I want to expand – or complement, your call – our previous post about leadership.

How long have you spent time employed in different organisations over how many sectors? Have you ever sat and thought – positively or negatively – how long supervisors, and middle and senior managers spend supervising you and your colleagues? I used to – not least because one of mine, when I first worked full-time, bullied me because I had a degree and he didn’t. We all know most managers are hardworking and many of us get on personally very well with ours. Perhaps “our” problem isn’t them but them being forced to manage hierarchically by the (public and private sector) top-heavy management model which is often bloated and expensive. All you have to do is read any number of government and think tank reports on the management structures and costs in central and local government, and the NHS; or in private corporations such as RBS pre-2008.

Managers cost businesses in different ways, primarily based on size – a new or small organisation may have 1 manager and 10 employees; a business with 10,000 employees will have hundreds of managers: managers managing managers. There will also be hundreds of employees in management-related functions, that is functions which are key to the business “managing (to survive)” – finance, HR, logistics and planning. Whichever particular structure that all takes is going to involve one absolute: expense.

The other difficulty with “standard” management hierarchy is the increased likelihood of business-critical, costly bad decisions. The pyramidal structure by definition means that, as decisions get bigger, the body of people taking them gets smaller and therefore challengers become fewer. This was – allegedly, I stress – true of Steve Jobs who was said to run a highly autocratic culture where everything he conceptualised, was “right” and any failings could be palmed off as those of others. A hugely successful company? Absolutely. The happiest environment? Who knows.
Perhaps whatever problems certain companies may have encountered in that regard are inextricably linked to the fact that the most powerful managers are the ones furthest from the proverbial shop floor: decisions taken may be considered by the “front line” to be unworkable on the ground.

Another indisputable problem with large management structures is that there are ever-more approval layers and slower responses. In their eagerness to exercise authority, managers often impede, rather than expedite, decision making. This is notable when a bad or over-zealous manager disempowers junior employees.

In 2016, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said “Employees resign for many different reasons. Sometimes it is the attraction of a new job or the prospect of a period outside the workforce that ‘pulls’ them. On other occasions, they are ‘pushed’ (as a result of dissatisfaction in their present jobs, possibly because of a lack of training, development and career opportunities) to seek alternative employment. The move might also be prompted by a combination of both ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors. A poor relationship with a line manager, leading to disengagement, can often be a ‘push’ factor behind an individual’s decision to leave the organisation.”

The obvious question therein is: how much of that is manager-driven? Virtually all of it. Of course, that is different from whether those outcomes are a management negativity trend or simply that ‘it is what it is’
The same article noted “In high-turnover industries in particular, a great deal of employee turnover consists of people resigning or being dismissed in the first few months of employment. Even when people stay for a year or more, it is often the case that their decision to leave sooner rather than later is taken in the first weeks of employment. Poor recruitment and selection decisions, both on the part of the employee and employer, are usually to blame, along with poorly designed or non-existent induction programmes.”

What controls all of those factors? Managers. In this regard, it is also worth looking at Jane Young’s 2015 article “Best Companies’ Engagement Lab – Employee Turnover & Engagement: What You Need to Know” which indicates the same management-impacting-good-or-bad-churn model.

So what might the board’s best path be? I think if they try making the company mission “the boss”. Counter-intuitive? Probably but then allegedly so was Steve Jobs. If we assume that people join a company because they like, or approve of, its mission, the use of the mission as a driver will empower people; the company will create an environment where people can better-manage themselves rather than being constantly directed. Wouldn’t it be great if businesses could manage (pardon the pun) without a highly visible, some would say oppressive, supervisory structure?

So, do we wish to make all managers redundant? Absolutely not – the whole pack of cards would collapse. It’s difficult to imagine a company where nobody has a boss, everyone can spend the company’s money and nobody is ever promoted. So perhaps we should make every employee’s own mission the boss – all combined of course. Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” I think as a statement it’s broad enough to cover most things – which perhaps isn’t good as a management tool; a little amorphous perhaps. Or maybe it’s great because if you like Google, you’ve joined because you like the mission.
If personal mission statements were the core of the organisation’s management model – “I am responsible for the accomplishment of my mission and ensuring I have the training, resources, and colleague co-operation to fulfil it” perhaps colleagues would begin readily to take on more-complex assignments and off-load basic tasks to others – for instance newer members of the team or those who have no wish for promotion at all.

But surely no one is going to just give all employees permission to demolish the existing structures? Well if I had built a business from scratch or taken over and turned around a failing one, I wouldn’t. Employees would have to demonstrate that self-management doesn’t mean no management.

My suggestion would be that everyone writes down their personal mission, focusing on the benefits they deliver rather than activities performed. I do this in my CV work – “I achieved” rather than “I was responsible for”.
Then all colleagues examine all the other mission statements, working towards peer-negotiated accountability rather than “my manager tells me….” They work on a kind of “I do mine this way but I’ve never thought about your way, maybe I’ll try that” approach. The question is then put: what restricts or constrains you in achieving your mission?” and explore the answers with each other. The idea there is to make everyone aware of what everyone else does and force thinking into how they can or should or currently don’t synergise.

Based on the hopefully increasingly energised and “freed up” feelings, the team looks for ways to erase the distinctions between those who manage and those who are managed; to question: do I really need to be leaned over or can I take more accountability if I’m allowed to. At this point the managers express their commitment to your team, asking everyone if they see that in their daily work life – is it evident or are they simply seen as a manager? The team probably knows the manager is committed but the restrictive nature of the old structure means this isn’t communicated well if at all.

My own best example of this working is when I ran a whole company, a small multisite retail business which the owner had grown from nothing. It was quickly apparent that he didn’t wish to relinquish any control. In bite-sized chunks I persuaded him to allow me to ask the teams – they were very small per-site – how they wished to run “their” business. Once they felt not only that they had input but that, crucially, it mattered and was given some rein, our staff churn dramatically decreased and stayed low.

Of course, that peer management doesn’t mean everyone is equal. In any area of expertise, some colleagues are recognised as more competent than others, and these differences are reflected in compensation levels. While there’s internal competition, the rivalry is focused on who can contribute the most rather than who gets a plum job. To get ahead, an employee must master new skills or discover new ways of helping their colleagues. Think of it as climbing on each other’s backs. The ones with the broadest backs show the way but then allow others who are more reticent to stand on their backs and thus self-develop. The outcome is that everyone feels valued, worthy and measured equally. All employees will personally do better; they’ll be more enthused to do things.

All of that said, the fundamental dilemma will not go away. To run a large- scale operation you need people to occasionally behave like machines—to be reliable, precise, and hardworking. Typically, supervisors and managers ensure that noses stay on grindstones and people do what they “should”.

So, can we ever realistically have no managers? No. Can we make management less autocratic? Absolutely. Are managers redundant? Not at all. But should the market – in its biggest sense: all businesses – work towards a situation where all employees are less managed, more self-managed and thus, ideally, improve productivity and output?

Ask the CIPD – the answer’s self-evident.