A Better Workplace --- Meridian Group's Newsletter, Number 36

The Biggest Management Mistake

A newsletter from one of my favorite marketing web sites said many managers unknowingly make mistakes that decrease profits, lose their best employees, prevent them from achieving goals, and push away clients.

This prompted me to look back over my work with managers in many corporations. I asked myself, "What is the biggest mistake managers make?" The answer came to me slowly. It is so simple it might tempt you to stop reading right now. The Biggest Management Mistake is, "not thinking of people as people".

Not Thinking of People As People.
At the first level of management, supervisors learn that to get the work out the door they must have their people on board. This is particularly true in manufacturing, distribution, retail, and the service industries in general. High performance supervisors bond with their employees, understanding their work problems and learning much about their life away from the job, their families, interests, hopes and desires. This personal relationship creates engaged employees. Engagement and high productivity are one and the same.

My experience with executive managers is that they discount their early lesson. Layers of management separate top executives from the rank and file. High in the corporation, first line employees are no longer people with families, personal problems, vacation plans, hopes and dreams. They are now numbers, expenses, or columns on Excel. This can lead to inhuman actions.

A friend in the IT industry recently told me that his company would soon outsource the IT function. "It will be done by the end of the year. Because I'm a manager I found out that the corporation plans to reduce termination costs by transferring everyone to the outsource company payroll, and then firing them. Some of the employees have been here over 20 years. It's brutal. "

People are People, Not Objects
A person, in contrast to a piece of equipment, software, or product, is not a fixed commodity. We each remember how inspired we were when praised by a parent, teacher, or employer. We have all experienced that elation, excitement and motivation. Many employees are members of highly motivated work teams. Their day passes quickly. They go home exhilarated, looking forward to returning. We all wish that for ourselves.

Skillful supervisors and managers create such a work culture, one that inspires and motivates. These workplaces can be more than twice as productive as conventional companies. People always respond appropriately to their work situation. An ordinary workplace will produce ordinary performance, average productivity. An inspired workplace will produce inspired performance, extraordinary productivity.

Why Do We Forget?
Executives in the upper levels of corporations are typically highly intelligent, with great personal drive, well-developed competitive skills, strong analytic skills, and a focus on "What works?" The cultural norm of executive committee discussions reinforces these qualities. Discussions are mostly on analysis, finance, and action. Reflective discussions on people leadership, on creating the workplace with qualities that motivate and inspire, are rare or nonexistent.

This is understandable. Executives, like all people, respond to their context. The context or culture of the executive suite is the CEO, the Board of Directors, and the stockholders. Their focus is rightly and legally, on financial performance, on what to do.

From the Abstract to the Concrete
This pressure at the top for financial performance passes down the line of command to lower managers as the pure abstraction that it is, the language of numbers derived from the most abstract branch of science—mathematics. Far from the abstraction of numbers lies the concrete reality of people's experience. There is nothing more concrete than our feelings, than our immediate reaction to our world. Unfortunately in the abstract discussions of the executive suite, the concrete rarely finds a chair at the table.

This is why I believe that the biggest mistake managers make—the mistake that decreases profits, loses the best employees, prevents the teamwork needed to achieve corporate goals, and alienates employees to the point that they push away clients—is forgetting that people are people, capable of extraordinary actions—in the right setting.

How to Avoid The Big Mistake
People respond to people focused cultures, cultures that consciously balance the essential abstract numbers and goals with people's concrete experience and engagement around these goals. The key to business success is balancing the What—the number—with the How—through people.

Cultural leaders and heroes show that balance. By showing in their words and actions that people are people, they avoid The Biggest Management Mistake.