There’s a new game making the rounds these days called Phone Stack. Have you played it? The basic gist is this—when you dine out with friends, everyone puts their phones in the middle of the table and then embarks on a huge game of chicken— who  can resist the siren call of their phone for the longest time? The stakes are fairly high: the first person to take a call agrees to pick up the tab for the whole group.

Reporting on this game, the blog GetKempt says, “It’s a buzzing, flashing reminder of every phone-etiquette rule the world seems to have forgotten.”

I like it. A lot. In fact, I think we should kick it up a notch and play Phone Stack at our next company meeting. It’ll be like an intervention to see who’s the most addicted to their mobile device.

If I were to suggest this process (we’re in business, we don’t do “games”, right?) at a meeting, the outcry would be fierce:

“I’m expecting an important call.”

“I just need to sign off on this P.O. Accounting is emailing it to me any minute now.”

“My customers expect me to be available”.

“Who do you think you are?!”

There is truly very little that can’t wait. Most of the “emergencies” in our business lives are urgent because we allow them to be. When people are constantly checking their phones, it feeds the urgency, creating a vicious cycle. Every time a phone buzzes or someone glances down at their lap (do you think we can’t see that?!) it disrupts the flow of the meeting. It sends the message “What’s happening outside this meeting is more important than the topic of the meeting I’m in.”

“But wait!” you say, “What’s going on outside this meeting room IS more important.”

Well, you’re not alone in that opinion. According an infographic published by SocialCast, 71% of employees in the U.S. feel that most meetings are a waste of time.

Feeling vindicated? Hold on a minute. . .

Consider this: When you attend a meeting and fake your attention, you’re contributing to that statistic. Your attendance at a meeting doesn’t mean you’ve met the mark. It’s your participation that counts.

As I see it, if you think that meeting will be a huge waste of time, you have two choices:

A)    Put on your Big Kid Pants and accept that you need to be at this meeting, and you will give your 100% full attention.

B)    Prior to the meeting, find a way to speak up and suggest to the meeting planner in a professional manner that perhaps there’s a better way than conducting a face-to-face meeting.

Anything less is just contributing to the problem.

Now, if only I could figure out a way to have the offender “pick up the tab” at the meeting, we’d be all set . . .

 Photo credit: istockphoto.com © sndr

Earlier this week I presented a session on Influencing Across Organizational Boundaries to the Western Michigan chapter of the Project Management Institute. The session was so well-received that many people asked for copies of the Power Point presentation. Well, you know how that goes—a Power Point without the corresponding speaker commentary is a bit flat.

So, I created a modified version that excerpts a few key concepts. You can view it via SlideShare by clicking here.

Also, here’s a plug for the WMPMI group. They have a lot of really great things going on, including a brand-new event called THE Project 2012, which is a collegiate project management competition. I love it when our future business leaders help grow the talents of those coming along.

Here are a few photos from the event:

Participants at the pre-session networking event

It was standing room only! That's me waaay up front.

And look at this great book they gave me, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage. It’s authored by a couple of directors from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, so it should be a good read. Look for a book review down the road.

Many thanks to the kind folks at WMPMI for your great hospitality and the wonderful things you are doing to promote professionalism in your discipline.

Part Three of a Three-Part Series

The conclusion of this series on integrating our work and personal lives focuses on the changing nature of work—when we work, how we work, and how others around us deal with it.

Part One of the series was What is Work Life Integration? and Part Two was Work Team Leaders: A Key Ingredient for Successful Employee-Friendly Practices. I talked with Tracy Brower, Director of Performance Environments at Herman Miller for her perspective on this topic.

JM: Tracy, you’ve been researching flexible work scheduling as part of your dissertation for a Phd in Sociology. What have you uncovered?

TB: There have been several interesting trends that have emerged.

First, the companies I’m studying readily admit they don’t have flexible scheduling figured out for high-structure jobs (like production workers and call center employees). However, one factor that is important to employees regardless of the job they do:  control over their schedule. Employees seem to say, “If I have some measure of say in my work schedule, I will feel less stress.” A key component that helps people feel that control is if there is some consistency. For example, if an employee has a schedule that is non-standard (ie: Mon/Wed/Fri days days and Tues/Thurs nights) then it should remain that schedule from week to week.

Here’s another interesting development that’s occurring because of increased globalization: the perception of “shift work”. I talked with a company that has many locations inChina and India. When the company was in growth mode, they had knowledge workers with MBA’s working on all three shifts, and the workers were fine with that. Then, somewhere along the line, the MBAs working the third shift starting to balk at doing so. There was a stigma attached to working third shift. Managers were hearing the knowledge workers saying, “If I work third shift, my friends will think I work at a call center, so I don’t want to work on third shift.” There’s a perception that “white collar workers don’t work off-shift”.

There’s a second aspect to the issue of “shift work” and it’s this: our own notion of what “shift work” is will change because with globalization, the need to connect with our global partners and customers creates demand for our time at all hours of the day and night.

At this point, in highly developed countries, we tend to treat it [the need to work “off shift”] rather episodically. It’s not part of our normal work pattern. Because we need to connect with our global customers and partners, we will begin to create new work patterns.  One pattern is that we’ll end up clustering our work. For example, if I need to conduct a conference call at 5:00 AM to talk with a business partner in London, I’ll just keep working for several more hours after my call, even though my standard work shift starts at 8:00 AM.  That’s not my “normal” shift, but it’s what fits in the flow of my day. As the practice of “clustering” work becomes more accepted, I think our own notion of shift work will change as well and perhaps, by extension, the stigma of working “off shift” will go away. 

JM: And by extension: this flexibility and “clustering” will only work if your boss supports it. For example, if you do the call at 5:00 AM and just keep working until 8:00 AM and your boss says, “Hey, we work from 8 – 5, so I expect you to work until 5:00 PM” then it’s not worth it.

TB: Exactly. Here’s the thing about providing flexible work schedules: You’re not giving people a free ride. Usually flexibility comes with a lot of demands. It comes with a tradeoff.

One of the challenges in today’s world and the reconfiguration of our work life is that technology has accelerated the pace of everything. One of the phenomena that I’ve observed is something I call “fast information, slow people”—meaning: information can move so quickly and is so encompassing and yet humans have a hard time keeping up with it. Add human expectations: people expect responses really quickly and expect the information to move really quickly. The information/content can be created so quickly and as a human it is hard to keep up.

JM: Is it that we expect humans to process information nearly as fast as our technology?

TB: It’s not just processing it (that’s transactional); humans are good at processing information.  It’s the synthesis. Data is coming in from all different places and we need to put it together and figure out the meaning. Computers can process really well, but it’s uniquely human to synthesize. It’s not that we can’t do it [given enough time]; it’s [that given time pressures] the acting on it that can be overwhelming. It’s not that the processing is mentally difficult, but there are so many things that need to be done.

JM: That concludes our discussion of integrating our personal and professional lives, courtesy of Tracy Brower. Tracy, thanks so much for your time.

TB: My pleasure.

Part Two of a Three-Part Series

In this second installment of a discussion with Tracy Brower, Director of Performance Environments for Herman Miller, we explore a key factor that determines the probability of success for a company’s work/life integration policies. The first article in this series was in What is Work/Life Integration?. 

JM: Tracy, your research has uncovered a discouraging statistic about companies that offer “employee friendly” policies (such as flex-time): 

100% of companies surveyed said they have a large suite of these types of practices, but 80% of employees at these companies said they didn’t feel free to fully use those practices. 

What’s causing this paradox?

TB: It is a paradox—a corporate culture paradox. What I’ve found is that in even the most progressive of companies, sub-cultures exist. The paradox is that a work team leader can create a sub-culture that is counter to the organization’s “open” and flexible culture. So, even if the organization as a whole  is very supportive of these employee-friendly practices, there can still be pockets within the company where the leadership is more traditional—I call them “managing by the whites of their eyes” type managers. These leaders feel that if they can’t actually see their employees, then they aren’t able to effectively manage them.

JM: What’s type of leadership style best fits with an “open” organizational culture?

TB: It’s the “managing for results” leader—and those are the leaders who will support the more flexible workplace practices. Work team leaders are that critical link. They’re the “linchpins” for helping employees feel they can bring their whole self to work. Support of flexible work schedules is dependent on a person’s direct supervisor—if the work team leader is still old-school, employees will feel less comfortable availing themselves of the employee-friendly practices.

JM: So, it seems that trust plays a big part in making a flexible work schedule a viable option.

TB: Trust is huge. More companies are going to more broad “flexibility” policies, so the administration of it is up to the work team leader. For this reason, there’s variance in the perceptions and administration of the policies.

Trust tends to erode when employees perceive a gap between what the organization as a whole espouses (“we have policies to help employees achieve work/life balance”) and what the work team leader actually executes.

It’s really a two-way street—trust needs to flow in both directions from the work team leader and the employee. The work team leader needs to trust that employees are getting their work done, even if s/he can’t actually see them performing the work. The employees need to trust that their work team leader has their best interests in mind and will support them.  

JM: Thanks, Tracy for that fascinating look at the role that work team leaders play in work/life integration. The third part of our series (which posts next Tuesday) will focus on emerging trends in the way we think about and organize our work life.

Part One of a Three-Part Series

I attended a Workforce Issues panel discussion during which panelist Tracy Brower discussed forces shaping work/life integration. Tracy and I first met when we were colleagues in the Learning Development Group at Herman Miller. Tracy is currently the Director of Performance Environments for Herman Miller.

In addition to her day job, Tracy is studying for a PhD in Sociology; her dissertation research is on the integration of personal and work life. After the panel discussion, I contacted Tracy to see if she would be willing elaborate on some of the themes she raised during her panelist remarks. She graciously agreed.

Here is Part 1 of our discussion, which defines work/life integration and why it’s an important subject for the workplace.  

JM: You told me that one of the reasons you’re studying sociology is that you’re interested in how work shapes us and how we shape work. That seems to be a good place to start—why study work/life integration?

TB: Most people live it, in one way or another. We’re parents, or we have parents. Most of us work outside the home in some capacity. And, we all have interests, hobbies, and obligations outside of the workplace. There’s a lot of research that suggests successful life integration is high on people’s priority list. We need to find a way to make it all work, but we haven’t figured really figured out how to do it.

JM: What area does your research target?

TB: My research has focused on [interviewing] senior executives because they’re in the position to catalyze decision making; and because their choices and behavior tend to send cues to others about what is acceptable within their organizations. So people [who work at these executives’ companies] look to them for cues and signals. Company executives are important influencers of organizational culture.  And, I’m studying both men and women, which is a slightly different focus than some of the already-published research literature which tends to study only women; women aren’t the only ones who face challenges with integrating life/work.

JM: How do you define work/life integration?

TB: The popular press calls it “Work/Life Balance”. The problem with that description is that it suggests there is a tradeoff—that one side must be “up” and the other one “down” like a weight scale that has two sides to it. Using the word “balance” suggests that the two aspects are completely separate from one another. The reality is they are completed integrated. So I use the term “integration”. You can’t decouple work from other parts of your life.  Our personal lives and professional lives aren’t separate “containers”.

Another term I sometimes use is work/life “navigation”. In sailing there’s a term called “sounding” – it’s when you put the pole down into the water to determine how deep it is. That’s what work-life navigation is: you’re constantly “checking in” with the people in your life. It is fluid and you have to navigate through it. You are constantly reorienting and reconfiguring the logistics in your life to make it all work. There’s a constant shifting due to changes in one’s life.  

JM: Thanks for helping us set the stage, Tracy.

Up next Tuesday: exploring the role that work team leaders play in creating successful integration of one’s personal and professional life.

photo credits: istockphoto.com

I’ve joined the ranks of TED aficionados.

Last Thursday, along with 599 other lucky people, I participated (on-site) in the first-ever TEDx event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A TEDx event is a spin-off of the popular TED Conference. For those unfamiliar with TED, it’s a unique conference format designed around “riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”. The TED conferences are by invitation only and are a series of brief (20 minutes max) presentations, with people from very diverse viewpoints, cultural backgrounds and vocations spreading “ideas worth sharing”. Even though the live TED events are by invitation only, anyone can benefit by viewing the videotaped presentations on the TED website.

The TEDx Grand Rapids event was inspiring and thought-provoking.  In the spirit of passing along “ideas worth sharing” here are eight ideas that grabbed me. I’ll be chewing on these for awhile to come. Perhaps they’ll inspire or provoke you as well.

1. The only way to prepare for the future is to embrace uncertainty. Futurist Sheryl Connelly works for Ford Motor Company.  She observed that the things that surprise us the most are almost always things outside of our control— tsunamis, economic collapse, terrorist acts. As a futurist, she doesn’t predict the future, but rather she actively thinks about it and explores as many alternative scenarios as possible. Uncertainty is part of life. Exploring all possibilities will help us cope with it. 

• Who else in your life can help you think about your alternative scenarios?

2. In a video clip appearance, Chuck Saylor, founder and CEO of Izzy Plus talked about how he loved the job title “Chief Officer of Discovery”, saying that in order for creativity to flourish we must have “an insatiable desire for discovery.”

• What do we need to discover today?

3. Kids need social skills to succeed in the workforce. Mickey McManus shared how his company is working with at-risk inner city kids to help them regain the creativity that formal education has drilled out of them. He talked about how it’s important to focus on STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) and SEL – Social Emotional Learning.

• How can we build SEL into our workplace?
   

4. Grace under pressure will never go out of style. When Jeffrey Kimpton’s slide show went blank just moments into his presentation, he gamely persevered, giving visual descriptions of his slides as he spoke. The irony was not lost on the audience: Kimpton is president of Interlochen Center for the Arts, proving once again, that the show must go on.

• Has grace ever deserted you ? What can you learn from that situation?

5. We’re all curators. Filmmaker and author Steven Rosenbaum says that no amount of working harder or sleeping less is going to help us keep on top of mountains of data available. The only way to manage is to connect to good curators. Technology still hasn’t replaced the human mind when it comes to sorting through the clutter. The world needs thoughtful filters— and humans are still the best at figuring out what matters.

• What topics are you best suited to curate? Who can benefit from that expertise?

6. Get on with the show. Onstage TEDx Grand Rapids host Eric O’Brien proved that a pithy two-sentence intro that whets the audience’s appetite is really all you need to set up a good speaker. 

• In what areas of your life do you need to “get on with it?”

7. It’s OK to be the new kid on the block. West Michigan newcomer and TEDx Grand Rapids “architect” Steve Frazee gave a heart-felt, funny preso full of gratitude for the many people who made the event possible. As someone who just moved to the area 12 months ago, it’s amazing what he was able to instigate.

• In what ways might you be holding back because you’re not the “expert” on something?

8. Prepare to be changed. Truth be told, when cyborg musician Patrick Flanagan took the stage I wasn’t really expecting a whole lot because I’m not a big fan of tech-enhanced music. However, after a mere 30 seconds of listening to his mind-bending sounds, I was sitting there completely wrapped up in Patrick’s performance. I wasn’t alone. The amazement was palpable throughout the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre. And that’s when I finally “got” was TED is all about.  It’s about the unexpected. The miraculous. It’s about reshaping the way you see something. Or connecting with someone that’s outside of your everyday life.

• When was the last time you were amazed?

Those are my eight “aha moments” from the event. I’m so  grateful for this opportunity to pass along the “ideas worth sharing” that came from TEDx Grand Rapids. Do yourself a favor, if there’s a TEDx in your community, do your best to join in. You won’t be sorry.

May 19, 2011. Update: One of my fellow TEDx attendees Ben Rousch wrote an excellent post about ways he could have been better prepared for his TEDx experience. It’s a great reminder for anyone wanting to maximize a conference event. As a bonus, he highlights (with links) five other bloggers’ reactions to the event.

Super-Smarts without Compassion: A Dangerous Combo

I’ve been enjoying the press surrounding this week’s Jeopardy game show match-up of IBM super-computer Watson against two of Jeopardy’s most prodigious players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.  Of course, there have been many accounts of the “man versus machine” angle. My personal favorite came from an interview in which NPR’s Talk of the Nation Neil Conan interviewed contestant Ken Jennings. A person calling in to the show recounted a famous Jeopardy match in which the leader prior to Final Jeopardy made a wager constructed to create a three-way tie. The caller wondered if Watson was programmed for similar notions of altruism.

Jenning’s response? “You’re asking, does the machine love, I guess. My guess is that Watson plays to win. That’s how I play. And I know the IBM engineers have told me they watched my style of play very carefully. . . I don’t think Watson would play for the tie. And my inclination is that I would not either. Maybe it’s just – maybe it’s personal pride. But I like to think it’s the dignity of the species. I would like to see the big, bad machine go down in flames.”

Ken Jennings is an amazingly smart (and funny) guy. It was great listening to him trade quips and factoids with Neil Conan and the other callers.  

So, this is all fun and games, right? No harm, no foul, just a little TV entertainment. I’d like to think so, but then again. . .according to a Time Health and Science article, there’s a thing called “singularity”— the point at which computers become smarter than humans. The Time article says this event is predicted for 2045.

The year 2045 isn’t all that far away. Heck, I’m may even still be around.  If these events come to pass, then maybe we should be learning to “play nice” not only with our fellow humans, but with computers too. As opposed to wanting to see them go down in flames.  Just in case, you know, they forgot to program the computers with that altruism.

As of the publishing of this post, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Rutter have one more round of Jeopardy to play before all is said and done. At the moment, it looks like Watson is kicking their butts. Let’s hope we can add in a little compassion before 2045. Perhaps a little less Watson, a little more WALL-E.

A Look at HR’s role in Mergers and Acquisitions

One of my colleagues, Dave Carhart, a former technical recruiter, is studying for his MBA/MILR – (Masters of Industrial and Labor Relations) at Cornell University. He recently sat down with me to discuss the lessons learned from his internship with Hewlett Packard (HP). Dave was part of a Human Resources Mergers and Acquisitions team that helped integrate the workforce talent of companies recently acquired by HP. Over the past decade, HP has been recognized repeatedly for its talent management practices, including a 2006 BEST award from ASTD and SHRM’s 2009 Human Capital Leader of the Year, which was awarded to Marcela Perez de Alonso, HP’s executive vice president for human resources. Dave has graciously agreed to share some “lessons learned” with The People Equation so that fellow Human Resource professionals can benefit.

Jennifer: Thanks, Dave for joining us, and for sharing this information with the readers of The People Equation.

Dave: My pleasure. I’ve gained tremendous benefit from the online HR community and this interview is a great way to stay connected. Thanks for the opportunity.

Jennifer:  You were part of a Human Resources mergers and acquisitions (“M&A”) team responsible for integrating the workforce of companies recently acquired by Hewlett Packard. What was that experience like?

Dave: It was a very exciting, fast-paced and intense environment. A few of the acquisitions were high-profile deals—well-known companies such as Palm and 3Par.  Over the years, HP has integrated literally hundreds of thousands of employees and we have deep knowledge in this area. It seems that companies have realized how important the Human Resources function is to the M&A process. That’s exciting of course, because it’s my chosen profession. 

Jennifer:  Part of your team’s role was to integrate employees after the “deal” was done. What are some of the aspects that surprised you about the process of on-boarding?

Dave: How much planning went into the integration—planning for communications, compensation and benefits harmonization, data management and the integration of people into organizational reporting relationships. The team created extensive timelines and it all had to flow together.

One of our primary goals was to facilitate a smooth integration, while maintaining the well-being of employees. There was a high level of complexity in transitioning the Human Resource operations and service delivery into HP’s systems. I was on a project team that was virtual and global; I discovered that there’s a high degree of variance across the globe in all of the operational aspects of HR, especially when country-level legislation is relevant.

Jennifer: Tell us about some of the more successful processes the HP Human Resources team used to ensure a smooth integration.

Dave: Two processes that I think were especially effective were:

1) We conducted mini-employee surveys during the on-boarding and integration process. This was particularly useful during the first few months of an integration when some of the biggest changes were taking place. We wanted to know: How was the integration going? That way, we could diagnose any problems as they were occurring. Because we did these surveys with all of the various employee populations being integrated, we could also compare the relative success of different integrations and improve our processes over time.

2) We had access to communications professionals to assist us on projects. Members of the HP Communications team could be brought in as needed to provide communications expertise for the M&A team. They were instrumental in helping us sort out the myriad communication tools at our disposal: newsletters, micro-sites with FAQ’s, in-person communications, and town hall forums. They would strategize with the HR team to help us form the strongest possible communication strategy for the employees.

Jennifer: As you worked your way through this process, what were your key lessons learned?

Dave: The key learning for me was how important HR really was to the M&A process. My internship gave me the opportunity to see the due diligence and employee integration process up-close and I saw the value that HR added.

Jennifer: Why do you think HR is so valued in the M&A process at Hewlett Packard?

Dave: From my perspective, the executive leadership of the HR function at HP has been very effective in driving HR transformation. In particular, Marcela Perez de Alonso, (Hewlett Packard’s EVP of HR) has always been interested in moving HR forward.  The human resources function is aligned with business objectives and has a close working relationship with business unit leaders. I also observed the ways in which HR was actively innovating and reinventing itself through the use of data and analytical rigor. A great example is workforce planning. HP has developed a strong center of expertise that uses analytics and modeling to align HR areas like recruiting and development with the overall business and financial strategy.

Jennifer: Now that you’ve had a birds-eye view on employee integrations, what observations do you have for executives who are considering an acquisition that includes employee talent?

Dave: Involve Human Resources early. The earlier, the better. The worst thing that can happen is for HR to find out about an acquisition from a company-issued press release. To do it really effectively, HR needs to be involved during the due-diligence stage—not only to identify HR-related costs and risks, but also to develop plans for retaining employees and integrating them into the organization effectively.

I also think that executives should remember the cardinal rule of large-scale change: communicate about the process as honestly and openly as possible. As with any change management process, it’s incredibly important for securing people’s trust and buy-in.

Jennifer: Thanks, Dave for providing your valuable insights!

Dave: Happy to do so.

For those of you looking to connect to Dave Carhart, you may do so on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Organizationally Speaking, That Is

I heard an interesting interview last night with Ned Breslin, CEO of the nonprofit Water for People on American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program. Water for People’s mission is to provide safe drinking water all over the world. The interview explored the level of transparency that was created when the organization adopted their FLOW system, which measures the successes — or failures — of global water projects in a very public way. Here’s how transparent it is— people can take a photo or shoot a video of any location of an installed water sanitation system, upload it into the tracking system and measure its effectiveness (or lack thereof) immediately.

Interviewer Kai Ryssdal wondered how that level of transparency was working out for the staff of Water for People.  

Ryssdal: When you first brought this idea to your staff, did everybody jump up and say, “Oh man! Awesome idea!” Was it universally adopted?

Breslin: No. Not at all. I think it’s a real challenge for some people. And Water for People’s gone through a bit of a staff transformation over time. So we’ve had some staff leave . . . and we brought in a very rich and dynamic group of people who actually embrace and are quite inspired by this. And frankly, we’re a much more interesting organization as a result. But yes, there was pushback.

The CEO’s comments underscore what I think is a key reason that executives often hesitate to launch large-scale change. They are aware that the pain of the change (in this case, über-transparency) may cause dissension amongst staff members. That, in turn, may prompt employees heading for the door. And if the exiting employees are key contributors, it’s understandable that there may be second thoughts on the executive’s part.

It was probably a tough sell for Mr. Breslin to convince staff that allowing anyone to “rate” their organization in real-time was a good idea. That sort of transparency is scary. It would have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall, listening in to those first bumpy staff meetings. I applaud this CEO for not only leading his team towards transparency, but for openly acknowledging the challenging journey.  The quote above calls out a benefit of pushing the envelope:  he sees his team as stronger and more aligned to the organization’s goals.

There have been other payoffs as well— donors have been surprisingly supportive. Initially, there was concern that donors would withhold funding if they perceived water installations as ineffective. According to Mr. Breslin, the opposite has proved true. Rather than withhold funds for projects that are seen as “failures” due to real-time reporting, donors have instead provided feedback and access to resources to help improve processes. A solid demonstration that what is feared most in an organization often doesn’t come true.

This story provides an excellent real-life example of what happens when an organization, led by a capable leader, pushes ahead in the quest for transparency.  While “letting it all hang out” isn’t typically wise advice for leaders, it appears that organizationally speaking, it may not be such a bad idea.

An email arrived the other day; it was a request for assistance from a person who is gathering research for his Master’s study program. His thesis will explore, in part, a study of the demise of the command-and-control management style. I was happy to supply the information he sought.

After sending the email, I found myself wondering, “Haven’t we been talking about the death of Command and Control for a really long time?”  If indeed “command-and-control” is a dated and ineffective business management practice¹ shouldn’t it have given up the ghost by now?

If command-and-control management is so bad, why is it still here?

To be sure, there are many plausible and erudite explanations to that question. Today, I’m taking it in a different direction.  My cynical side is wondering, what if command and control in the workplace isn’t dying—what if it’s (gasp!) thriving? What if the reports that it’s unfashionable, outdated and ineffective are an Urban Legend?

With that in mind, I offer you (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) my 5 Reasons That Command and Control Management Has Yet to Die:

1. It’s fun to say. Let’s face it, the phrase has a nice alliterative ring to it—“command and control” just flows off the tongue.
2. Everyone loves an underdog. Now that the management style has garnered such continual negative press, it’s achieved a sort of perverse underdog status.  And who doesn’t love to cheer for the dark horse?
3. It’s an easy target. Like Motherhood and Apple Pie, there are just some things that are difficult to criticize, like management by consensus-building. If there wasn’t Command and Control, who else would we blame for our miserable conditions at work?
4. Dilbert cartoons wouldn’t be nearly as funny.  ‘Nuf said.
5. Because I said so. Well, it works for Command-and-Control; I thought it might be persuasive here too.

So there you have it, my Friday musings on why we’re still heralding the death of the Command-and-Control management method. As they say, there’s truth in jest, so maybe there’s a kernel of reality in my reasons. Or, maybe note. In any case, it does appear that the reports of the technique’s death have been greatly exaggerated².

What say you? Why do you think that we’re still talking about the death of command-and-control?

¹ This post refers to the general term “command-and-control” as a management technique in the business world rather than “command-and-control” as a military technique.

² This is a paraphrase of the often-quoted Mark Twain quip, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  Interestingly, this quote is a sort of urban legend as well.

Photo credit: istockphoto.com © ODV