What do you think of when you hear the word “manager”? In the traditional way of working, it was someone who was in charge of others and often acted like a slavedriver of sorts to make sure the job got done. But that’s not the case now, and it definitely won’t be the case in the future. As employees demand more flexibility and hierarchies disappear, the role of the manager is changing, and managers need to adopt new skills to keep up. ;…’
Each week I’m going to provide a round up of what I consider to be important and interesting articles on
A growing number of companies are turning away from using the term “manager” and choosing instead to use more generic terms for all employees. The idea is that it removes the negative connotations of having to report to a strict boss and instead opens things up to a world of collaboration and equality amongst employees. […]
Many organizations are experimenting with new physical space designs. Management structures need to be redesigned to go along with these new office spaces, but this often gets overlooked. Why is this necessary? When organizations are originally designed, they reflect how managers actually manage. Thinking about a traditional cubical environment, employees and managers are used to private working time, and not a lot of open collaboration during the work day. If this environment was redesigned to be an open space, then management and employees will struggle keeping the same work habits in the new space. […]
I am constantly amazed at the size of human resource teams that companies continue to have. The small amount of resources that HR people and talent related functions receive, especially at massive global organizations, is quite shocking! In an organization with 50-100 thousand employees or more, it is not uncommon for the HR team to be only 100 or so people to support all of those employees. I’m wondering what would happen if HR was the biggest team instead of sales or marketing. If we devoted the most people and resources to HR, how would an organization be restructured? […]
There has been a lot of news recently about executives and senior leaders that are being paid tens of millions of dollars to leave their organizations! Some of these are CEOs of large, global companies that are either being indicted or let go for a myriad of issues, including poor performance. They make so much money, that they just don’t have any incentive to do their jobs well! So this got me thinking that maybe one of the reasons that change is not happening in workplaces is because executives are being paid so much that they just don’t care. Perhaps they don’t have the motivation to care about employee engagement, organizational change, or corporate culture. […]
At a recent workshop for a large financial institution, a conversation was elicited about how to identify leaders within the organization. The employees were sitting around tables in various groups and no one really had an answer about who they felt the leaders were. So I gave them all paper and asked them to write down which members of their team and which senior members of the organization they would consider leaders. It should be someone whose behavior they want to emulate and team they’d like to be on. I noticed that the same names popped up over and over! So employees do recognize the leaders within their organizations, they just don’t publicly address it. […]
The role of management has changed quite a bit over the past few years. Few people realize it, but the
As we shift to the future of work where organizations are focusing on the reasons why employees WANT to work versus NEED to work, it is important to understand employee experience. A lot of organizations historically have focused only on one aspect of organizational change and that is culture. This is how employees feel when they are inside of an organization, the vibe that they get, the organizational structure, leadership style, compensation and benefits, etc. While culture is a part of the employee experience, it is only a third.
This topic was inspired by a recent conversation with Beth Taska, CHRO at 24 Hour Fitness, about being a human leader. We discussed how treating employees well, having relationships with them, and showing them they are valued also affects your customers. Most employee-customer interactions are pretty standard, with the same process every time. The thing that makes these interactions important is the employee and how they treat people, or their discretionary effort. When employees feel more engaged, productive, and valued they will treat customers better. […]