No other management guru influenced American business the last fifty years than Peter Drucker. His writings flourished in what we now refer to as the “Information Age,” but his HBR articles and books transcended the American corporation and influenced leaders and managers to develop personal skills based on psychological and managerial theories. Of all his traits listed for effective leadership, his foremost tenet was “Listen first, speak last.” As a tribute to Drucker the editor wishes to offer a few insights into what effective leadership is NOT.

Corporations today are based on an incremental, short-sighted model that promises quarterly financial returns to stockholders at the risk of ethical principles and employee morale. The fact that Fortune magazine features the “Best 100 Companies to Work For” each year, attests to the fact that bosses really don’t care about their subordinates. Even with 360 evaluations most managers concern themselves with “upstream” news rather than “downstream” news. The fact that the number one complaint of corporate America is one’s boss is a fitting testament to the lack of charisma and effective leadership today. The Enron debacle adds to the business lexicon that “Enron gate” is synonymous with poorly defined leadership, mismanagement, and decisions devoid of ethics and sense of fairness. It’s not enough to claim ignorance when thousands have lost entire savings because they believed upper management was doing their job.

Most managers today PANIC in lieu of basing sound decisions on basic management principles that Drucker espoused during his illustrious career as consultant and teacher to MBAs and CEOs for five decades. Panic by its very nature implies that decisions are short-sighted, impulsive, arbitrary, and designed to cover up important mistakes, whether intentional or not. If one is unfortunate enough to require ER services due to a critical injury, panic is the last thing one wants to see in the faces of doctors and nurses. Although a life hangs in the balance in the ER, millions of lives are affected by business decisions daily. Trade agreements, tariffs, intellectual property rights, patents, trademarks, confidentiality agreements, ROI (return on investment), to name a few, are reactionary in nature to give a FEW advantage over MANY. Let’s take a look at what leads to panic within companies.

No Planning: If you don’t have a roadmap, then you are relegated to running around in circles looking busy. Drucker said it best in his “HBR Managing for Business Effectiveness” in his 1963 article that “there is surely nothing quite as useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” How many times have you witnessed companies working a frenetic pace only to achieve few results? I don’t know about you but I want my surgeon to draw on my belly with a magic marker before he cuts on me.

No Assignments: Work without delegation is chaos. How many times have you seen departments working at cross purposes because of a lack of communication, trust, or knowledge of the bigger picture? The FBI, DEA, CIA, and NSA are notorious for turf battles that limit their effectiveness. If you want a job done right, you have to know the skills of your people and assign jobs accordingly. Project leads with engineering backgrounds generally lack this skill and believe in the axiom that “divide and conquer” is superior to “assess and assign.”

No Notice: Employees are no different from anyone else and simple reinforcement principles from psychology apply here. While it is true we work for money, recognition is a far superior motivator for maintaining employee performance and morale. Annual company picnics are not the venue to recognize people for a job well done. Parking spaces, employee of the month, gift certificates, time off, public presentations, travel, and educational incentives are important to making folks feel special.

No Instruction: There is no substitute for training to eliminate obsolescence and middlescence in the workplace. Unfortunately training is looked at as a waste of time that takes the employee away from production or operations. With long-distance, virtual institutes, staff is not required to leave work to gain knowledge. They can integrate knowledge and theory with case studies from their own venue. Esoteric rhetoric from ivory towers is part of managerial history and there exists much more dynamic interplay between theory and practice.

No Celebration: An important coaching tool is to celebrate the successes of your client. American corporations would do well to follow a coaching model when mentoring employees. QA is synonymous with “what’s wrong” which leads to less risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit. What is needed in our businesses today are “celebration teams” that not only recognize but inspire and transform our successes that motivate and infuse our workers with energy.

Any of you who have suffered from panic attacks know that this unpleasant experience leads one towards the false belief that one is going to die. Organizations can also develop a “panic” mentality that is based on fear and ignorance. Without planning, assigning, noticing, instructing, and celebrating the successes of your employees, there is no effective leadership, just mediocre management.

Helpful Hints:

1. Read a case study on a company “turnaround” and look for parallels with the “panic” model for successful change.
2. Notice how many consultants operate on a panic model for change and why their effectiveness is diminished after they leave the company.
3. Look at a coaching model for effective leadership and notice how the client is empowered to make a difference.

 

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION