If I had to choose a word of the year, it would be ‘Management Bashing’. It is not really new, but last year in my surroundings it has become particularly popular. ‘Management Bashing’ is used in phrases like ‘Please, let’s not do management bashing now’ or ‘Ah, that’s again management bashing, that won’t help us to find better solutions’.

If we say that management has not the skills for a modern, coaching leadership style that develops people – it is management bashing.

If we say that management is spending too much of their time for execution of given tasks and not enough to drive change that allows better work – it is management bashing.

If we say that they are looking at the wrong reports with the wrong data – it is management bashing.

For those who use it, ‘Management Bashing’ means the activity to criticize management and to make management responsible for issues in an organization in a generalized way. Their use of the term goes with the correct assumption that managers are not bad or incapable people. They are human beings like you and me, they are doing hard work, like everyone. The use of ‘Management Bashing’ expresses, that we are failing to identify the real root causes of issues by pointing to management, too fast.

Every time, when I noticed that last connotation in the use of ‘management bashing’ I asked myself: Why the hell should we not look for sources of issues in what management does, what management thinks and what management holds for true or not? Of course that is a very important corner to look at! Can’t they see that obviously, yes, management is a very important part of the problem?!

However, who is ‘management’? Shouldn’t we rather say: „…what managers do, what managers think…“? Yes, that makes more sense, doesn’t it? There is no such thing like ‘management’ as a thing or a group that would act homogeneously, driven by one magic hand. That sounds logic, and so reasonable and respectful. But I don’t agree with it. Not fully.

Of course, there are only single managers, individuals, that are thinking and acting. But there is also something that links and drives them: A management system, consisting of knowledge, practices, rules, processes, tools, methods, common sense convictions, do’s and don’ts. It rewards some actions and punishes others. And there is a whole school of thinking that tells a manager today, what is good management. That management system drives the perceptions and beliefs of managers and sets the conditions that influence their behaviour.

I must admit, there is something true about the phenomenon that ‘management bashing’ refers to: Indeed, it is not helpful to give the fault for what goes wrong in a company to management in a very generalized way, without specifying what would be the wrong action or concepts and which individuals are acting and thinking the wrong way.

We want to stay respectful towards people and we don’t want to treat anybody unjustly. We should be thorough, precise and fact-based in our analysis of root causes and not just attack those who seem to have more power and influence than we do. And last but not least, the purpose is not to just talk ‘against’ the managers, but to find out, together, what is a better way to walk. We are looking for solutions, not for scapegoats – that is what they mean with ‘management bashing’.

Yes, that’s all nice and there is peace on earth and management can carry on to try to solve problems the way how they always did it. But how would anybody want to solve a problem, if we can’t talk about it and name it openly? Before we move to a solution, the problem must be identified, named and understood.

Unfortunately, in my surrounding in 2014 ‘Management Bashing’ has been used in an inflationary way as an ‘argument’ in situations where we started to talk about the problem that my company and many others have today. Too frequently and too fast this ‘Let’s not do management bashing now’ has been brought up when somebody started to name one of the issues that we actually have in management.

Of course, ‘management’ consists of many different individuals, each one is a person, following own motivations, principles and practices. And most of them are really acting in best faith and best intentions and are very motivated to find best approaches and to do a real good job as managers. There is a lot of good stuff, there are great people doing great things. On the other hand, many of them are frustrated: They do great things despite difficult conditions.

Indeed, I am not writing this to blame the individuals, that would be outdated management thinking and is not the way how we solve problems. We must look at the conditions, at the ‘system’ around the people and blame the wrong design of that ‘system’ (in the sense of the structures in an organization) for what goes wrong again and again. The job is to make understood, what needs to be changed about the ‘system’ to get out of the issues that management today mostly causes in organizations.

But who does that? Who spots out what it is and then, who changes it? Who has the job to do that? Of course: It is management. It should be management. So, on the other hand, just because management consists of individuals, there are also always individual choices about what to do or not. And those who have the ambition to be leaders (what management usually does) have accepted the responsibility to take choices not only for themselves, but for many others: Their teams, their peers, their bosses, their partners and customers.

Let’s be honest: Wouldn’t we all like to bash our manager from time to time? Give her or him the fault for what is so difficult with our work? Wouldn’t we like to just tell them how bad we find some of their decisions? Wouldn’t we like to tell them into their faces that it was their fault, what just went wrong with that customer?And, why can’t we, by the way? Why ist this relationship so difficult, so dangerous, it seems? Certainly, because they have the power and because employees depend on them – at least if management is being practiced like it mostly is.

And is it just a normal phenomenon of jealousy that in some surveys around 70 percent indicate their manager as the source of frustrations that they would change first, if they could? There must be something true about the criticism against management – I mean, these employees are not all bad people, too. They are not completely disrespectful idiots who just walk around and beat upon colleagues (their managers) because they are not satisfied with their work, their salary and their lives.

What unfortunately happens so many times when the discussion comes to the point of change and what needs to be done to get change, is that managers complain that they are so busy with their job, that they ‘have no time’, that they can’t take the risk to experiment with new ideas and approaches that have never been proofed in practice (and even if, then it is an issue that it has not been proofed here). Each one of these individual managers make the choice to continue to move in an unproductive system and not to look for better new approaches to change the system and its productivity. All the pain, all the efforts, demotivating obstacles and deficits – they are fighting all that day in day out. It is like the famous hamster in the wheel: A lot of eager running, but things do not really change, there is no real progress.

It is clear: If you want to get out of a hamster-wheel, what is needed first is to stop to move in the hamster-wheel! So why do they continue running? It has become a trend of today’s management best practices to re-frame poor or average standards and results to be good work and good success. This is the only way for a manager to continue to do what is expected, without kicking your own integrity and pride consciously every day. They chase the targets, KPI’s, issues, escalations, commitments – stay busy, eager, work faster, do not question things, do not reflect with a too critical mind. It is a chase where you only win if you don’t hold yourself back with justified doubts. 

The re-framing from mediocre to good is a nice escape door to rectify the perception to not be forced to change their own action. Change their behaviour against a mighty system and its pressures and rules. Free, intelligent human beings will only continue to run in a hamster-wheel as long as they don’t admit that it is a hamster-wheel, or if they feel that they have no other choice. But as said above: Of course, there are other choices, every day.

To say it even more directly: There is a lot of crap being done out there in typical modern companies for the sake of moving somewhere restlessly. That crap is being done by eager, intelligent managers in the very best intentions and with the honest conviction that this would be a good way to do the job. And here we are with the core of the problem that many companies have: Unfortunately, the majority of managers have quite outdated perceptions and concepts of what ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ means, about what leadership can do and not and how work and organisations can be designed to get far better results than today. This is the issue that needs to be called by its name: A whole generation of management education and practice has moved into the wrong direction.

The base of knowledge and the quality of what is common practice, or ‘best practice’ if you want to use another modern management buzzword, is not adequate any more in comparison to available knowledge about what determines the performance of an organization and what human beings need to give their best to this end. Time has overcome old patterns of what a manager does, how a management system works and what are good (valid) and bad practices (myths). A lot of what apparently successful managers consider as best knowledge, tools and practices today, is just the very root cause of many issues that organizations typically are facing today.

Unfortunately, the damage that this does is not obvious, because financially, in a mid-term view, such companies can be very successful for some years and the usual controlling reports and surveys hardly give enough hints about the structural damage that grows deep inside the heart of work relationships. The long term perspective, however, is different: These outdated management concepts and practices – considered as best in class and what everybody does everywhere – are the root cause of severe risks and dangers for the long-term survival of companies, that are dominating their markets today. Not only success, but their survival depends on the question if managers will be able to get rid of outdated perceptions, principles and practices – or if not.

And again the question: Is ‘generalized Management Bashing’ an acceptable, helpful position – isn’t that unjust? Is this the fault of these managers? Of every single individual in a management position? Yes and no.

No it is not, because they are not aware of it, they are just practising what they have learned from others or from the wrong books and lectures. In the conviction to get the best, they just do what all the books, management schools and all the consultants and peers are preaching and practising. It is a whole majority ‘movement’ in which they are doing their job and that gives the trends and myths of what would be best way to do management.

And yes, it is their fault. At least for all those who get knowledge of better advice, all those who have employees or colleagues who come with data, good arguments, cases and suggestions about what needs change. It is their fault if they do not listen, do not support, do not lead the exploration of better approaches. It is their fault if they judge everything as not worth to be followed what THEY do not understand immediately and what differs from THEIR basic assumptions and practices – or what questions the existing rules of the game in management. 

Also it is the fault of every individual manager with an academic degree who answers that their job would be a question of experience and practice much more than of good theory and foundation in facts, logic and purpose. This is just not a very professional attitude – good engineers would not answer bluntly in that way… nor would doctors do so. They know how important the scientific foundation of their work is.

What I am talking about, a bit more specifically? Here are two examples of problematic and outdated management theory and practice:

1. Most of the large western companies are taking decisions about products, markets, customers and resources based on traditional accounting information that displays the cost of business structured into cost-types and expressed in sums and averages. All these companies also try to steer their operation by setting targets in form of KPIs or quantified goals (cost, revenue, throughput): For example, they try to cut down the cost of business by setting cost reduction targets per functional area and department. Plenty of nasty stories can be told about the damage that this does to a business and to the motivation of managers and staff. I invite you to study analysis about how useless this type of controlling information is to identify the real root causes of avoidable cost or inefficiencies. By cutting cost, usually these kind of decisions systems are cutting also the revenues and the future capabilities of their operation, without even knowing it. Don’t believe it? Then please observe the reality around you and those who work under such management. Listen to the stories about the work at the base. The book ‘Profit beyond measure’ gives the full argumentation and examples why this is the case (Profit Beyond Measure, H. Thomas Johnson, Anders Broms; published in 2001 by Free Press). However, this book is not part of what ‘modern management’ reads or what is being taught in (most) MBA-curricula or controlling lessons.

2. Go and do a test in your own environment – may it be in the company that you work for or with your friends and their experiences: Try to get an appointment with somebody in higher management (firs hurdle: In my company that either takes 6 months to happen or you will have at least three short-term postponements) and ask them how they have come to their latest strategic decisions and how they determine what changes in their organization are needed to improve its overall performance. If you manage to talk to them, find out how much the experts who do the work (in the line, in operation) have been involved in that decision taking process. Are they still acting based on the assumption that some few wise top managers alone know best how the company can innovate and improve? Objectively seen, they very probably are practising a quite autocratic leadership style, while other leadership practices are proclaimed as the ones that they would like to apply. The next level in this ‘game’ (for courageous and skilled fighters) is to then ask them for the data that was used (please, not just a couple of few data points and not averages! Real statistics would be better), what theory, concepts and methods for the analysis and how valid all that is from a perspective of scientific thinking. Might result in very strong and ‘fresh’ wind against you.

3. Still many organizations are convinced that bonus-systems in combination with management-by-objectives are a very good and modern way of improving the overall performance of their people and their organization: Unfortunately, there is plenty of scientific study that proves the contrary. Watch this nice animation: RSA Animate – The surprising truth about what really motivates people. Didn’t know? Don’t believe? Welcome in the club… – feel bashed? Well…

Need more examples? ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ by Douglas McGregor would be a very good start lecture to change your perspective about how human beings nature at work really is and how it needs to be managed in an organization (The Human Side of Enterprise, annotated edition, by Douglas McGregor, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld; published 2005 by McGraw-Hill).

So, the problem with the usage of the logical fallacy of ‘Management Bashing’ is not the question if (all or individual) managers have the fault or not. Who would have said that in the middle age the sailors are guilty of ignorance, because they believed that the earth was flat and that they could not sail too far south or west, because their ships would fall off the plate, directly into hell. But obviously that question of ‘guilt’ is less obvious to answer for the pope who listened to Gallileo Gallilei’s scientific findings…

Yes, that’s where we are going with this article: The problem with this ‘Management Bashing argument’ is that people bring it up at the point where one starts to question today’s holy beliefs that are the fundament of current power constellations. This general issue of outdated management knowledge must be adressed openly in order to talk about what can be changed to help organizations avoid failure at large scale – but it is a topic that menaces some important foundations of today’s management practice: Pride, looking strong and wise in front of others, keeping control, have nobody interfere their decisions or opinions and last but not least in some of the ‘nice-culture’ type  companies: A fear to demotivate people by talking about real problems – while just this has already demotivated them continuously before.

A lot of what is considered as common knowledge and best practice in management is outdated or science has proven that it was a myth, a wrong belief. This fact must be named clearly. Otherwise, how would we change it? However, that requires humility and it requires the readiness to unlearn the old stuff and to question a lot of concepts that are today the base of a manager’s power and personal security in his job. The fear of disorientation and loss of control holds them back, but such insights are the price to pay for reorientation, creative new concepts and better outcomes. This and the illusion that the own way of acting is the right way because the short term financial results look good on the paper, makes a lot of managers resist to critzism of that kind. ‘Mangement Bashing’ is a nice ‘killer term’ to stop that kind of important discussion at the very beginning.

If conversations about this topic are being driven harder and more consequently – who has then the bigger problem? Those who leave the comfort zones in the debate and who speak honestly about what needs to be adressed without making it politically so correct that you can’t recognize it any more? Or those who are not able to listen and who claim that you can’t talk like that with managers? Reality does not wait until the fog of politically correct nice-talking has gone away. And market opportunities are long gone when innovative new ideas are obviously ‘best practice’ for even the last careful and change-phobic practitioners in the last corner of ‘follower competition’. How long do you want to continue to waste the lifetime of your employees and customers, just because moving on with known practice is more comfortable and seems to be less risky (while this is the real dangerous risk in reality)?

Clearly I would say, it is not helpful to not start this very important debate, because we risk that some of the included generalizations are not rewarding the heroic efforts and skills of every individual manager. And I must say, self-praising has reached enough – no, even much too much – popularity in the best pratice of today’s management, while self-criticism is de-classified as for the ‘weak ones’ or ‘loosers’. A dangerous constellation of arrogance and complacency for everybody who wants to stay on the winner side in the market (not to talk about those who want to be THE NUMBER ONE). So, tell me, how bashed do you feel now? And how would you solve that paradoxon of: How to tell somebody that he has a big problem without calling it a big, serious problem, sooner or later?

It is a good intention to protect the human beings from injustice who are managers. But the way to hell is paved with good intentions, as a very true proverb says. At the end we have to ask ourselves: What shows more respect towards these human beings who are managers, and what shows more leadership competency at their service: Stay nice and politically correct, avoid the risk of hard debate and conflict and let them continue to waste their lifes and motivations in business hamster-wheels? Or talk to them as adult persons about how bad things really are and what better stuff can make them more successful and the work of all much more meaningful and fulfilling.  Is it competent or respectful to not tell them about that huge opportunity, just because the first step on the way there is painful as truth can be sometimes? I would not leave that better choice aside. It would just be too hard to watch how we do not use that opportunity.