> David asks,
>
> "We are experiencing in one of my client organizations a case of managers
> not willing to manage. All to often a subordinate will request something
> and the respective manager will pass on the responsibility to his
> superior, who will pass it on it turn, until the whole job lot of problems
> ends up on the top management's plate."
Other clients I know in this situation have gone AROUND THE procedures and
policies and bypassed them, for example, by configuring business
partnerships in a way which does not need senior sign-off because it is
not a monetary ccommitment but a time commitment. Or if a meeting needs to
be approved before it can be held, you set up the meeting and drive it but
then get someone else to head it up for you who has sufficient rank or
freedom and is outside the sign-off process.
This sort of response and the need for it leaves me cold and sad. Our
organizations and their systems and procedures and structures conspire to
ensure that the people and the company underperforms its actual growth
compared to its potential growth. Either there is too much management and
therefore too little inititave and exploration, or too much management and
no commitment by signer-offers to implement employee-initiated ideas.
It is however better to be in a situation where managers are not willing
to manage than in the much more common situation where they over-manage.
In either case the requirement to get approval from those in the hierarchy
is an outmoded over-organized organizational constraint which hinders
everything good that can occur in an organization such as empowerment,
learning, initiative, and bottom-line performance.
The way to overcome it is by downstructuring: removing systems and
structures such as job descriptions, job titles, the need for the 9 to 5,
replace managing with self-mentoring plus mentoring, free people from
their desks and empower them to acheive their full potential.
Organizations as currently configured are simply not the ideal form for
doing business in today's global, diverse, fast changing unorganized
world. Don't make managers mange, let people manage themselves!
Rgds sincerely Simon Buckingham, www.unorg.com, buck@dial.pipex.com
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>