“My way” (or the highway) management uses intimidation, internal spying, micromanagement, inconsistency, fear, yelling, poor performance appraisals and threats of discipline or termination. It is characterized by worker distrust, micro-management (too much communication) or lack of communication (secrecy), production inconsistency and constantly higher never-attainable metrics, high turnover, poor health, absenteeism, lack of engagement, fear and/or total confusion about what’s going on and why. It may work in the short term but poisons engagement and crushes retention and long term stability. Today, sadly, this is what most employees see every hour of every day in their working life.
“…. an obnoxious boss can make life miserable for his or her direct reports, but new research covered at length in HBR this month, shows that tormented victims are actually more likely to engage in office nastiness themselves, thereby spreading the unpleasantness in a widening circle around an organization. …… we can add one more item to the list of the highly contagious: being a jerk.”
A recent Florida State University study revealed these results about supervisor treatment of employees:
39%: Their supervisor failed to keep promises
37%: Their supervisor failed to give credit when due
31%: Their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.
27%: Their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
24%: Their supervisor invaded their privacy.
23%: Their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or minimize embarrassment
Strategy failures look similar whether $Billion over-arching brand/sales strategies like Talbots or JC Penney or internal company/organization culture change. They fail to make the necessary and required changes and improvement and fail the ROI test. Changes to Employee/Employment Culture are no different, but must represent more than change issues, which is not a strategy.
New strategies are generally doomed because there is a lack of understanding on how to successfully implement the strategy, the management who will implement it and the reaction of those people most impacted by the strategy change, the People. The employees know how disconnected and fragmented the companies are, and to most it’s laughable. It’s only the leadership that doesn’t know. So…the employees simply bide their working time until something perceived as better comes along….or as Don Weis commented on the LinkedIn's Chief Operating Officer Network Group, “Having buy in from the workforce ….. raises the odds of a great strategy, that will be enthusiastically implemented vs. "just another dumb initiative being thrown out there by corporate" .
Next: Employee churn costs business $2Trillion?
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