Last week I was forced to think about the shift that is going on in management. I was invited as a guest lecturer to moderate a workshop at the Zagreb School for Economy and Management (ZSEM) about the subject of ‘Shared Leadership’.

In preparing my workshop for this next generation leaders I thought about management as one of humankind’s most important inventions. It is, actually quite simply, the technology of human accomplishment. You could say that our capacity to improve the state of the world is ultimately bounded by our capacity to manage.

Prof. Dr. Gary Hamel gave me another perspective. (6 April 2011 in management 2.0 ): The management model that predominates in most organizations has its roots in the 19^th century. It was built to maximize efficiency by minimizing deviations from standard practices. But today’s organizations must be more than well-oiled machines; they must also be endlessly adaptive and relentlessly innovative. The fact that most aren’t, demonstrates just how little progress has been made in retooling management for a new age.

Defining the market

We often hear ‘the market requires us to change’, but, the question is: who is that market? Right! It is us! It is the people! A (wo)man in their changing roles of being employee, a customer and a consumer. And this is where the change starts, from the consumer, customer who is at the same time employee.

In broader context we see a tremendous management shift happening right now in e.g. several Middle East and African countries, where people don’t accept the management style of their leaders anymore. People want their basic needs fulfilled. But in a smaller context, what about organisations? And what about the people who receive this management?

This management shift is also going on in organisations at this very moment. A closer look at organisations shows that in most larger organizations there are more and more restless managers who are eager to disrupt the status quo, and, even one or two have actually taken a risk and launched a small-scale experiment for improvement in their own department. Practice is, it’s often hard for these renegades to get a hearing, and even when experiments go well, they often fail to scale because there is a lack of support, a lack of guts to change from their top management.

It's easier not to change

Why is this so? It is usually much more comfortable to stick to ‘my old habits’ then to put energy in changing my personal behaviour. And yes, then we are always very creative in finding arguments to convince ourselves it is not necessary to change anything.

But, leadership makes the critical difference in every organization. Often CEO’s are fired from top companies and in every case, the ultimate reason given for the firing was “failure to perform”. The major reason these senior executives have failed to perform is because they appointed weak managers and executives under them. And then they did not have the courage to replace them when they did a poor job and failed to get the results expected of them. Yes, it requires thinking from other perspectives, no narcissism, but having the guts to be a leader. A leader who is not afraid to admit (s)he does not know everything and who would like to be informed by his employees.

A recent University of Michigan study found that employees are generally afraid to raise questions, primarily because they fear that anyone who asks fundamental questions will be perceived as incompetent or uninformed. I see this in my daily practice: experts know they’re supposed to supply answers, not more questions. But, ‘asking the difficult questions’ is actually the best stimulator for creativity and innovation in every organization to improve their performance.

People are everything

Concrete, in reality, the best companies have the best people. The second-best companies have the second-best people. The third-best companies are on their way out of business. Your ability to select good people and then to manage them well is the critical determinant of the success of your business. People are everything! 95 percent of your success will be determined by the people you hire for key positions. And how they perform with the people they are leading.

The golden rule is that you cannot expect people to perform at high levels unless you have thoroughly trained them to perform at those levels. The most profitable companies invest in the most advanced development programs. The worst companies do no training at all. Your ability to build an effective team of high-class professionals is the key to business, to sales growth and to profitability, without which nothing else will work.

Based on this kind of thinking I prepared my program, an Appreciative Inquiry approach into ‘Shared Leadership’ for the ZSEM students. A group of ca. 30 international students from some 11 countries around the world, including Croatia. I was very curious to hear about their personal experiences with leadership and management, about their ideas, their norms and values. The result of this workshop was astonishing and a real eye-opener.

Good and open communication

I was impressed how the students came up with a clear view on the behavioral aspects they need from their (future) manager and which they want to apply in their own leadership style, just because they believe this is the only way to get fundamental results for any company as a whole. They really want to have another way of management than they experience right now, not only for themselves but also for their generation; this is their belief and ambition. To make this very practical: the way these students see Shared Leadership as a future management style should contain aspects as: good and open communication; listening and talking with staff; sharing information, knowledge and skills throughout the organisation; keeping up to agreements that are made; focus on effective teamwork; stimulate creativity and innovation; set common goals; being clear about responsibilities and accountabilities which should be regularly evaluated; demand high performance and reward accordingly by recognition (explicitly not meaning money! and that for economists!).

The benefits as they see it for both the organisation as for the staff is that there would be an honest and stress free organisational environment in which: employees would be happier; more motivated; have a higher moral and loyalty to the company; they show a high level of self management for taking initiative and responsibility; in a culture where they would feel free, have fun and could think positive, creativity and innovation would get a real boost.

Through this way of managing the results and profitability of the company would increase. Besides, the company would gain a lot of respect from external stakeholders, especially from their customers who would prefer to do business with this type of companies.

And so, the circle is closed: the general conclusion of this new generation managers is that no organisation (read: managers) with the ambition to really make a difference and realise a competitive advantage, will be sustainable if they do not put their people first.
I herewith sincerely thank the students for this inspirational exchange on management and leadership development thinking, it was a real pleasure for me.

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