Most people think that American managers are the best on the planet, and it’s easy to see why. Once a person concludes that US companies are the world’s most innovative and profitable, it stands to reason their managers must be incredibly smart and people-savvy.
If you’re not persuaded, people around the globe seem thoroughly convinced.1 From Shanghai to London, American managers are esteemed for their personal dynamism, entrepreneurial guile, inventive marketing, and canny leveraging of capital. Even when some lapse in judgment or dishonest act is exposed, few outsiders start thinking there might be something fundamentally wrong with how US companies are being managed. No, in the eyes of the world, the acumen of American managers is unparalleled in the history of modern times.
That’s not the way I see it. I see bad management as the norm, and I’ve got plenty of company in seeing it this way.2 Bad management takes place much too often to be considered an exception.
Just because a corporation makes a lot of money for its shareholders, or a nonprofit stays within budget, doesn’t mean its employees are receiving the kind of guidance, support, and encouragement they need. Just because a manager graduates from an elite MBA school doesn’t mean that when tested with real-life situations this person will act out the high-quality answers given attempting to earn an A on the final exam.3
While there are many reasons for believing American companies are the world’s most successful, the character and quality of management their employees receive should not be counted as one of them.4 Despite the halo cast by financial success, the daily human toll is despicable. What’s more, it detracts from the bottom line.
I’m not talking about every company. We’ve all heard about the excitement people feel working in start-ups, and the feelings of well-being and community that can take place working in a small business with considerate and appreciative owners on site.
I’m talking about the experiences people are having in the majority of companies and organizations and, with a few noteworthy exceptions, in just about every large company and bureaucracy that exists. You know, the places where the preponderance of people are employed. I’m talking about the tenor of the workplace where your children and grandkids are headed. Think about it: How many jobs do you know of that you’d wish on someone you love? Someone whose sensibilities you care about, a person looking to the workplace to realize their ambitions, and for support in living a good life.
I find it a real shame that so many people are the recipients of state-of-the-art, default-setting, bad management behavior.5 It’s a shame because, for the most part, the bad behavior is meted out by well-intentioned, good people acting without realizing the negatives their actions inflict, and without awareness of the forces driving those actions. In their minds, they’re doing their very best to cope with situations not of their making.
Well, at least they realize the situations in which they find themselves aren’t of their making. But that hasn’t been enough to provide clear vision. Bad management behavior is coming from well-educated people, including the best and the brightest America has. I’m not talking about mean-spirited people acting selfishly. I’m talking about good people, who mean well, screwing up predictably.
I wish I were wrong in sizing up the situation. Unfortunately, my beliefs are supported by what managers and other professionals tell me, and corroborated by almost every focus group and published research study. Most damning is the Gallup polling that annually concludes that four out of five people in management positions lack “the talents” to manage others effectively.6 What are those missing talents? Gallup gives long explanations that I interpret as managers lacking the interest and capacity to give direct reports the focus needed for them to perform at their best.
What’s the difference, you might ask? Companies are succeeding. And besides, notwithstanding an occasional awfulness, people have adapted to what they receive. That’s right, people are inured to the bad management behavior they receive, and managers are unaware of the bad behavior they dish out. Why worry about a situation that’s working fine the way it is?
I’ll tell you why we should worry. Not only does bad management take a dispiriting toll on people, but, as a consequence, their companies’ shareholders are losing out. The bottom lines may be profitably green, but they’re not nearly as green as they ought to be. As it is, the money paid to managers is a major expense that burdens profits. Better management won’t cost any more, and the efficiencies realized, and ingenuity gained, can only make profits rise.7
Compared to the rest of the world, American companies have some very big advantages. Relatively unencumbered by bureaucracy, they are allowed by the government to make personnel changes, to enjoy tax advantages, exploit loopholes, change business practices, sell off what no longer makes sense, and generally behave in ways the rest of the world finds efficient, even ruthless, taking a straight-line path to the end results they seek. Add to this the fact that America serves as a magnet for attracting the world’s talent.
It’s a travesty that being employed by the world’s most successful companies should come at a cost to the well-being and sensibilities of the people performing the work. Think how much more efficient companies would be if their employees were free of unnecessary distractions, not intimidated by their managers, better able to speak their views with candor, and free to pour more of their hearts and souls into what they do. Then add in the enhanced effectiveness that will emerge when managers shift their focus to make more boss-report camaraderie possible. It sounds enticing, if you ask me—whether you are in it for well-being or bottom line.
Yet good management is advertised and promoted everywhere! Each year brings new bestsellers about how to manage people effectively, and thousands of vanity speeches by high-profile executives advising companies to go about it the way they did. So much would be different if only managers in the audience were able to implement the advice they receive. Unfortunately, they aren’t able to, and employees know it. Especially in large companies, people are quick to recognize that the good management they’re told they’re receiving is someone’s illusion, and definitely not their own reality.
I hear a new bad management account almost daily. If I don’t read about one in the paper or see it on TV, then I hear it directly from some manager or professional who feels their effectiveness and well-being threatened by a bad management situation they’re unable to fix. Only when a situation becomes especially egregious does the world hear the truth about what actually transpires in the workplace. Hearing what’s taken place, people complain and vent their outrage. But seldom do I hear anyone saying they were surprised. It seems people actually expect to hear about problems caused by managers behaving badly.
Wait a minute. Did you catch that? People aren’t surprised; in fact, they expect bad management! I find this alarming—because it’s true. Yet, if you inquire, and I do all the time, you’d find most managers are extremely well-intentioned. Oh, if only good intentions were enough!
There’s something systemic throwing them off, and managers haven’t figured out what it is. Even if they knew, they’d have a hard time owning up—which is another part of the problem. Explaining what’s erroneous in conventional managerial thinking, and why it goes undetected, is a big part of the understanding I’m out to provide.
Listening to the stories, one can’t help but wonder what causes managers to behave in ways that arouse so many suspicions, and so much insecurity. How can managers say they’re practicing good management while their direct reports plainly see so many managerial actions preventing them from being their effective selves? There’s a research study8 that investigated the managerial actions professional-level employees found most useful in their quests to work at peak effectiveness. The study concludes that the most useful thing a manager can do is not interrupt when an employee considers him- or herself to be working productively—often by calling what the employee deems a needless meeting. In other words, given the managerial help employees see themselves receiving, they’d prefer their managers to leave them alone.
People come to work wanting to feel good about themselves, and count on their manager to help them be their best. They come expecting to be on a path to realizing life goals. But this is not what people often enough experience. In fact, on any given day, usually without recognizing what they’re going through, employees find themselves on the defensive, putting almost as much energy into getting their boss to value their contributions as they put into doing the work itself. Instead of leaving work feeling energized by what they’ve learned and accomplished, too many people leave feeling beat up, drained, dispirited, and emotionally needy.
No one wants management left the way it is, and that includes most managers. It doesn’t have to be this way, but even if nothing were to change, it’s certainly better to realize what’s causing so much bad management behavior, and why it persists. Without this understanding, people don’t see the inevitable coming, and lack the means to protect themselves when it hits. As it is now, they allow their expectations for good management to rise and, from my vantage point, take their disappointments much too personally. It’s an ill-will situation that needs to go away.
People begin their jobs with flame, turned on, and looking to realize their potential. They want to work efficiently, the way they’re best able. They expect to have assignments that leave room for them to pursue what’s important in their lives. They want to grow and develop in personally meaningful directions—not the direction stipulated by a manager making self-serving assumptions about what’s best for them. Feeling misunderstood and misdirected, the inner flame begins to flicker.
A great deal more affects an individual at work than can be discerned merely by observing their behavior—especially when you consider the masks people feel compelled to wear. What managers call “human capital” is so much more than interchangeable resources to be deployed for company return. These resources are precious, sensitive people with distinctive skills and limitations who want to accomplish things, and to progress in their lives for doing so. People work to enrich themselves, to learn, and to have high-quality interactions. They work to fulfill ambitions. They come with good health they’d like to preserve. You want to know how what goes on at work affects the human psyche and spirit? Just ask the people at home to whom employees return each day. Ask enough and I bet you’ll conclude, as I have, that what goes on at work affects every aspect of a person’s being.9
Unfortunately, for reasons to be explained, managers are so consumed with getting work accomplished that they feel forced to ignore whatever they can put off—and usually what can be put off most easily is attending to the needs of the people reporting to them. Managers ignore how many hours it takes to get an assignment completed, and don’t want to hear about people feeling forced to put in hours off-the-clock. They use the carrot of advancement, and the stick of evaluation, to get reports to perform in ways that accrue to their success. An example of precisely what I’m describing is found in an angst-filled email sent to me by a middle manager who’s seen as an “up-and-comer” in his company. Here’s what he wrote that his boss knows nothing about.
I’m beginning to realize how many factors affect me at work trying to prove myself deserving a promotion. I’m always nodding my head trying to show people I’m responsive. But too often I don’t retain what a person tells me because I’m always absorbed trying to get them to finish so I can get on with my work. Even bringing work home there’s never enough time to catch up. It’s as if I’m always picking flowers but clueless to their smell. Worst of all, I see my marriage suffering. Even in the same room, both my wife and I feel a distance. As a stay-at-home mother her stresses build as the day progresses. By the time I walk in the door, she’s ready to crash. Then she needs my help checking our boys’ homework and getting them bathed and ready for bed—which, after working a long day, always drains me. At home I’m impatient just like I am at work. Then there are the phone calls and emails that I exchange on weekends. I feel guilty not being the father my children need. I don’t want them growing up like I had to with working parents who had little time to get involved. Telling my wife and boys I’m doing it for the family only gets me empty stares.
Specifics notwithstanding, I don’t find this situation unusual. Another well-intentioned person looking to move up, and giving his job what he thinks it requires. He’s got a higher-level manager, probably in a troublesome situation of their own, who has little idea of what he’s going through. And what do you think people reporting to this impatient manager, who has difficulty retaining what he’s told, receive in the way of help and support? Do you think his reports get better focus than he receives from his boss, or his family receives from him? With the pressures he’s under, I’m guessing no one gets what they need, and everyone feels deprived. And we’re talking about good people!
Could it be that not complaining and just putting up with workplace intrusiveness has become the badge of honor for moving up in management? Apparently, that’s what many people holding high-stature, big-paying jobs seem to assume they should get from their lower-down reports. I’ve met several top-level executives who see nothing wrong with having key personnel on speed dial, reachable at any hour, any day—even when on vacations with their families.
Everyone knows getting ahead entails trade-offs. In fact, most people expect employees with ambitions to go above and beyond whatever is required. But managers who don’t know the trade-offs their reports are making, or the consequences they hold for them, lack the wherewithal for knowing if either the company or the sacrificing individual is getting good value back for what they exchange. And just like the boss of the manager who wrote that email, few managers have the means for knowing precisely what their reports see them requiring. Is it unreasonable to expect managers to have the time and inclination to learn about an employee’s life so that they can realize the implications of their own words and actions? Most people I’ve surveyed don’t believe their manager knows much of anything about the life predicaments that arise for them because of job commitments. Posed the question, “What difference would it make if your boss knew more about how your work affects your life?” the majority speculate they’d get no empathy or relief if they should ever misspeak by making their truths known.
Going to work shouldn’t dampen the human spirit. It never does when people feel they’re working effectively, have their manager’s support, are appreciated, and see themselves making progress toward personally important goals. In fact, under the right circumstances, work isn’t even work; it’s what a person wants to be doing. But given the lack of managerial focus most people receive, those right circumstances are seldom present. People should feel happy going to work, not miserable when Sunday night rolls around and they start thinking about what’s ahead for them in the morning.
It’s tragic that so many employees consider their jobs an onerous obligation when, with the right kind of managerial support, a job could be become a self-valued activity. What’s preventing bosses from giving employees what they actually need?
I believe I’ve had good success helping managers to see the negatives in the management practices I’ve investigated, and the misguided thinking that went into conceiving them. But I haven’t been nearly as successful helping managers overcome the forces that resist their changing what I’ve helped them to see as inappropriate and wrong. In the process of trying, I’ve learned a great deal about these forces, and believe I now have the prime contributor identified. What I’ve learned also accounts for why bad management behavior goes unrecognized by so many, and, for those who do see it, too perilous to fight.
Let me divulge what I’ll be elaborating on throughout this book. The root cause of most of the bad management behavior taking place today, to which so many well-intentioned managers are oblivious, is that the American work culture, en masse, has managers thinking incorrectly. That’s right. I believe most of what accounts for the failure by so many managers to live out their good intentions is caused by the very work culture so many people believe the world at large should emulate.
The American work culture leads managers to implement practices that contradict basic facts of human nature—about how people think, communicate, and function. Worse yet, the culture encourages managers to support practices that prevent everyone, themselves included, from speaking about these contradictions, and the personal binds created for them by the way their companies are managed. Even when top-level managers encourage candor from below, they don’t remove the obstacles that prevent people from speaking their truths. It’s enough to give one the impression that, deep down, top-level managers are only interested in hearing that everything is going along just fine. And often, that’s what they do hear when they ask their employees. But that doesn’t make it so.
Allow me to explain how I arrived at this conclusion. America’s workforce is supposed to consist of individualistic, positive-thinking people who pick themselves up by their bootstraps and always look for the next opportunity to improve, and climb the ranks by doing so. People are so familiar with stories of individuals who have overcome huge obstacles that it’s commonplace to think anyone can push themselves to master almost anything. Consequently, managers have unrealistic expectations. They think they can sweet-talk, manipulate, and intimidate employees to improve on almost any behavior they want changed. Well, they are wrong. Some things in a person can’t be changed, and those that can take time, whether it’s externally stipulated or self-developmentally inspired.
Everyone wants to grow, learn, and better themselves as they can, and herein lies a core obstacle to managers behaving better. They’ve been taught to invest in themselves and their futures—to idealize “getting ahead”—and the work culture pushes this ideal to an extreme. Managers become so consumed with their own advancement that they lack the capacity to give others the focus they need.
Anxious to accomplish and move ahead, managers become so excessively self-oriented that they treat people working with them, particularly direct reports, as resources to deploy and use in furthering their own success. Assuming this orientation makes it extremely difficult for managers to use what life experience has been trying to teach them—how to get along and enjoy working with imperfect people who think differently than they would like them to think. Too many managers just don’t get it. They refuse to accept that imperfect people—people who think and reason differently—are all they’re ever going to encounter.
The result is generation after generation of managers possessing unrealistic expectations due to their inability to get human nature straight. To be fair, I don’t see managers as entirely responsible for their own bad behavior. Why? Because no one calls them on it. Fathom this. Some companies spend millions of dollars annually on management development programs. They do this without spending a single dollar to research what those same managers think that company leaders expect from them. And yet, it is those very expectations that lead to the employee-alienating survival mechanisms that the management training is aimed at getting them to stop. I’ll be telling you about several such mechanisms when I get down to specifics.
So why aren’t more employees demanding better treatment? Why do most complain and see bad management as a systemic problem only after some managerial action, or inaction, thwarts their number-one goal: accomplishing what the company needs done and, by doing so, moving their careers ahead. When something particularly negative strikes, coworkers may lend a sympathetic ear, and perhaps even make a few suggestions. But in the end, it’s not their problem, and it’s not their goals being affected. With little at stake, others limit their involvement. Working in a high-threat environment, they act to safeguard their ambitions as bad management behavior continues, story after story.
While every bad management experience is different, there are some similar themes. One familiar theme has employees being told the mistreatment they’re experiencing is actually evidence of good management. For example, consider this account that a company president shared with me. It describes an early-career encounter with a manager that continues to haunt him today. Granted, it’s an extreme situation, and most bad management instances are a bit more subtle. But do read it, and when you finish, ask yourself how many similar stories you have heard—and over how many years?
My interview with this vice president did not go well, to say the least. His questions caused me to struggle and stammer. I wanted a change in assignment, but it was an awful interview and, ironically, I was qualified.
Toward the end of the hour he looked at my résumé, noting that it stated I’m an avid food and wine enthusiast. He excused himself for a minute and returned with two Styrofoam cups—one with water and the other with soda. He then asked me to drink from each. After taking a sip, he asked if either cup had wine in it, to which I replied, “No.” He responded saying, “Well, at least you know something about wine because you know nothing about finance.” I was shocked and found his feedback immensely cruel. Nobody in the entirety of my life ever said anything so spiteful and offensive to me.
Not only did he share his impressions with my direct supervisor and my then division head, he went on to tell them he would have never interviewed me if it wasn’t for the relationship my division head had with his boss—the managing director. I was devastated and offended. But most of all, I was distraught that I let my supervisor and division head down.
This isn’t the first time I’ve shared this story, but it’s the first time I’ve realized how profoundly impacted I was by this VP’s comments. I was always confident and talkative, but for ten years now I’ve gone through periods of fearing I’d say the wrong thing at the wrong time, not be articulate when I need to be, and let people down who believe in me. Stupid as it sounds, I’ve finally come to realize this VP has become a nagging thorn in my side.
I never want to be spoken to or thought about this way again. I never again want to be the object of such spite, judgment, and disappointment. My fear has led to my focusing so much on saying the right thing that my authentic voice becomes garbled. It’s come to the point where I find myself saying things entirely different from how I want my message to come across. I hope that by finally recognizing how profoundly this event affected me I’ll be my true self again.
Don’t get me wrong. Not every manager has a mean streak like the individual dishing out hurt in this story. However unconscionable his behavior seems, I doubt he thinks he has a mean streak. Considering himself a good manager, he probably thought, It’s time someone wises this young guy up for his own and the company’s good.
But, as you will see depicted throughout this book, every manager has been culturally touched to the extent that hurt-causing acts like this become possible, even excusable. Do you think others hearing about its occurrence complained, or put the dishing-it-out manager in his place? I don’t. We’re living in a work culture that lulls employees into complacency—thinking it’s just a few bad managers, or a company in the wrong hands, creating a toxic environment. The thinking goes that once a bad-behaving manager gets his or her next assignment someone more sensitive will come along. People don’t realize bad managerial behavior is the consequence of a system that permits it and, yes, causes managers to behave badly without realizing the negatives their behavior inflicts on others.
You want another example of how people slough off bad management behavior? Take Carly Fiorina, the AT&T executive who moved on to head Hewlett-Packard. She’s a graduate of more than one esteemed university and no doubt used plenty of good judgment to work her way up in the engineering world. But the quality of Fiorina’s judgment began to slip once she became chief executive officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard. Her clandestine eavesdropping on the board of directors was cited in a book, written by leadership experts, that portrays sound judgment as the essence of good leadership. The book used her actions to illustrate what falling far short of the gold standard actually looks like.10
So why did she do it? Why did she feel the need to use stealth once she rose to the top tier of management? To my way of seeing it, Fiorina had a few blind spots, as all people do. Those blind spots went undetected until she encountered a situation that, in her mind, made dishonest spying acceptable.
While board members at Hewlett-Packard didn’t forget or forgive her, most of the world moved on. Her highly publicized “naughty” did not deter communications giant AT&T from inviting her back and making her a member of their board. Nor were more than four million Californians deterred from voting for her in 2010 when she unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US Senate. Apparently, a lot of people thought her misbehavior was isolated to the work world and wouldn’t reoccur in public office.
I see Carly Fiorina’s misbehavior as a mere symptom of a problem much larger than her myopia. As I stated, I’m not talking about a few inept managers performing badly, or the kind of sporadic mindlessness into which anyone can lapse. I’m talking about a perverted way of thinking about one’s self, and other people, that makes bad management predictable and prevalent in almost every large organization and company, and plenty of smaller ones as well. It’s not just some executive drowning in ignominy by having their bad behavior publicly exposed. The problem is far more pervasive than that. It’s a sleeper-cell mindset created by blind spots and ambition that, once awakened, can lead almost any manager to malfunction. It’s endemic to the way people in management positions have been conditioned to think. It emanates from a perspective that’s very flawed.
What I have to say in this book is disturbing. It will especially challenge managers who like to believe that nothing systemically pernicious is taking place. This is a common reaction, and one that reflects how the American work culture socializes people to stick with the positive. But such optimism has its limitations. For one thing, it pushes managers to cherry pick their problems and avoid issues they’re not confident they can resolve. Playing it safe, they stick with what the mainstream culture deems correct. They fear being seen doing anything wrong or performing inadequately, and gravitate to treating symptoms instead of grappling with the problems causing those symptoms.
It’s like the proverbial drunk looking for lost keys under the lamppost where he has enough light to see instead of the spot where he dropped his keys.
I don’t see a quick fix for the bad management problems I shine light on in this book. The solution requires expanded consciousness leading to a serious change in managerial focus. It entails living with broken situations that, at least in the near term, most company leaders lack the will to repair. No fix is possible until more people—leaders, managers, operatives, and employees—accurately see what’s going on. Getting clarity entails stripping away veneer to expose the pressure points and hidden forces that prevent good management from taking place. That’s what I’m out to reveal. I want you to see the force field clearly enough to appreciate what’s needed, and know enough about it to involve yourself in changing what, for so long, has been the workplace status quo.
When laying out these misconceptions for managers, there’s a refrain from an old tune that I often hear. It’s a common refrain that, no matter who’s crooning, always sounds off-key to me. It usually starts, “Really, Sam, it’s not that bad. Employees can always come to me with their problems. They know that.” Oh, do they? How can some managers be so naïve! Do they really think that all it takes is an open-door policy, and an earnest appeal, for employees to feel sufficiently comfortable to speak candidly to people holding the power to determine their fates?
If you need examples of people who paled in the face of power, think about the scores of engineers who didn’t speak up about the defect-hiding conspiracy at General Motors (GM), the hundreds of administrators at the Veterans Health Administration who were aware of double bookkeeping appointment–ledgers, and officials and managers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who knew shutting down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge was life-interrupting needless. The open-door policy clearly didn’t help in those instances.11 People knew but didn’t speak up for fear of jeopardizing their careers. Who needs more evidence that major differences exist between the words managers speak and the messages their employees receive? I remind managers all the time, “If you want to know what you said, ask people what they heard, and, better yet, look at what they did after you spoke your words.”
This raises an important question: What is it about the work culture that has people in management positions thinking that doing right for themselves is more important than doing right for their employees? In management schools we teach students that doing right for employees equates to doing right for oneself. Yet stronger forces undermine this lesson. Most managers claim to be well-intentioned, and appear genuinely disappointed when their actions aren’t seen that way. In their minds the gap is caused by the unintended consequences of being overloaded by doing what the job objectively requires. And, on the surface, they probably have good reason for thinking this. But digging deeper, I see managers more overloaded by work-culture-provoked insecurities that prevent them from following their good instincts. If good intentions were enough to make good behavior, the workplace would already be transformed.
I intend this book to serve as a splash of cold water in the face for its description of the perverse forces bearing on managers at every level. There are few mysteries about what people want in the way of good managerial behavior. The big mystery has to do with why people aren’t receiving what almost everyone, managers included, believe people should receive. Yes, there are many managers doing things right. But relative to the numbers, they’re the exception. And by no means is having a good-behaving manager today sufficient reason to believe the next one you get will be the same. The system that socializes and rewards managers prevents it.
Without the system changing, companies will continue implementing piecemeal remedies each time a bad management practice gets revealed. But such solutions only act like mallets used in the Whac-a-Mole games found at carnivals. Each dysfunctional practice that pops up gets whacked with a remedy, only to have another dysfunctional practice pop up. I now see managers tackling one problem and then going on to another, a waste of company resources. It’s time to fix the system that keeps the stream of bad management problems coming.
As you read this book, you’ll have many opportunities to check its accuracy. You can do so by reflecting on what you’ve already experienced to see if what’s been related helps you to understand more. I’ll be revealing hidden aspects of the force field in which the managers, whose bad behavior impacts you, are destined to operate. I’ll be making you aware of the reasons that underlie the detrimental behaviors taking place—behaviors you may have missed noticing. Making you aware of what transpires is necessary in order for you to utilize advice I eventually offer. While a good deal of that advice is implied in my narrative going along, I wait until later chapters to get explicit about the actions leaders, managers, and employees who want to stop the flow of bad behavior need to take. I believe the narratives leading up to this advice are essential in order to avoid people inappropriately blaming higher-ups and subsequently misfiring.
I intend to increase your awareness of the bad management behavior you’re witnessing, and of why the managers dispensing it are so oblivious to their impact on the people they’re out to help. I also want to make you aware of what blocks people who experience bad management behavior from urging company leaders to put a stop to it. While critical about what I see taking place, my purpose is not to admonish and blame; it’s to make everyone more aware of what prevents people from getting what they need, and what constructively might be done about it. And I have suggestions.
I expect many readers will feel the urge to talk with others about the realizations they have as they go along. I fully understand this, and believe it a splendid idea—that is, eventually. But I urge restraint. Wait until you finish the last chapter, where I provide some cautionary guidance for discussing what you’d like to see changed. I fear that until you get the entire picture, your insights may alienate some of the people whose indignation you’re out to arouse. Eventually you’ll need their support and want their camaraderie, and I’ve got advice for how to proceed when soliciting it.
I find that people who feel they’re succeeding prefer the devil they know to the practices they’ve yet to try. When you think about it, this reasoning makes a lot of sense. Why remove a prop that could destabilize what one fought so long and hard to achieve? Besides, who wants to face the embarrassment of realizing that some good management behavior taken was mostly good for oneself, not nearly so good for others, and that the schism was obvious from the start? Talking system change, it’s inevitable you’ll get pushback. Prepare to deal with it. Think of the resistance you get as a sign that you’re on to something. Like Frederick Douglass, the famous American abolitionist, once wrote, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
During a career spent working as an MBA school professor and researcher, I’ve investigated and exposed many questionable management practices—acquiring a reputation as a muckraker for doing so. Wizened and impatient, I now find myself needing to strike out at the heart of the octopus that, up till now, I’ve been battling one tentacle at a time. This time, I’m out to expose the so-called good management reasoning that leads to bad practices in the first place, and the doublethink reasoning managers use to hide the negatives their actions effect—from employees, from cohort managers, and, I hate saying this, especially from themselves. Until this reasoning and the circumstances responsible for it are denounced, I fear that bad management will continue as the norm.
It’s time for managers to face some missing facts, and to rethink what they call good management. I believe greater awareness of the forces corrupting their behavior, and a more solid connection with their humanity, is the route to managers realizing their good intentions. I see the heart of good management grounded in human nature facts. That is, real human nature facts, not the warped versions some managers like to concoct when trying to convince themselves they understand people.
This is where we begin.
1. This is an often cited, empirically documented fact. For example, see this study reporting findings from over 10,000 companies for a decade: N. Bloom, C. Genakos, R. Sadun, and J. Van Reenen, “Management Practices across Firms and Countries,” Academy of Management Perspectives 26, no. 1 (2012): 12–33.
2. A poll conducted of visitors to the Monster.com website, reported November 25, 2014, had more than one in three of 2,700-plus respondents rating their boss “horrible,” and over half giving their boss a negative rating. http://www.monster.com/about/a/think-your-friends-have-horrible-bosses-too-youre-probably-right
3. An extensive analysis of MBA programs by a celebrated researcher and MBA professor concludes there is no reason to expect performance in school to translate into effective management practice. H. Mintzberg, Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005).
4. An August 2007 survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) in conjunction with HR.com found that almost half—about 47 percent—of the 338 organizations surveyed have no training programs for new supervisors. http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/The-High-Cost-of-the-Bad-Boss.aspx#sthash.9T8QeBQO.dpuf
5. Results from a poll of one thousand US adults in March 2007 by the Employment Law Alliance (ELA) found that “44% of American workers have worked for a supervisor or employer who they consider abusive.” See more at http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/The-High-Cost-of-the-Bad-Boss.aspx#sthash.9T8QeBQO.dpu
6. State of the American Manager, Gallup Company publication, 2015. http://www.gallup.com/services/182138/state-american-manager.aspx
7. A great number of research studies report trust in one’s manager and an organization’s top management enables a person to better focus on their work and consequently to be more productive. For example, see R.C. Mayer and M.B. Gavin, “Trust in Management and Performance: Who Minds the Shop While Employees Watch the Boss?” Academy of Management Journal 48, no. 5 (2005): 874–88.
8. S.J. Schroeder, “An Investigation into the Psychology of Individuals’ Empowerment at Work” (dissertation, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, 1998).
9. There are several studies reporting that people who experience abusive situations at work also report more work-caused distress in the family life. For an example, see B.J. Tepper, “Consequences of Abusive Supervision,” Academy of Management Journal 43, no. 2 (2000): 178–90.
10. W.G. Bennis and N. Nichey, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (New York: Penguin, 2007).
11. Attesting to this reluctance is a study where 85 percent of participants indicated having been in situations where they felt uncomfortable raising important issues with a supervisor. F.J. Milliken, E.W. Morrison, and P.F. Hewlin, “An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why,” Journal of Management Studies 40, no. 6 (2003): 1,453–76.