guilty Companies list, read about the experiences of others like you, feel a sense of community in our forum and get ideas for starting a revolution in your workplace. Join us!
R E S P E C T
Why do people in organizations malpractice management? Ignorance. Arrogance. Selfishness. Carelessness. Lack of training. Ease. Convenience. Expediency. Efficiency. Thoughtlessness. Impatience. Cynicism. Distrust. Lack of RESPECT for others. Why do you malpractice management? Have you thought about it? Take just one of the many management principle that are often malpracticed in today’s organizations — respecting others and their individuality. Are there people inside your organization who do not receive the respect they deserve? Why are they ignored, belittled, or discriminated against? What can you do to change things? Are there people outside your organization — be it vendors, suppliers, or customers — who likewise fail to receive respect from your organization? If so, why? What about the people who report directly to you? Are any of them respected more than others? If so, why? Are you respected by your peers and leaders? When was the last time you felt seriously disrespected?
To increase the level of respect for individuals in your organization, begin by eliminating the disrespect. Never bully, demean, berate, belittle, ridicule, denigrate, or otherwise verbally or emotionally abuse anyone in your organization. If you have to convey criticism, do it privately, not publicly. Dig deeply into your organization to uncover verbal abuse and other forms of disrespect. There is no excuse for allowing such behavior to exist and flourish in today’s organizations. Stop it now. Recognizing and communicating the serious downsides associated with such behavior — lawsuits, loss of staff, termination, disengaged workers, lack of productivity — is a step in the right direction.
Employee Engagement
The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) is an independent, apolitical, international centre of research and consultancy in human resource issues. IES’s research on employee engagement is worth reviewing. What is employee engagement? According to IES, an engaged employee believes in the organization, desires to work to make things better, understands the business context and bigger picture, respects and helps colleagues, demonstrates a willingness to go the extra mile, and keeps up to date on developments in the field. What drives employee engagement? IES’s research indicates that “the strongest driver of all is a sense of feeling valued and involved. This has several key components: 1) involvement in decision making; 2) the extent to which employees feel able to voice their ideas, and managers listen to these views, and value employees’ contributions; 3) the opportunities employees have to develop their jobs; and 4) the extent to which the organization is concerned for employees’ health and wellbeing.”
According to various surveys conducted by IES, Gallup, The Conference Board, The Society for Human Resource Management, Towers Perrin, and The Discovery Group, the percentage of “engaged employees” in organizations is less than 30% in the U.S., less than 20% in Europe and less than 10% in Japan. Organizational leaders and managers worldwide should be apalled by these statistics.
According to IES, “Engagement is big in the HR consultancy market, yet there is a dearth of academic research in this area. IES research suggests that engagement is more than a passing fad – it brings clear business benefits. Engagement is seen, by the UK company that is furthest advanced in using it, as bringing real competitive advantage. However, raising engagement levels, and maintaining them, takes time, effort, commitment and investment – it is not for the half-hearted.” We need more focus on employee engagement. And, of course, we need more focus on the primary contributor to such low employee engagement levels worldwide–management malpractice.
Bullying in the Workplace
The Chartered Management Institute of Britian claims, “Bullying amongst managers rockets as organizations fail to take action. Bullying is rife across UK organizations according to research published by the Chartered Management Institute. The survey, which questioned 512 executives in public and private sector organizations, revealed that many senior managers are victims of bullying and identifies psychological intimidation as the biggest problem. The research also shows an alarming lack of awareness about dealing with workplace bullies. Bullying at work: the experience of managers published in association with UNISON and Acas, reveals that 39 per cent of all managers have been bullied in the past three years. Middle managers are the most bullied amongst the UK management population, with half of them (49 per cent) having suffered. This suggests that ‘management squeeze’ is a serious issue - with pressures from above and below the reporting line creating problems for those in between. However, victims appear at all levels of the organization. Almost a third (29 per cent) of directors and two fifths (42 per cent) of junior managers reported incidences of being bullied.”
“The research found that the most common forms of bullying are misuse of power or position (70 per cent), verbal insults (69 per cent) and undermining by overloading or criticism (68 per cent). Physical intimidation or violence are the least common forms, with less than one fifth (17 per cent) having been bullied in this way.”
The reason for all the bullying? Management malpractice, specifically poor management skills and authoritarian management styles. Mary Chapman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute reaffirms this, “Poor management is at the root of the problem since senior staff lack the skills to prevent incidents of bullying from occurring. Organizations must create an open, empowering culture and develop the skills of those who enter management positions to ensure that the potential for bullying is minimized and that a positive, productive working environment develops.”
Employee Burnout
HR Magazine reports, “Forty percent of employees say their workload is unreasonable, according to a study conducted over several years by management consulting firm The Discovery Group. And in many organizations, that won’t change soon. Positions have been eliminated, and many people will be expected to continue to do more work than they believe is appropriate because hiring has stalled. Bruce L. Katcher, an industrial/organizational psychologist with The Discovery Group in Sharon, Massachusetts warns, ‘This exhaustion results in a lack of enthusiasm, tardiness, daydreaming and a drop in productivity and quality of their work.’ But there are things that HR line supervisors can do to try to limit the stress of the workload on valued employees, Katcher says. For example:
“Try job enrichment. Give key workers ‘more opportunities to make decisions, to be challenged, to use more of their intellectual skills.”
“Retrain people. Reinvigorate careers of those who are loyal to your organization.”
“Rotate employees. Sending them through different jobs widens their knowledge base and increases their value to the firm.”
“Show appreciation. Thank people and recognize them publicly. Show that you realize that this is a difficult time for them.”
“Allow –and even encourage–informal employee chats around cubicles or the water cooler on company time. ‘The more opportunities people have to interact with their peers and serve as a support network, the better.’”
In other words, don’t malpractice management. Great management principles practiced by the “best companies to work for” — principles such as providing meaningful work opportunities, matching talents and assignments, sharing ideas at every level, fostering a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo, treating employees as your most valuable asset, valuing the contributions of each individual, creating an environment where people feel free to raise concerns, establishing a foundation of respect and trust, enabling people to tap into their full potential, listening to all viewpoints, constantly challenging assumptions and biases, and accepting responsibility for your actions – help substantially to reduce and eliminate employee burnout. Management malpractice is, once again, the primary cause behind unreasonable workloads in organizations.
#1 Productivity Killer
“Workers in the United States believe that poor management is the number one productivity killer in their workplaces. The 2005 Workplace Productivity Survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that almost six out of ten (58 per cent) Americans identified poor management as the biggest obstacle to productivity,” as reported in Management Issues News.
Management malpractice destroys productivity, people, cultures and organizations. Sometimes I wonder whether we have all become so cynical and apathic that we just don’t give a damn. We can solve this problem, but only if we work together with our co-workers to first, see the problem (I think most of us see it, we just don’t seem to believe that we can do anything about it), second, expose the malpractice and third, take steps to prevent it from happening again and again in the future. We can and must start talking about management malpractice more openly in our organizations.
In 2006 we’ll be providing you with a number of new tools to promote more open dialogue about management malpractice in your organizations.
EDE–Employee Disengagement Epidemic
A recent article by Management Issues News identifies employee disengagement as a global epidemic. “At a time when companies are focused on growth and relying on their workforces to achieve it, a major new survey has found that only one in seven employees worldwide are fully engaged with their jobs and willing to go the extra mile for their companies. But the study, by consultants Towers Perrin, found that while many people are keen to contribute more at work, the behavior of their managers and culture of their organizations is actively discouraging them from doing so….they say their leaders and supervisors put obstacles in their paths. The study, the largest of its kind, was carried out among more than 85,000 people working for large and midsize companies in 16 countries on four continents. It shows that there is a vast reserve of untapped ‘employee performance potential’ that could drive better financial results if only companies could tap into this reserve.”
Management malpractice is once again the culprit. People in organizations want to contribution their talents and passion and commitment to their organizations, but they are thwarted by managers and leaders who want to limit, control, judge, coerce, evaluate, criticize, direct, scrutinize, and otherwise exercise dominion over them. Let your people fly, encourage them to find and do what they love, give them the chance to create a better workplace for themselves and their co-workers, open the door to higher levels of performance and productivity than you have ever imagined. Stop malpracticing management. Apply the timeless, universal management principles that your organization preaches, the ones your people have heard you espouse, and if you haven’t espoused them, start now — then practice what you preach. If you don’t know what these timeless, universal management principles are, go to the websites of the best run companies on Fortune’s most admired list or best companies to work for list. Turn the tide on employee disengagement now!