There is something drastically wrong with global management methods. Over two thirds of employees in the US are not engaged (i.e., not involved or enthusiastic) in their work or the organization, and the numbers are much worse in Europe and Japan (Gallup, 2024). Likely causes include a:

• Widespread failure to provide gratifying work experiences

• Lack of managers who value, respect, and trust employees

• Shortage of opportunities to grow, excel, and advance careers (Bernstein, et al., 2024).

Poor employee experience leads to dissatisfaction, disengagement, low productivity, turnover, and many other issues. It’s time to redefine the role of management as creating and maintaining the environmental conditions that allow employees to flourish.

Managing for Impact: “Only ~20% of the world’s employees are engaged” (Gallup, 2016, 2019, 2024).

The management mindset that got us to this point was based on very pessimistic beliefs:

• Workers can’t be trusted

• They don’t have the skills to solve problems or make effective decisions

• They don’t have the organization’s best interests in mind

The role of management was to do all the thinking, while workers did all the doing. Management’s job was to ensure the compliance of workers in following instructions, leaving little to no room for intellectual contribution. The truth is that while our understandings of management have progressed considerably, our day-to-day practices have not, and the resulting manager-worker tension is a primary reason why workers quit (Gallup, 2019).

What is needed is an 180 degree shift away from classic managerial methods. This has been known, but not implemented, since the early 1900s when Mary Parker Follett called for “power with, not over, the people” and clarified that "the creative power of the individual appears not when one dominates others, but when all unite in a working whole.” Follet’s ideas are still very relevant and badly needed today.

MORe contends that all workers, and especially knowledge workers, want to use their brains, have a say in what and how work is done, innovate and problem solve, learn and grow, etc. Therefore, instead of managing for strict compliance with someone else’s instructions, we must manage for commitment through collaboration. Allowing workers to engage in, and have an influence over, how work is done is a powerful motivator (Pfeffer, 2018) and is desperately needed in every type of organization, or wherever we apply the tool of management.

Recommendations: Leveraging extensive research by Gallup (2016, 2019), we now know that creating the right environmental conditions to engage and motivate workers to commit to the organization requires changes to the entire employee journey.

Hiring: Ensure a high degree of alignment between the needs of the organization and each worker’s natural “talents, i.e., patterns of thoughts, feelings, & behaviors that can be productively applied”, and look for tendencies like motivation, workstyle, initiation, and collaboration.

Orientation: Provide a thorough and clear description of the organization’s overall purpose, how it realizes that purpose through value creation for customers, and where and how new recruits will contribute to both. Set expectations to communicate the company’s focus on the ends, not the means. “Great managers define outcomes and trust workers to determine how to achieve them”.

On the Job: Engage with workers in their day-to-day experiences to ensure:

• Less “bossing, and more coaching. When management moves from the role of boss to the role of coach, it increases employee engagement and performance”.

• Closer personal connections with coaches including “expressions of care & concern, leveraging of strengths, tough love, early & direct confrontation of poor performance”.

• Stronger engagement through “solicitation of opinions and recommendations, involvement in decision-making and problem solving, and opportunities to learn and grow”.

• Sharing of knowledge and changing expectations, “training on new materials & equipment, opportunities to do their best work, recognition, care, and encouragement”.

• Strong team relationships. “There is a global and universal connection between strong team engagements and superior performance”.

Advancement: Discard your formal performance management systems and tools and replace them with candid and frequent face-to-face conversations regarding:

• Other ways to advance or earn gratitude other than by climbing the corporate hierarchy, “every role should have dignity and recognition”.

• Opportunities across the organization to try different job roles, obtain new skills, make a difference, leverage strengths, or achieve a personal career objective.

• Plausible ways to leverage every employee’s personal passions and interests to find the true win-win for the organization and the individual.

Successful managers will be those who embrace and leverage every worker’s undeniable human nature by allowing them to actively contribute to a larger cause through collaborative, intellectual engagement and a nourishing environment. The subject, value, and impacts of management are by no means settled law. They are still open topics in need of new perspectives.

Stay tuned for MORe insights and recommendations.