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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

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Alan Murray has a fine piece in the Wall Street Journal with the intriguing title: "The End of Management." Here's the framing quote.

"Business guru Peter Drucker called management "the most important innovation of the 20th century." It was well-justified praise. Techniques for running large corporations, pioneered by men like Alfred Sloan of General Motors and refined at a bevy of elite business schools, helped fuel a century of unprecedented global prosperity. But can this great 20th century innovation survive and thrive in the 21st? Evidence suggests: Probably not. "Modern" management is nearing its existential moment"

This is the sort of piece that should start your synapses firing. I suggest you click over and read it. Just do so with a critical eye.

There's usual drivel about "creative destruction" and the "Innovator's Dilemma." This is dangerous because there's a core of truth to it.

Yes, it's true that when a new technology or business practice transforms an industry, the leaders tend to re-double investment in the old technology. That usually means they disappear.

This is tragic and true. It's just not common. Industry-transforming technology change is rare indeed. The internet, for example, did not transform most industries at the core, but only at the margins.

The Innovator's Dilemma is a natural human response to success and change. It won't go away because we manage differently.

The same is true for bureaucracy. Murray says that "Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats." Perhaps.

I choose to think that bureaucracy is like barnacles. They will show up on the hull naturally and when they do, you need to scrape them off. When Tom Hall and I did the research for Ruthless Focus, we found companies everywhere that created cultures where barnacles are regularly scraped.

My rule is simple. Behaviors that are rooted in human nature don't change. Clinging to what's brought you to success and making "rules" until they choke you, seems like normal human behavior to me.

The best thing in this provocative article comes near the end. Murray describes what he's looking for in a new model. He says: "The new model will have to instill in workers the kind of drive and creativity and innovative spirit more commonly found among entrepreneurs."

Yup, that's so. And you have to ask, why do we have a problem with this, when it's human nature to want to do good work and to be creative? We don't have to instill that in people. We need to back off and let them do what they do naturally.

We can't do that if we continue to think of our organizations and machines and management as an exotic form of engineering. You can't plan and control your way to creativity and initiative.

The good news is that we have other models. We have them in business and we have them in nature. Here are some ideas about what to do differently.

Don't specify goals to six decimal places. Take the advice of Jack Welch. "Pick and general direction and then implement like hell."

Let people do what people do: get involved and innovate. Set some boundaries, but not much more.

Ditch the procedure manual. Use a few simple rules instead. It works for flocks of birds, for chess and for growing babies. It might just work for you.

Don't lean in and pore over the work. Lean back and let it go.

Boss's Bottom Line

Whatever ultimately happens, a knowledge economy like the one we'll have for some time will require you to tinker less while you support and coach more.