Managing Leadership^®

Several articles from the WSJ published over the past several weeks explore how managers are learning to deal in new ways with organizations composed of autonomous constituents, or of more assertively involved employees:

• Management by walking around. As a general rule, the more press exposure – especially in the form of personal interviews – a CEO has, the less likely he or she is to be genuinely effective. When the CEO’s focus shifts from the firm and its work to him or herself and the propagation of his or her special qualities, the end is probably near. Nevertheless, this article is worth reading by managers from the senior executive level on down. It describes the efforts of one CEO to get to know his organization, its constituent elements and individuals, and to listen to and learn from their experiences and challenges. In the course of doing this, he also builds trust and confidence within the organization in his long-term, organizationally-centered good intentions, removing a major obstacle to their ability to get productively on with their own work.
• Multigenerational management. It can seem, sometimes, that the PC machine rolls relentlessly on, finding new groups to identify in new ways, requiring new accommodations that are directed at their peculiar needs. These needs may thus become institutionalized, perhaps even pathologically, rather than relieved in the broader genius of society. And yet, like many things, this subject is legitimately debatable, and every position is laden with difficult to identify and assess advantages and disadvantages. Managers cannot escape the need to figure out how to deal with it. We have discussed here both the unfortunate tendency to differentiate disparagingly between the generations, and some of the issues associated with managing across generations. Now, take a look at this article describing some ingenious ways managers are successfully dealing with “multigenerational” workforces.
• Centralized decentralization. Many firms recognize the need to exploit the otherwise hidden talents, knowledge, and experience of their employees. Various efforts to “manage knowledge” or to create “learning organizations” (see this recent post for a discussion of this) are commonly generated to address this need. Curiously, though, many of them have the peculiar characteristic of being inflexibly designed, delivered, and monitored from the top down to promote flexible bottom-up and -across communication and productivity. Not surprisingly, it is all-too-common for such initiatives to wither on the centrally monitored vine. Take a look, then, at this item about new programs that at least allow employees to influence, or even simply make and execute, certain technology selection and purchase decisions. It is not a long step from this to bottom-up design and execution of bottom-up productivity-enhancing knowledge management programs.

Sometimes, managers don’t have to do things – they just have to create the circumstances that allow those things to happen of their own accord. But there’s a cost to less daily interference in the work being done: greater attention to the needs of those doing it. It’s actually an investment, and one that will pay off handsomely on many levels.

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Many thanks to the hosts of the following Carnivals for selecting items from these pages:

• The Married Guy Cook, hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists, chose Creating Creativity.
• Billy, at The Organic Leadership Blog, who has been busy lately hosting the Leadership Growth Blog Carnival, selected Phony Phase Transitions.

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