WARREN BENNIS ON WHY FAILING ORGANISATIONS NEED LEADERSHIP NOT MORE MANAGEMENT
Use this to remind you of the need to let go and empower others.
Warren Bennis (1925–2015) was a management consultant, writer and academic who pioneered the comparatively new field of leadership studies. In both his research and consultation work he observed that:
Failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led.
Warren Bennis
Bennis’s argument is that too many organisations micro-manage their staff and in doing so crush their enthusiasm and their willingness to act independently. When things start to go wrong, management assumes that the answer is even greater control of staff and additional policies and procedure, when what is actually required is to give staff the discretion and power to sort problems out at their level. After all, they understand their problems and how to correct them better than senior management. All they need is the freedom to do so (see Quotation 45).
WHAT TO DO
- Organisations fail because they are too slow to react to changing circumstances and emerging threats. To survive, you need a workforce that is flexible and willing to make decisions without referring every little issue up the chain of command.
- Flexible, autonomous staff are not created overnight. They have to be grown in the right environment. Follow the advice of Andrew S. Grove (see Quotation 65) and look to manage your staff and organisation on the basis of clearly defined principles and precepts rather than detailed instructions. If you do this, then staff will be programmed already to respond proactively to emerging threats and will feel confident enough to take the necessary decisions.
- Recognise that you can’t do everything or foresee every eventuality. Appoint good people (see Quotation 27) and then let them get on with their job. Don’t interfere unnecessarily. What you are aiming to create is an organisation in which you provide the framework within which people exercise their discretion and only come to you when they are worried or realise that the decision is outside their area of discretion.
- By adopting this approach, you are empowering your staff to lead and decide how best to react to issues and events on the ground. This negates the need for every possible eventuality to be covered by a process or procedure and frees up staff to respond to the problem they are facing immediately with imagination and ingenuity.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Am I a control freak? Do my staff think I’m a control freak?
- Do I get involved in too many detailed decisions/discussions?