The Evolution of Management
How did we get traditional management?
The profession of management as we know it today began in the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s as agricultural workers began to migrate into towns and cities to work in factories, mills, and other industrial oriented companies. The worker’s level of education was low, and they had little experience in the type of work they faced, thus the role of a manager was to directly manage the workers so that they could be productive - what we would call micro-management today. The mindset and methods from that bygone era are still prevalent in many organizations today.
When we refer to “traditional”, as in traditional organizations or traditional management, we’re typically referring to this era’s top-down hierarchy-driven management approach. In these traditional organizations the responsibilities of people in management included directly managing the people and managing the work. This traditional approach to management had its benefits 100 years ago in the early days of industrial factories and manual labor, as direct management compensated for the lack of education and experience among the workers. Managers were responsible for ensuring their employees were doing the right work (setting priorities), and doing the work right (quality output). Managers had the information and expertise in order to be trusted to make appropriate decisions, and managed their employees based on timing and task completion.
The limitations of traditional management arise
As we advance a few generations into the 1950’s, post-WWII, we see that the needs of organizations have started to increase. Technological capabilities and customer expectations are beginning to change more frequently, and workers have increased their level of experience and education. The need for more timely response to production line issues drives behavior change in management as the pace of change does not allow managers to be everywhere and make every decision.
The management approach shifts from micro-managing all aspects of the work to trusting the employee to make localized decisions. Managers must rely on individual workers to make decisions at their work stations because the worker understands their piece of the puzzle, are the closest person to the problem, and can make reliable decisions within their area of expertise. Managers shift to being responsible for managing the overall process to ensure completion of a finished good or completion of project, and thus monitor output metrics such as quality and productivity.
The role of management must shift again. Managers now must enable and empower teams to make better decisions faster so that they can respond to change more effectively.
Management must evolve for complexity
Fast forward a few more generations into the information age, knowledge work, and the internet. The pace of change is increasing exponentially and it is a daily struggle for companies to handle the constant change that occurs. But the context is not just about one workstation on an assembly line. Decisions are needed that affect a complex web of interconnected pieces and parts. Individuals, even when experts in their piece of the puzzle, lack full context of the whole picture. Thus, there is a need for teams of multi-skilled people working together in tight collaboration to make decisions and respond quickly to changes. Any delays in this approach, such as escalating decisions up a management chain and back down, can result in missed opportunities and lost customers.
The role of management must shift again. Managers now must enable and empower teams to make better decisions faster so that they can respond to change more effectively. They do this by building effective teams and addressing the systems around the teams to reduce impediments and improve the flow of information so that teams have what they need to be successful. Management then focuses on managing a different set of metrics focused more on organizational health (resiliency), team health (enablement) and value delivery (outcomes).
The evolution of customer needs and the response of those doing the work often outpaces the change in behavior of management. One of the most common struggles in reaching for business agility is the evolution of the role of management and letting go of direct control of the work. Managers who want to operate more effectively in dealing with change begin to shift their thinking toward empowerment and enablement of cross-functional multi-skill teams, and remove the barriers between those teams and their customers and users.
As we think about traditional managers being responsible for both managing the work and managing the person, Agile organizations start to pull these responsibilities apart. High-functioning Agile teams can take on the responsibility and accountability for understanding customer needs (priorities) producing high quality work (output). This allows managers to focus their energies on personal development of their employees and setting them, and their teams, up for success by solving bigger organizational issues and impediments. Increasing the teams ownership (autonomy) and building individual capabilities to better contribute to their teams (mastery), combined with more confidence that they are building the right things (purpose) by being in closer contact with customers, completes the trifecta articulated by Dan Pink’s book
DRiVE about what really motivates knowledge workers. Managers can catalyze their organizations and teams not by getting out of the way, but by refocusing their energies on the aspects in and around the teams that can increase their effectiveness.
Shifting management’s focus to people and outcomes
One good way for managers to start down this path is to change their approach to 1:1 conversations with their employees (if you’re not having 1:1s regularly, start ASAP!). Traditional managers often start a 1:1 employee conversation with “How is the project going?”. This approach generates a focus on the work and devolves into tactical issues for getting today’s work done. Agile managers start the 1:1 conversation with “How are you doing?”, which is a very different conversation that opens a door to growth opportunities and longer term thinking, allowing the employee to take more ownership. Try that conversation starter and be aware of keeping the conversation about the person, not the work. You’ll likely see a significant change in the quality of that conversation, and a change in the quality of that relationship, that can lead toward fulfillment for you and your employees.
Another suggestion is to reevaluate how you measure success. Traditional management thinking is often focused on controlling product metrics, such as hours allocations and resource utilization. Managers often do not realize that fully utilized people lack available capacity to handle change and are then more disrupted when the unexpected occurs. So, think about shifting your focus to outcome-based metrics, such as metrics for customer satisfaction and/or value delivery. This aligns team goals with the customer’s needs, and allows the team the bandwidth and creativity to satisfy those customer needs more effectively.
Questions to explore
- How do you build relationships and vision for a committed workforce?
- What behaviors can you change in yourself to shift your focus from the work to the people?
- How do you enable and support your teams to ensure they are equipped to achieve their goals while also demonstrating your trust in their execution?
- How can you measure success differently to unlock both creativity and value delivery?
