Study: Most managers are ineffective

Courtesy of Flickr user The Accent C.C.2.0

Power is the ability to get things done. You could say that management is the art of ensuring that things get done. Yet what's so striking about most organizations is that so little management is effective.

That's what academics Heike Bruch and the late Sumantra Ghoshal discovered when they investigated what they called "decisive purposeful action." Most companies, far from being hives of busy, effective executives, could instead be seen as "a few isolated islands of action amid an ocean of inaction," the researchers found. Does this ring any bells? It certainly reminded me of many places I've worked -- and run -- where a small number of people always seemed to be doing the majority of work that mattered.

Bruch and Ghoshal's study quantified my impression. "What we found in our research surprised us," the authors write. "Only about 10 percent of the managers took purposeful action." The remainder were busy, just not very effective: 40 percent were energetic but unfocused; 30 percent had low energy, little focus and tended to procrastinate; and 10% were focused, but not very energetic.

No wonder most businesses are so unproductive. What all of this suggests (and there's plenty of other supporting evidence), is that we waste most of the human resources we hire. The people around us are either unfocused (they don't know how to use their energy), uninspired (they've lost their energy), or distant (they'd rather think than do.) Leadership is about galvanizing this potential and getting it to move effectively in the right direction.

The 40 percent who are energetic but unfocused are the ones you have to work on. They want to do useful work and are up for a challenge. They just don't know where to start or how to prioritize. When you have a coherent strategy, you give this energy meaningful direction. Unfocused energy is rarely the fault of the individual. Rather, it's an indication that your strategy isn't sufficiently understood or being translated into goals.

The 30 percent who have low energy and little focus are tough nuts to crack. Did they start well and just run out of steam? Are they in the wrong jobs or the wrong company? There's a high likelihood they started out in the energetic 40 percent cohort but became disillusioned and disengaged by their inability to have an impact. Your best hope is that galvanizing the 40 percent creates enough draw within the organization that the best of these get swept along.

I don't really worry about the focused but less effective 10 percent. In my experience, focus is always valuable, even if it's slow. In most companies, everyone knows who fits into which category. You probably know, too. The question is: What are you going to do about them?

[bensimo]

The problem is that the vast majority of managers and executives use the traditional top-down command and control approach to managing people. By its very nature, top-down tends to demotivate, demoralize and demean employees thus causing them to disengage.

Creating fully engaged employees (managers and workers) who are highly motivated and committed to their work is relatively easy if one uses the opposite approach, that of Autonomy and Support.

Take a look at the short videos on my website.
http://www.bensimonton.com
Best regards, Ben

[Alex_Iva]

People who are thrust into a position of power and responsibility without being fully ready to take it often behave like little children. There is a great book on the matter: Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant, by Lynn Taylor (http://www.tameyourtot.com/index.shtml). It's written with a great sense of humor. Although it may appear to be targeted to employees, it has chapters specifically for CEOs on how to improve the management force.

[pepperjack2]

One contributor to lack of focus is the fallacy that more effectiveness happens with more corporate goals. Those goals turn into multiples beyond comprehension when they are translated through sub-goals and projects through the hierarchical layers. Some managers are asked to work on a dozen goals and collaborate on a dozen others. Plus they have to run the department. "Yeah, I think I've got time on October 23rd from 9am to noon to work on that goal out of the 24 on my plate. Oh, wait, the boss just called and wants work on something else. I guess this project gets moved to November 12th." Of course, effectiveness suffers.

[KatherineElizabeth]

Our employees are reporting a lack of trust from managers when it comes to their expertise in doing their work. This causes disengagement. Managers who simply bark orders and condescend to their subordinates are creating a resentful, hostile environment. We are working on change in this area.

Personally throughout the years of committed service to various companies, I became resentful when I discovered that some managers were getting paid twice as much as I just to tell me what to do. This bothers me and still does.

However, on the other hand, I had very keen art directors (managers) who really deserved their pay by their guidance (leadership) and trusted in my abilities. To them, I'll raise a glass and thank them for the learning experience I've acquired in order to get where I am today.

[peterahunter]

If we accept that most managers are ineffective what is the point of telling them to do more of the same management behaviour.

If current management behaviour is ignoring 90% of the potential of the workforce then surely that indicates that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that we have been managing.

The behaviour we need to change is not the behaviour of the workforce, we have to change the behaviour of the managers.

It is the behaviour of managers that creates the environment in which the workforce works.
The way the workforce feels about what they do depends on the environment created for them by their management.

Their failure to understand this creates the environment that actively causes their workforce to disengage.

When the individual arrives for the first day on a new job they are energetic, imaginative and engaged.
It is what happens to them subsequently that causes them to disengage.

We do hire valuable human resources.
We waste them by creating conditions in which they cannot be productive then we blame them for their lack of performance.

Stop blaming the workforce, start blaming the people who make them feel this way. Their managers.

Peter A Hunter
www.BreakingtheMould.Co.UK

[coachthee]

Newly recruited or promoted leaders often fail for a few common reasons: due to unclear or outsized expectations, a failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders, a failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough, a failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports and a failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people.

Executive onboarding coaching of the newly recruited or promoted executive can turnaround this high rate of failure.

[sunnyjeff]

I am in the 40% energetic and unfocused. How about some resources to help?

[jamal.hijjawi]

No way you are great, the most fun of it if you are a financial consultant as my self, how you can tell this you can't nail them in the head of course, telling you something I have an idea just use them as how much output you can get out of them let say 5% make the best of it and ignore the 95% which is idle, how about that, since we loose here, can we compensate this yes, how, either you put them through real program face the challenge tell them of there deficiencies, the targets needed to over come the gap or they are out this is fair enough and/or replace them gradually.

[jamal.hijjawi]

No way you are great, the most fun of it if you are a financial consultant as my self, how you can tell this you can't nail them in the head of course, telling you something I have an idea just use them as how much output you can of them let say 5% make the best of it and ignore the 95% which is idle, how about that, since we loose here, can we compensate this yes, how,either you put them through real program face the challenge tel them of there deficiencies, the targets needed to over come the gap or they are out this is fare enough and/or replace them gradually.

[jamal.hijjawi]

Please ignore the previous one
No way you are great, the most fun of it if you are a financial consultant as my self, how you can tell this you can't nail them in the head of course, telling you something I have an idea just use them as how much output you can get out of them let say 5% make the best of it and ignore the 95% which is idle, how about that, since we loose here, can we compensate this yes, how,either you put them through real program face the challenge tel them of there deficiencies, the targets needed to over come the gap or they are out this is fair enough and/or replace them gradually.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8618-505125_162-57355776.html?assetTypeId=41&messageId=11836336&tag=socialToolBarBottom;accordionB#ixzz1jnmWkzHy

[Marcellus128]

The source of this 'new' knowledge says: 'Management is the Art of Doing and Getting Done, Heike Bruch (University St. Gallen),
Sumantra Ghoshal (London Business School (Deceased)), Business Strategy Review, Vol. 15, pp. 4-13, September 2004

So why is this article written in a style as if this research was conducted recently?

[margaretheffernan]

I didn't say it was new. Like much of Ghoshal's work, it is relevant for longer than the moment it is published. And most people are unfamiliar with it. There is a vast reservoir of outstanding research that has stood and continues to stand the test of the time. We make a big mistake imagining that only the newest is relevant.