A short chat message exchange with an acquaintance leads me to the conclusion: The old pony is always right.

We had briefly talked about a work appointment that had to be postponed due to illness, and somehow ended up discussing where on earth one is supposed to find the time for all the things we have to fit in — or want to fit in — at work and in our private lives. We quickly agreed that time with the pony, already 31 years old, should definitely take priority (in human years, that’s about 95!). And we agreed that overtime at work (or simply “working more”) is usually not the solution to problems at work.

I thought: the pony is already old — who knows when it will die — so you’d better spend time with it while you still can.

But I also thought — and I told her this — the pony is a “giver of good time.” And that is precisely why the pony deserves priority even more. I would even claim: The pony makes us happy in our free time, but also more productive at work. Because only brains and people and souls that are truly relaxed for once, that can breathe deeply and let everything go, can see the forest behind all the trees again and approach things with a clear view, free thoughts, good faith and good patience.

A few weeks earlier, my acquaintance had told me that thanks to a few sick days at home, she had gained a clearer view of a situation at work. That was when she realised there was a problem — or at least a serious risk — connected to a change that had just been implemented in her company.

So I say: Old ponies are always right. Because these beautiful hobbies we immerse ourselves in, where we forget everything for two or three hours, ensure that our mind becomes completely free. During that time, all the noise disappears, all the smoke above the actual fire. And this is not to be understood as me suggesting that one should start thinking about work problems while riding a pony in green nature. I would strongly advise against that — the pony probably wouldn’t like it very much either (I assume ponies can sense quite well how present and attentive you are while riding). It might even lead to riding accidents in the end, and we certainly don’t want that.

Above all, we don’t want the brain to be harnessed to the cart again, burdened and occupied with annoying work thoughts that it would do better to let go and allow to fly away — precisely to separate what is essential from what is not. I’m not worried: The insights will return by themselves the next day at work or the following week — but freely, with new perspectives.

And that is exactly what helps in solving problems: First of all, getting a view of what the problem actually is, where it is, what it consists of, and why it should matter at all. And even there — with this immensely important question of what it is ultimately about, and what is meant to be achieved — the old pony helps us along beautifully. Because such an old pony reminds us wonderfully of what life is really about.

And no, this is not where the answer to all philosophical questions appears — the famous 42. And no, of course, an old pony is not the right hobby for everyone. No — the pony (and other beautiful hobbies) helps us, as individuals and as human beings, to feel what truly matters to us in life. And that also includes: why we like this job (or don’t), and why it matters to us that it runs well, that it feels right, that we can use our abilities well, and that it gives our clients what they, in turn, need.

The pony is therefore also an important piece of argumentation in a discussion I occasionally have with another friend: Do we work only for the money? And if we see it that way, can we really do very good work? In other words: Can we solve problems in such a way that we are not merely serving the purpose of “making money,” but can actually be effective for something people out there need for a good life — and for which they, as customers, are willing to spend money and time?

Whether that matters or not in an employment relationship may be a matter of opinion. I think that wherever people want to live their lives well, it certainly takes more than money. For example, the incredibly good, richly fulfilling time one can experience with a pony. Despite (and perhaps even because of?) the work it requires and despite the “wasted” money for feed, stable and equipment.

And I also think — and have experienced it so often in my career — that this makes an essential difference at work as well: Why, for what, and for whom we do this work, and how it contributes to a good life. It makes a difference to how we look at problems and which goals we pursue: in the experience of the work itself and in the results one can make possible — for clients and for one’s own company.

What would the pony say about all this? Certainly not: „Life isn’t a walk in the park“ (or, as we would say in German, literally: „Life is no pony farm.”)

And I know from my own experience at work: Whoever has lost this connection to their inner pony — that is, to what they are actually doing this work for — easily loses their way in the wrong problems and looks for the wrong results in “solutions” that in the end, for example, don’t interest customers at all and certainly don’t bring more good pony-time into the world — for anyone.

The Russian General Kutusow’s army is moving slowly through the village of Pratzen, situated on a hill that dominates the center of the battlefield. Impatiently he is giving orders to let them take marching positions for a possible enemy contact – against the directives of the battle plan that assumes that Napoleon’s troops are some kilometers away from Pratzen. Kutusow’s regiments are foreseen to move down to the foggy valley on their left to support the offensive on the left flank of the Austro-Russian forces. But he wants to wait longer. There is still dense fog in the valley in front of them, and it is not certain where the French are standing exactly. During the night French soldiers have been reported to be seen much closer to the Russian lines than they had assumed. Urging faster into the fog does not feel like the right thing to do. Just in that moment czar Alexander and the Austrian emperor Franz arrive on the spot. Alexander asks him why he did not give orders to his regiment to move forward.

What would you do in that situation?

Kutusow takes a considerable risk by opposing the czar’s wish and says he wants to wait longer. He even insists in a short conversation, referring to his responsibility for the troops and the success of the operation. Such a behavior towards the emperor was not at all usual at the time and seen as an offense, particularly in front of the allied Austrian emperor – even if it comes from the long-serving chief army commander Kutusow. But it is only a try: Kutusow gives in quickly as he sees that the czar does not change his mind. He turns back to the expected attitude of absolute loyalty and gives order to move down to the valley. His regiments disappear in the fog.

Only a few minutes later the French are starting a heavy attack towards the hill where Kutusow and the czar are standing, coming out of the fog on the right side. The height of Pratzen was the key position and the attack on that hill was the key move of Napoleon that decided the famous battle of Austerlitz in October 1805. By that meticulously prepared surprise move, Napoleon takes over the dominant hill in the center of the battlefield, cuts into the side of the Russian advance and splits the Russian and Austrian positions in the middle. Part of his tactics was to keep the surprise attack hidden in the morning fogs in the valley as long as possible – while he could perfectly observe the enemy’s moves on the hill. During the days before the battle, he had well observed at what time in the morning the fogs were starting to disappear. What Napoleon had thoroughly planned based on endless rides through the whole environment and based on careful observations and analysis, could only be guessed by Kutusow’s intuition as an experienced general. The plan’s of the monarchs Alexander and Franz were much more driven by optimism, arrogance and impatience for a success against Napoleon than based on investigations and facts about the French positions and tactical possibilities.

Tolstoj’s description of this encounter in his novel ‘War and Peace’ puts us into a very close and human perspective of the famous battle. He lets the reader experience the events only from the limited perspective of a few involved decision takers and supporting officers. And that gives an impressing insight of how it is to be in the middle of such a battle – and how limited the view and the options of single individuals are – let them be soldiers, officers or generals. What the reader gets from the next pages is not the well sorted sequence of attacks, counterattacks, successes and failures from an all-knowing distant perspective. The reader just sees, what the officers see: Suddenly the French are there and a lot is going wrong on the hill of Pratzen, while everybody is fighting and struggling at his very best. We follow the commander in chief and his officers trying to understand what is going on and how they can get the situation back under control. And while they are fighting bravely, we witness how they slowly discover that the whole battle is lost already before they even had a chance to understand what is happening to the battle as a whole.

A narrow, ‘siloed’ view reduces options to act

The officers can only see their corner of the battlefield – a road, a hill, a village, shooting and dying. And they only know what their orders are for their unit – as long as there is somebody to give orders. They are trying to turn the battle to the good with bravery and decisive action, but their possibilities are limited to what they can see: Their narrow section of responsibility, without an overview of the whole battlefield and without a base of information to see where their intervention would really help most. They can only defend and counterattack where they are standing. They are executing their task, being blind for the overall battle situation: They do not know what is going on somewhere else and if their movement, following the original orders, still makes sense in the actual situation.

No command, no action

Even the chief commander Kutusow and his generals find themselves lost in the middle of a situation that was not foreseen and that is no longer under their control. And while they let their officers fight fiercely to win the hill back, while they are throwing their elite cavalry reserves into total annihilation, they miss to abandon the whole original plan and to adjust positions and movements to the new situation – with this giving away their last options of avoiding a total defeat. While they lose the strategically important hill of Pratzen, there are large reserve units at the right wing, standing on the positions of their first quick wins, kilometers away from the center and without new orders, waiting until everything is too late. Their culture of hierarchy and orders makes it impossible to take own initiative that would go against the original battle plan – these generals are not used to take such responsibility. It is the job of the chief commander to take such decisions and so they send out a messenger. Until that cavalry officer has ridden along the many kilometers of battlefield to to find Kutusow or the czar for new orders, the disaster is already in full scale and everything is lost.

From the perspective of that messenger-officer the whole damage and desperate struggles of various units become visible along his ride, however he does not understand the causes of the disaster and does not draw conclusions for his own action (for example ride back and urge his general to act to support the center of the Austro-Russian lines). He does his duty and finally finds the csar. But Alexander is far retreated from his troops, obviously desperate and not with many options or much courage left. The officer decides that it is better to leave him alone, in order to not be the one officer who embarrasses the csar in his weak moment.

The result as history reports it: 15 000 Russian and Austrian soldiers have been shot into pieces during the battle or in the trap of their retreat between a narrow dam and the icy water of the lakes in their back – the French shooting with artillery from the conquered Pratzen height. 12 000 prisoners are taken and half of the Austro-Russian artillery cannons are conquered by the French (their metal was melted to a triumph-colon, today still standing on Place de la Concorde at Paris). With their armies destroyed the Austrian and Russian emperors can only bargain within Napoleon’s conditions: Russia must accept to retreat from the war and France gains control over large parts of northern Italy. At the same time, this marks the end of the hundreds of years old German empire at that time.

Overall performance is not determined by individual efforts in execution

Had general Kutusow waited longer on the hill – we do not know if and what that would have changed to the outcome of the battle. Maybe it would have improved options for the allied armies? However what is more important to learn from this: Tolstojs impressive and consequent storytelling with these limited, subjective perspectives demonstrates how much human beings – like Kutusow and his generals and officers – are just a little function of the dependencies and rules of an organization and of a leadership system that had come up with a not good enough plan. We see the disaster happen through their eyes and we feel their desperation to change the whole situation from their position, with their limited insights. And we see how difficult it is to work against the culture and rules of management in that system. Why did Kutusow give in so quickly? Did he know that it was in vain to insist, because he had tried before? Did he, just like the rest of the generals, unconsciously rely too much on their superiority in numbers and artillery? Was it the arrogance of the experienced elite generals against the unorthodox newcomer Napoleon? Did he think that somebody else would know better and do the right things to avoid damage? Did he maybe just think that it can not turn out too bad, after all? Because the armies are too big, their nations too strong, the company too rich and the customers still patient?

What assumptions would you have made in that situation? Before knowing the outcome of the battle? (And please keep in mind that it is easy to analyze after seeing the result, but difficult while things are not yet decided).

What we can say (assuming that Tolstoj’s view of the story is true) is that Kutusow already went quite far in stretching his personal courage and career risks – if we take into account the culture and customs of a military organization at that time and the special situation: Alexander wanted to demonstrate strength and decisiveness in front of the Austrian emperor. If his view could help or not was fully depending on his personal courage and risk-taking. Nothing in the given culture of leadership supported the beneficial use of his objection and expert judgement, in contrary, such behaviour was punished directly. Kutusow’s advance created subtle, but powerful resistance and, at the end, was without any effect on decisions and outcomes.

Working within the given system and culture – or changing the system

What seems certain is that Alexander was an energetic and ambitious young emperor with modern ideas and a drive for success. He wanted to move and progress, take risks, be the active part – and not be seen as the waiting, hesitating, too careful man, who is not ready to seize the opportunity to beat Napoleon. Mind the similarities to what is seen as successful and modern ‘leadership’ today! Maybe Kutusow knew that beating this spirit and the system of hierarchy would not work. Maybe he simply did not see this as his purpose – just as so many ‘modern’ managers definitively do not see it and do not practice it today. If Alexander and Franz (the management) wants it like that – shall they get what they want…

What is also certain is that nobody was able to intervene in a way that stopped the disaster – even not the young and freshly spirited, smart officers who had not yet fully inhaled the principles of blind obedience and absolute loyalty in the hierarchy – these young men who were still much more pushed by the impulses of their very lively hearts and human instincts. Those of them who had access to the planning meetings of the generals on the days before found enough doubts and questions – but they did not raise them in front of their ‘top management’. Again, any similarities to modern organizations and the discrepancies between formal management meetings and informal lunch conversations are fully intended and important lessons.

Doesn’t that characterization of the czar, the officers and the generals very much sound like a characterization of a modern management team today? This situation is two centuries ago and we should think that the aristocratic culture and strict hierarchies of a military organization are not a good comparison case for today’s 21st century management and work culture. But unfortunately, in today’s modern enterprises we find a lot of the factors of failure that become visible in Tolstoj’s story and in historic research about Austerlitz.

How much are organizations today still being managed with principles from the past?

We have the dynamic, forward pushing top leaders who’s attention and focus are on the big overall strategic opportunities – not on doubts of order-executors. We have the senior-management layer who has made careers just for their special drive to generate quick results and quick action when the top leaders push for it. They are excellent in executing given tasks fast and against all doubts, counter-indications, resistance and changing circumstances – and they rely on their experience and resources to turn all weird (or brilliantly innovative) top management decisions into something that fits into their own old understanding and their existing systems of management and operation. And we have the middle layers of management who find themselves left in the resulting struggles, caught between reality and higher management top-down-plans, with a limited view of what is going on across the whole organization. They are trying to make their career and success by pushing through what can be pushed, without objecting and making the best out of it instead where their influence works: Optimizing within their little piece.

Officer’s heroism

Some of them are even eager to face challenging situations to demonstrate their ad-hoc-hero-skills in front of their seniors. Just as the young Russian officers who were happy to finally lead a risky attack in a threatening situation – to show off their skills and heroic leadership. Some of these managers fall in the battles, but most of them survive because the price is paid somewhere else: At Austerlitz in the ranks of 12000 soldiers that died on the field. In modern organizations at the work execution level with very difficult work situations (e.g. complicated, ineffective processes) and in form of less value and higher cost for the customer and last but not least by a creeping destruction of their personal integrity. An acceptable way of living and surviving? Acceptable because it is without alternative? You might want to go with that story, but where will you end up with it? I think there is a better way.

What modern businesses and management systems do not have and why we do not hear the stories about the spectacular management defeats, is the body count. Seriously: There is no count of bodies and lost cannons for executed tasks. In most of these tasks or projects an objective measurement is missing that would show if the purpose is reached. There are just other managers from other, far away corners in the organization, like controlling for example, who start to make pressure, because there are issues and risks around the overall results. And of course this traditional management can always tell what the costs are and how many resources are used (which is, in comparison, counting the shot ammunition and kilometers run by each battalion at Austerlitz). If wrong decisions and not well investigated ‘solutions’ killed people in organizations, many of them would have extinguished themselves much faster than it takes to slowly but constantly ruin a company – by loosing too many of their customers (which is the corresponding final body count that nobody can disclaim or paint green any more at the end).

However, what drove the Austro-Russian army into disastrous defeat are not the performance or failure of single officers, generals and soldiers. They were doing their best – and many died on that day. It is the wisdom, effort and patience of investigating, planning and debating their plans and questioning own assumptions that were missing. And it is the culture of a strict hierarchical system, where in case of doubt the emperor is always right and questioning his views and wishes is an disloyal and cheeky treachery. And last but not least, it is a lack of humility on Austrian side that their decisions and way of warfare (their way of managing and driving a business) has already failed several times against the new competition named ‘Napoleon’ (shortly before at the southern-German town of Ulm, for example) and that consequently their logic and ideas might not be the best choice for this battle. This last observation is one of the most important, because usually in management that insight seems to be the most difficult for today’s managers, too.

So, after all, if Kutusow had stayed there on that hill longer with his regiments and if it had made a real difference to Europe – we will never know. The point that counts here is that you do not want to make your own possibilities and success dependent on the mistakes and weakness of the opponent or on pure chance of a hazardous choice of one general about waiting 10 minutes more or less – and that he has to make that choice against all rules of the established system.

The typical misbelief and misperception that blocks large organizations from changing and improving their setup is that it is seen as normal and ok that success or failure would mostly depend on the skills and efforts of single actors, especially single managers during ‘the battle’. And that in case of big problems there would still be time and options to act in heroic bravery to stop the disaster. What Tolstojs choice of perspective nicely shows is that in reality the reality (conditions and events) changes so fast and on such a large scale that managers in a traditional management system are simply too limited in their view and possibilities to see it and stop it. They are lost and over-stressed in the middle of a dynamics that they will only have understood well enough when its effects become obvious and when it is too late: When the damage is so big that they can no longer interpret it as normal losses on the right way to victory: Batallions being annihilated (large projects fail or stagnate dangerously), whole armies on flight (distrust, resistance, frustration, the best are leaving), chaos, key victims (reorganizations, managers must dismiss, whole market segments are lost to the competition). However, the signs are there long before: A lack of transparency, unclear responsibilities (nobody takes responsibility, or only for his small piece, not feeling accountable for the overall battle-outcome), missing information, missing or difficult coordination, unexpected difficulties (small and large customer escalations, delays, cost too high, revenue too low or too slow). But only when we count the bodies or the many lost customers of our business we finally see what really happens and then start quick action in panic – or simply run away to save our own individual careers and options.

Ignoring slowly growing disasters and their current and future, hidden body count

In traditionally lead enterprises, by the way, this blindness of failure can go on on for months and years from the first point where customers have clearly said that things are not ok for them. It can go on for so long because these traditional management systems just do not see and understand how bad it really is – because the traditional measurement systems show all green lights on the wrong KPI and the traditional management culture does not reward problem surfacing, uncomfortable questions objections. It is a bit as if the generals of an army would just watch the count of shooting and running in the fog and would conclude: There is great action going on, we are successful and – of course – moving forward into the right direction. Traditional KPI show the numbers, use and cost of resources and achievements of goals that refer to single pieces of delivery – they are not designed to show if the whole delivery works as needed and not how much and how well customer value is met. With the wrong measurements, top management just does not see how much is working in the wrong way for a long time already. The whole damage just becomes obvious when the shooting and the running stops and the fog goes away: When just too many customers have left, too many to still be able to pretend that all the busy activity in the busy business of task execution and goal-achievement would lead to the right direction. Unfortunately, most of today’s managers do not even know that they are running blindly. They think this is the way to successfully manage a business. They are really doing their best. They simply do not know better. And most of them, unfortunately are simply also just not listening to new, uncomfortable voices.

Mind the invisible surprise attacks of reality and markets: In some organizations it has taken as few as 4 months from the first customer losses to the complete bankruptcy of the enterprise (see Digital Equipment). Time to take choices and to listen to uncomfortable questions is long before the battle is turning towards defeat: It is while the armies are still there in full strength, in good positions and still well coordinated, with all options to change their marching plans.

Why do so many top managers and senior managers believe that they would have an overview and everything under control just because they have reports about the running and shooting (resources, cost, silo-outputs) and great nice plans of what they assume will work fine as a next quick action to improve or sell something? And I can only say again: They think this is the way to successfully manage a business. They are really doing their best. They simply do not know better. Those few who see the difference must go and show them alternatives that work better. Or at least point to the obvious problems in their way of acting, managing and seeing reality and start a conversation about where that leads and where we would like to end up instead. And what choices we have to make to turn the battle to our advantage.

“Of course, managers are the ones who take the decisions, because they are the ones who are held responsible”. “And the higher one in the hierarchy will always overrule the one who is lower in hierarchy.”

Such statements are made by some of my colleagues when we debate about the future of leadership and work organization. They say it in a double sense: It is like that now and it will and must always stay like this, because there is no other way that makes sense (to them).

Both assumptions are assumptions, and certainly not ‘natural laws’ or ‘self-understood’. Even the assumption that this principle would describe reality today is not true. Let me say it again, clearly: It is a bad joke to pretend that in today’s business reality, only managers would take decisions, the rest executes, and only managers are held responsible for the results that their decisions create. None of these things is really true.

Decisions are taken in many places in an organization, not only in management positions. Otherwise organizations would not function, they would break down. Even more: If this principle is tried to be lived somewhere to a very consequent degree, usually productivity and results get worse, to a point that it endangers the business as a whole.

It is even a big illusion that this principle would create good coordination. If ‘command and control’ is lived very consequently, it prevents real good coordination. Because real good coordination only happens, when real-time, real-life information is processed quickly and flexibly. Via ‘only managers decide’ this gets clearly slower and certainly much less flexible. And also quality of decisions is clearly worse, because information from the base flows less into decisions (and with that, there is a distorted view of reality, a too big distance from reality in management views).

Thus, let’s please have a realistic look at reality: This principle in its absolute primacy like stated above, with its sole claim of being the one truth and rule, does simply not exist in real life. In modern business organizations where many experienced experts are doing ‘knowledge work’, you even have the absolute contrary: People who must fill an ‘informal’ leadership role: Take a global service manager, for example. In my company, they do not have a management position (we would have too many management positions without own teams otherwise…!). But to do their job, they must lead others and take decisions together with others. ‘Distributed leadership’ is a good term that describes this real-life phenomenon. People do not act like that, to bother managers. And managers do not let that happen, because they don’t notice it. This simply happens, when human beings are trying to do a best possible job for good customer value.

Back to the ‘decision taking is a naturally given managers privilege’: If only management positions decide, results get worse (efficiency and above all, effectiveness). Look at government administrations of ‘old style’… bureaucracy is one of the results. In production or service organizations, defect, complicated, slow and inflexible processes are the result that cost a lot of wasted effort. Reorganizations result, that nobody understands any more at the level of practical work and that create constellations for production value chains that are very hard to handle for those who are supposed to live the new structures. By the way, for many companies this has even lead to bankruptsy, especially in the last three decades. And let’s be honest: It would be indeed consequent, if these managers took all the responsibility for the results of their decisions. But of course, that does not and will not happen in reality, too. And who would want that, really? Usually the same people call for more responsibility-taking or self-responsibility by employees. However, how can somebody take responsibility for something that somebody else has made up and decided?  And please mind, if I say, managers do not take responsibility for the results of their decisions: They will not go there and say: This is your fault, you are responsible. But they will look for explanations for bad overall results in the individual performance of their people. And if things don’t work out well at work, it’s the worker’s fault. Not the fault of the designer who designed work conditions by decision taking.

Of course, most managers with a good sensibility for people and good work simply do not act like that and do not really try to live that principle of the ‘managers take decisions privilege’. Because they experienced, that reality does simply not work like that. So, why do people believe in that myth and say such simplistic sentences? Because some decisions are indeed taken by managers and should be taken by managers. Fine, agreed. But only some. I would really appreciate, if we could come to a realistic and much more helpful understanding: There are decisions and responsibilities that are ‘managers privileges’ (best to be taken in a management position) and there are decisions and responsibilities that better are somewhere else, because that works better. This way, our mind can look at what good work in reality needs and we can more objectively observe what happens and more objectively explain why it creates good or insufficient results. We can free our mind from the strange belief that there would only be that one design principle for decision finding and coordination. We could open our ideas, creativity and learning experiments to other principles. We might simply be free to ask the question: So why at all did humanity once come up with that idea of a management (power) position?

And, by the way, these other principles (like self organization, like managers who gave decision power and work design privileges away to their teams and feel very well with it) are not really visionary any more and are not just some never-done ideas any more. There are real life examples that proof that it does a lot of good to simple employees as well as to managers and to customers. That explains, why ‘it will never be different’ also is a very big and very limiting assumption. But that’s for next time – we will talk about what self-organization and non-hierarchy spirit does to chief doctors and their patients.

A study where interviews have been conducted with hundreds of managers in Germany has recently surfaced, that two third of them sees the current style of leadership (authoritarian/command and control, hierarchy-based) as outdated and no longer valid to cope with today’s business requirements. They say that rather self-organization and network-based collaboration would be needed, as well as experimentation and non-linear search-approaches to work on complex tasks and problems.

The challenge that makes these managers struggle most is the management of change.  Moreover, it seems that they are well aware of the connection between their leadership style and the difficulty to manage change.

So far so good – so why don’t they simply change towards a new way of working, leading and collaborating?

Here are some offered answers from the presenter of that study, about what would be needed (and is missing):

• Courage to experiment with new things

• Abandon (at least some) power and power symbols

• There must be the readiness at the very top of an organization

Not surprising, thus, that this type of change towards really modern leadership only progresses outside large corporations, so far. Out there, in non-work-networks and, a lot of good action happens – in a space of our life where we are allowed to think and do whatever we find meaningful and interesting. It also rather happens in very small companies, where the contact to consumers is very tight, thus the contact to the needs of real life outside the company is much more intensive. In these contexts one of the most important questions still seriously raised and allowed: What is all that business and economic activity good for and who should it serve? Or asked in a different way: Are human beings there to serve economy or is the economy there for to serve human beings?

Very strange that this question is not asked any more in large corporations – or at least rarely. They seem to go with the assumption that it is self-understood that human beings are there to serve the piece of the economy that they represent, their big business. As soon as the revenues are great, the need is not seen any more to think about what sense all that makes for the human beings that form our societies. I wonder how such blindly executed business activity can keep a direction that serves life ans societies and that does not destroy life and societies.

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.

At www.my12for12.com I just read a comment talking about ‘authentic performance’ – what an appealing and inspiring expression! There is so much talking about performance in organizations. Mostly individual work performance with reference to set targets is meant. How well does an individual work towards the targets set by a manager which helped to break it down from a strategy? The breaking down from strategy sounds so plausible – but it is not: It is the wrong direction where targets come from and it wraps the reality of how such targets are built into a nice, optimistic simplification. Frequently such targets are the result of a kind of ‘machinery’ that is much more driven by unintended complex interdependencies of abstract KPI and political plays that are based on reports that do not at all relfect the reality any more that we experience as individuals at work – and they do not reflect what the customer experiences or needs.

This performance talking and controlling has not much to do with what we feel what would be  great performance  – as felt by human beings on a great workday. And it does usually not well connect that type of ‘I am good, I feel proud of my work’ feeling with what would be an overall great performance for the whole organization. Sure, top management talks about margin, benefits, revenue and market growth and how great everybody’s contribution is in the company to get that (btw.: Everybody does a great job until you start to talk in a 1:1 conversation about individual performance and salary…). But usually  – and I do not say that from a vague feeling, but based on observed evidence and based on what you can read in (real) good case studies – usually they don’t even understand how individual performance is really linked to company performance.

They can’t track down how individual performance really leads to organizational performance versus how not. They know that the people and their skills and motivation are important, but they can’t really explain it within the world of thinking and managing that they know. Part of the evidence is that they do a lot of things that hinder individual performance to contribute to good overall results. Another evidence is that what they say, here translated into short form: That the increased individual performance of everybody would add up to best company performance – but that is not true. It is too simple and ignors the real factors of reat innovation and success.

Sometimes some must do less or stop to do what they do to make the whole more performant. Simple experiment to demonstrate one effect why I say that: An 8-person-sport-competition-rowing-boat does not perform if everybody rows as fast as she or he can. What I mean are sentences like: “In this phase of change towards a new strategy, we must all give our best, we must all make an extra effort….” Or: “We need to hire more people in order to grow” – true if a pure growth in employees was meant, but of course that’s not the point. Even agreed that they do not only mean pure volume of work, but also quality and coordination. At the end they are looking at the reports with sums, averages, counted volumes of work, at the cost and the revenue  – and not at an overall coordination capability, and not at customer value reports. The volume and cost and efforts done at individual level is not able to talk about organizational performance. Organizational performance comes out of the way how all is orchestrated, how well it works together towards a purpose. The question is how well it fits together and works together to provide customer value.

And the question is also, how much it allows individuals to bring in their authentic performance into the whole: Talents, skills, curiosity, creativity, cirtical thinking, their aspireations from deep in their hearts, their eagerness and what they like or dislike, their very personal goals about what they want to be. And there we are back with a phenomenon of life that we can all feel and understand, because we have experienced that as human beings: Succeeding in applying our talent towards a visibly great result. A result that we are proud of and a working process towards it that we enjoyed. But we also have experienced, that a traditional management system is not very able to use this in good ways: Managers (themselves human beings) are doing their best in many cases, but the system around them and its rules and ‘necessities’ do not support them in fostering individual’s ‘authentic performance’. This all natural ‘doing good work by bringing in my very individual talents and feelings’ is a key performance factor for an organization that traditional management thinking does not understand well enough in its importance and that is not part of the work design assumptions and that usually is underestimated in its power as well as the risk is underestimated of moving into a big failure if this can not breath any more.

Ask a top manager what he thinks about the claim that people should be happy with their work life. I bet they will say it is not about ensuring that people feel happy in the office, but about outcomes? It is not about making people feel well, but about what the figures say, to safeguard their jobs? And I would even agree, but only in a certain aspect: I agree that the word ‘happy’ is not a good description for what is meant. ‘Authentic performance’ is much better. ‘Pride’ was my favorite so far, ‘value’ is what (good) lean management names it. But probably one word to express it will always fail, because different people understand words differently and class them into very different world views. Interpretation can be so different and with this the meaning that a word transports for an individual…

What I mean and what is so important is: Can I be authentically with what I am as a very private person, also in my job? If I am creative, fast with ideas and open to look into all directions it will be a big heavy load and restriction for my performance to keep me buzy with learning how to be ‘organized’ and ‘disciplined’. Vice versa for somebody who loves to be organized rather than to allow all ideas and questions to mix up the so far given order.

The authentic me also is the very human part of me that chooses in private life what is realy an inspiring, rewarding activity that I love to spend my time with. We call these things ‘hobbies’, to make clear that this belongs to the fun part of life, to the non-productive. Now, of course here again we have a framing that puts a wall between us and the better future that we might create if we drop such thinking limits. These hobbies frequently are in a direct translation: Being busy with our biggest talents, with what we are really good in and what we can give in great volume and variety without that it feels like a pain or pure inavoidable evil that needs to be done.

For me personally, two of these ‘hobbies’ are reading novels and writing. For a decade I had been working in a large corporation with the unquestioned assumption, that for my job in that company reading novels and writing would not be useful (and nobody asked me for it, too). For a decade I frustrated myself with the thought that either I restart a completely new career as a writer or journalist, or I drop the idea that writing plays a significant role in my job or my life. Bad luck… or be courageous, turn around, guy, and start a completely new life: Quit your job.

That was my ‘depression-story’ for a decade – and I followed the unwritten rules of my society (at least one that I perceived as a rule) and started to write a novel in my free time. Challenging, but possible. Challenging above all because after my work days I found it frequently not so easy to get into the right, inspired mood to do good writing. On many days my job was not giving back energy and was not inspiring… So this ‘free-time-writing’ was the mode to not completely drop my ‘authentic me’ and my ‘authentic performance’ – until one day a workshop moderator with the task to teach us how to lead cultural change in organizations asked us, what were our beloved hobbies, strengths and passions – ‘please, also things that you only know from your private life’.

From that day on I wrote diaries about our workshop group and the experiences we went through, for many years. That was, with some detours, the origin of this blog. My life was enriched in an incredibly strong way during the years after – it made such an important difference for me.  And it brought so much value for the others in that new transformation journey that was our job and where our company needed our best performance.

That felt like real, authentic performance, like real good work to be proud of because I could apply what was ‘my authentic performance’ and I could live ‘my authentic me’ and because it made an important difference for all in the organization and even for our families: Meaningful work. That did not feel boring any more or just stressing – it was hard work that felt like real life. By that work I was feeling alive. My girlfriend once said at the time when we stated that: “He appears much more awake than before.” And indeed, what a good way to phrase it: My ‘authentic me’ had woken up from a deep, dreamless sleep, a dull, inactive ‘parking position’ and now I could see the flowers blossom around me, a fresh breeze around my nose that triggered new ideas and the bright sun warming my face.

Big organizations that are shaped by traditional design and management thinking (well, simply the culture and dynamics that you usually experience in a big corporation) are constantly asking us to do things that we don’t really like, that we are not good at, that go against our values and hurt our integrity. They make us do things because for some hidden reasons they ‘are necessary’ or ‘we must do it’ or ‘have no choice’ – but it does not feel like meaningful work that we could be proud of or that has a self-explaining, self-dectetable value in itself.

One consequent alternative to change this is to leave these corporations and to go an own way. Certainly a good choice full of opportunities. ‘My12for12’ seems to be a good method to get that done. The other possibility is to change the big corporations. Not simple too, but also a field full of unused possibilities and that needs as much courage and consequence to succeed. At the time where I got ‘woken up’ by that half sentence ‘…also things that you only know from private life’  I chose to go that way. Why? Hard to answer in an explicite, rational way (we would get lost in a very interesting discussion). I answer it like this: Because that way feels like my ‘authentic me’.