I sometimes hear employees negatively describe a manager as, "command-and-control." The implication seems to be that within our management philosophy, this is a bad management style. And as a "style" or general approach to management, I would have to agree. It smacks of Hayek's Fatal Conceit and I believe it would tend to discourage the entrepreneurial behavior we require of employees to succeed long term.
But the criticism sometimes takes a more extreme form. It might come out like, "MBM says my manager can't tell me what to do, when to do it, or how to do it - I should be free to figure out all that on my own." When stated in such absolute terms, I would have to disagree. It doesn't even pass my laugh test. So is command-and-control acceptable within the MBM philosophy or not?
Ed Schein, in an annotated edition of McGregor's classic, The Human side of Enterprise, highlighted the point that good leaders act autocratically when the situation demands it:
"In our management models, we must separate command and control instead of always linking them. Command is consistent with Theory Y. It is in the concept of control that we must distinguish controls that presume trust (theory Y) from controls that assume that the employee will always take advantage unless closely monitored with time clocks, random inspections, and the like (the essence of Theory X)."
I have only passing familiarity with the Theory X and Theory Y models from a one-time reading of McGregor and a few articles. But I agree with the essence of Schein's comments from within my context of the MBM Framework.
I don't think there is anything wrong with "commanding," per se - i.e. "giving an authoritative order" to do something when it's within one's sphere of responsibility and one has the authority. How it is done, and for what reasons, would help me determine whether it was value-creating or value-destroying in a specific situation.
Commanding in its broader context might at least conceptually be seen in the hierarchical aspects of vision development - for example, my organization may need to coordinate with my management's broader organization through a shared understanding of its goals and priorities, the opportunities it is pursuing to create value, the capabilities it has or is seeking to capture those opportunities, etc.
Certainly there is a bottom-up aspect to vision development too - especially if we want it to be reality-based and shared - I'm just pointing out that "command" isn't necessarily inconsistent here with our mental models for good management.
As I develop my RREs with my manager, there is at least partially some "commanding" going on -- even if only in the Picardian "make it so" sense once we agree on what roles I should be playing, the responsibilities I have and what must be achieved.
I think the same reasoning applies to "control." Again, I'd agree that most generally we should tend to be reluctant about telling employees when or how to do things. At least not if we're attempting to capitalize on their specific knowledge and encourage entrepreneurial behavior.
But what if they haven't yet demonstrated a capability? What if they do not have the necessary knowledge? What if we don't want them taking any risk in a specific situation where life, limb, individual careers, or the health of the organization may hang in the balance?
There may be times when it's not only acceptable to tell someone when and how to do something - it could be considered poor management not to. I am thinking of examples like a new employee who lacks experience in operating some dangerous machinery; or the employee who is managing the financial records for tax reporting. What about an employee who needs to coordinate with other parts of the organization to obtain the necessary knowledge and perspective to make the best decisions in his or her role? There are probably many examples of situations where it is appropriate for our managers to impose conditions upon or otherwise control when and how we do something.
Controls can be as broad as our MBM Guiding Principles in defining the boundaries of our behaviors and what's expected of us generally. On the other hand, they can be very prescriptive. They can take the form of rules, expectations, priorities, measures, feedback, and so on.
When to use which and how? To what degree and in what form? Well, as Thomas Sowell famously quipped: "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." As a manager, you are expected to be aware of and make the appropriate trade-offs to maximize value creation in any specific situation. It's helpful to seek the guidance and opinions of your manager, HR, MBM, your employees themselves, etc., as you figure out those trade-offs.
Those are some of my thoughts. What are yours?
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