Management
MOVING BEYOND
BY JOHN McKINSTRY
Let me start with a question – over the last few years, how many fads have you seen the organisation you work for introduce?
On a personal level I have seen the “ideal way to manage people” introduced at least a half a dozen times.
Large sums of money were spent on bringing in consultants to the organisations where I worked to assist the managers of those organisations in learning and applying what were invariably described as the “latest” or most “cutting edge” techniques which would in some way completely transform the organisation forever…
How many management fads have you witnessed?
The subject was in my mind after a catch up with a friend who I used to work with. We had both been heavily involved in helping introduce a new way of managing people within the organisation where we had worked.
My friend told me that having rolled out this initiative less than eighteen months ago it was already being superseded and a new “ideal” approach being brought in.
And the managers we had to roll this kind of initiative out to were well aware that many initiatives were really just fads – things which would be amended or replaced sooner rather than later.
I still recall a training session I ran where the new, ideal way of managing people was introduced and one particularly cynical manager in the group asked me how long the “fad” we were introducing would last.
At the end of the day, the success of an organisation depends on the people who work for it and to enable those people to succeed, we do, I believe, have a responsibility to find and offer the most up to date techniques to them.
New initiatives can be seen as fads and greeted with cynicism as a result – so how do we get past this?
Well first of all consider if you genuinely do have a need for the bold new idea or concept which is being brought into your organisation.
Consider -
• How many of the managers in your organisation do you believe are using the same set of skills which were used on them when they were staff members? (“Monkey see, monkey do”)
• How many of the people managers in your organisation have been keen to try and learn something new in the last twelve months?
• How many of the managers where you work do you believe have one – and only one - approach to managing people which they apply to every single member of staff they come into contact with?
Managers who tell you that they have just one way of doing things (which has “always worked”) aren’t likely to be enough to keep your organisation successful. Things change.
The environment we work within changes. The people who work there change – the needs of the generation classed as “Baby boomers” are quite different to the needs of “Gen Y” or of “Millennials”.
Our people managers need to be able to transform themselves by learning new skills and new ways of dealing with people, but do we always do a great job of selling them on that message?
38 | TRAINING MAGAZINE EUROPE FEB 2015
THE FAD