Beyond the Trends: What Won't Change in Management
Focusing on Enduring Needs in an Ever-Changing Workplace
"Management is a practice that has to blend a deal of craft (experience) with a certain amount of art (insight) and science (analysis)."
Henry Mintzberg (Managers not MBAs)
Jeff Bezos emphasised building Amazon's strategy around customer needs that would remain stable over long periods of time. Three key stable customer desires in particular:
Low prices: Bezos notes that customers will always want low prices, even ten years from now.
Fast delivery: Customers consistently desire quick delivery of their orders.
Vast selection: having a wide range of products available is a persistent customer preference.
Who can argue with those three items for the retail side of their business? As a long-standing Amazon customer, I cannot find fault in the logic.
Consequently, this focus on enduring customer needs had several strategic implications for Amazon:
They could invest heavily in improving these areas, confident the efforts will pay off in the long term.
They built sustainable advantages by continuously exceeding customer desires in these three areas.
It helped them avoid short-termism and the inevitable distractions arising from short-term trends.
The improvements in these key areas over many years contributed significantly to the company's success.
Bezos shares further valuable insights:
"I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next ten years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two."
Following that logic, Amazon's founder confidently states that it is "impossible to imagine" customers wanting higher prices, slower delivery, or fewer choices in the future.
"When you have something that you know is true even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it."
This got me thinking: What can we be confident will not change when it comes to managing and leading people and the needs of subordinates?
Sufficiently intrigued? Let's see what we can learn...
Given my line of work as an executive coach, it won't be a surprise that I frequently work with people to help them overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities in their roles as managers and leaders. Whether it's pushing them beyond their comfort zones to explore unconventional solutions to confront workplace conflict or perhaps providing support during role transitions or during a particularly tumultuous time, the goal remains the same: changes to interpersonal behaviour to take people from good to great and from great to excellent.
It has become increasingly common in talent development to focus on notions of leadership rather than the complex practicalities of managing people, processes, and scarce resources to deliver what your organisation's clients and customers need.
As Henry Mintzberg writes in Managers Not MBAs, "It has become increasingly fashionable to distinguish between leadership and management. Leadership is supposed to be something bigger, more important. I reject this distinction, simply because managers have to lead and leaders have to manage. Management without leadership is sterile. Leadership without management is disconnected and encourages hubris."
Leaders have to manage, and managers have to lead. Truth!
Managing people, from first-time managers to experienced executives, is incredibly complex. To be clear, I refer to people managers as those accountable for people, what they do, their output, and how they show up at work. This responsibility will be formally documented on an organisation chart - the people report to the manager. Managers are responsible for feedback, promotions, development and adherence to the employing organisation's policies and procedures - if you don't have formal direct reports, you are not presently a people manager.
Ultimately, managerial roles require balancing fundamental tensions:
Overload: there is too much to do as the job never stops.
Ambiguity and uncertainty: incomplete and imperfect information is pervasive.
Dependency: the higher your position in an organisation, the more you rely on others to get things done.
Conflict: people versus people, task versus people and team versus the system.
These tensions are all inherent in the managerial role. Managers have to learn to live with imperfect solutions and the knowledge that they cannot be experts in everything. Fundamentally, a manager's job is to manage the many trade-offs that arise.
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs."
Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions)
With this in mind, here are four things I don't think will change regarding the management of people, especially teams of knowledge workers in professional and financial services, over the next ten years.
Mental health: The impact of heightened workplace overload, ambiguity and conflict on well-being will not disappear.
Collaboration: Almost all organisational work will continue to be conducted in teams.
Accountability: When you are in charge, most things that go wrong are not directly your fault, but they are always your responsibility.
Career success: Variety of work, seeking out new challenges and increases in compensation and status will continue to compel people to move up in organisations.
I know a considerable amount of change is happening because of AI and automation, so it is increasingly difficult to be sure what the future of knowledge work will be. With that big caveat in mind, it is almost impossible for me to imagine, in ten years, that the person you work for won't significantly impact how you feel in the workplace, working alone will lead to you having a more successful career, your ability to directly control everything around you will increase, and complexity in the workplace will reduce, so great managers are less critical.
So, with that in mind, a focus on enduring subordinate needs has several strategic implications for new managers:
They should invest heavily in improving these elements, confident that the efforts will pay off in the long term.
They will consistently differentiate in the workplace by continuously focusing on the needs of their team.
It will help them avoid short-term distractions and the inevitable noise that will build up around them as they move up in the organisation.
By improving in these key areas over time, you will contribute significantly to your team's success and increase your likelihood of a successful career.
What do you think about these enduring areas, and did I miss anything?
How can you spend time and effort developing and improving them if your workplace incentives continue to reward individual contributions as a lawyer, consultant, M&A or sales and trading professional?