Management is ‘whistling in the wind’ – Part 1

Cultivating talent

In my last blog I described how to find and develop the hidden talent in organisations. In this blog I return to the theme of why organisations fail to identify and develop their own talent in an effective manner. I will describe the reasons in this and a subsequent blog.

Productivity improvement

The consistent message read in many papers and on TV is that we need to improve our productivity in order to enable businesses to be profitable and countries to reduce debt and move into surplus. Some of the reasons given for most poor productivity are low investment, no innovation, lack of investment in R&D, low morale, lack of skilled labour, and ineffective management. There is ample evidence to show that one or more of the reasons can certainly have an adverse impact on productivity. I will focus on the last three reasons as I believe that they account for a significant amount of the low productivity.

Low morale

Similar to most situations there can be many reasons causing low morale in an organisation. However, there is a lot of evidence to show that low morale is associated with a number causes including the following:

• Inadequate workplace facilities
• Lack of the right equipment and resources
• Poor and inadequate communications
• Insufficient rewards for good performance
• Lack of relevant and effective feedback
• Conflict through difficult relationships
• Dominant competitive culture
• Lack of appreciation shown for effective work

There is no doubt that low morale is a significant contributor to poor productivity as the issuse listed above knock the stuffing out of most employees.

Lack of skilled labour

This is a fairly regular cry from business in times of boom yet they are quick to lay off their skilled people during recessions. We know that costs need to be contained but the issue is why it always appears to affect employees at the sharp end of the business. There is a strong perception of a disproportionate allocation in that senior management and other management people appear to be less affected. The drive for profit in order to meet the market and shareholder expectations clearly influences organisations to cut out employees who will not cost too much to layoff. Whereas, it would be much more expensive to layoff senior managers, thus the easy decision is frequently taken.

It is surprising to think that those who provide leadership in organisations fail to recognise that by making the people who produce redundant will have long term consequences. Those who are retained usually find that they have to do extra work to make up for those removed as well as it having a serious impact on loyalty. I recall a number of younger employees remarking that they would not go the extra mile for their employers because their fathers had been made redundant after between 20 to 30 years’ service. Although this was with different organisations they were adamant that business had no heart or soul so why go out of their way to do anything other than ‘keep their nose clean’. Not a very encouraging attitude to improve productivity.

Ineffective management

The US, UK, and Australian ‘Undercover Boss’ television series illustrate how little senior management really understands what goes on in their organisations. The failure to identify the really outstanding talent in the business coupled with a failure to give appropriate recognition for effective service delivered communicates neglect of a significant degree. Dr Rhema Vaithianathan of the Auckland University Business School revealed that a government survey of 152 firms revealed that NZ managers were amongst the worst in the world for their inability to recruit, promote, and keep ‘high talent’ staff. I certainly concur with her findings as my experience in many NZ organisations have exposed me to many senior managers who did not deserve the salary they were paid.

However, it would be useful to stand back and explore the reasons for this very poor scorecard on particularly NZ managers. As well as those managers not worth their salary, I have interacted with many high achieving directors, senior managers, and middle managers who wanted to develop their employees. They recognised that this was the most effective way of achieving higher productivity as well as creating a positive working environment. In most instances they introduced a number of initiatives designed to improve performance. I will describe what caused many of them to fail in my next blog post.

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As usual I would appreciate receiving your feedback by either contacting me at tom.jaap@centell.org or leaving a comment on the blog.

Best wishes

Tom