The 6 perspectives of Management 3.0
1-Dynamize people: they are the most important part of an organization and managers must do everything in their power to keep them active, creative and motivated.
2-Give decision-making power to teams: they can self-organize and this requires empowerment, permission and trust from their manager.
3-Align constraints: self-organization may not be successful. It is therefore necessary to protect people and shared resources and to give people a clear purpose and objectives.
4-Develop skills: teams cannot achieve their objectives if their members do not have the necessary skills. It is therefore the manager's responsibility to ensure the development of everyone's skills.
5-Grow the structure: Many teams operate in complex organizations. It is therefore important to look at structures that improve communication.
6-Improve the whole: individuals, teams and organizations need to continuously improve in order to postpone failure as long as possible.
As you can see, such perspectives are as much about employee fulfillment as they are about improving performance. To achieve this, Management 3.0 tries to reduce the distance between the team and its manager. Another advantage of this approach is that it can be done on a small scale to start with: you can try to use perspectives with one team first before trying to convert the whole organization.
Concrete use of Management 3.0 perspectives
What is the purpose of these perspectives? How can you use them in a constructive and useful way for you? I often remind people that Management 3.0 is a mechanism you need to implement in your organizations. It is not a clearly defined process, but rather a set of practices that you can use to address the challenges you face in your daily life.
Let's take two examples to see how the various perspectives outlined above can be leveraged.
First example: In a company, there is a decrease in employee engagement and motivation. Deliverables are less well defined, responsibilities seem to be blurred (when there is a problem, no one feels accountable)... Things cannot stay as they are, because they risk negatively impacting business objectives. How can we increase employee involvement and participation in such a context?
An analysis is needed to clarify whether this is a motivational issue. If it is, it is an opportunity to dig into the perspective associated with energizing people. You could then use the "moving motivators" tool to understand what motivates an individual or even your team. And from there, you could potentially build an action plan to correct what is demotivating people.
Or this is a case where empowering teams with decision-making power would be the prospect to explore. Involving employees in the decision-making process is a good approach to make them aware of issues they may not be aware of. It is also a good opportunity to let them propose different ways of doing and seeing. In any case, having decision-making power is also being part of the solution. This is a good incentive to get your teams involved again. If you don't know where to start, delegation poker is the perfect tool. When used with the team, it helps to identify and clarify specific points where they would like to be able to make decisions, without being blocked.
This also implies a self-examination on the part of the team leader: as a manager, what is your approach to delegating decision-making authority? What are the areas where you are most comfortable letting your team make decisions without you? How do you want your team to involve you in specific decisions?
Whichever perspective you favor, one is not better than the other. The choice must be made in light of the team's current context. Perhaps the "right" answer is to use both perspectives: first to energize people and then to empower them to make decisions.
Second example: in another organization, we notice that managers have a lot on their shoulders. The structure is very vertical, nothing can be decided without their approval. As their workload increases, so do the approval times, with the risk of missing important milestones. How can we allow teams to make more decisions?
If management is so heavy, it's time to share the burden: to change the system, not the people. In this example too, several Management 3.0 perspectives can be applied: energize people, empower them to make decisions or even develop their skills. If they develop their skills, they will be more confident to come and support the team leader and take the lead on certain issues.
The idea, in the end, is that the perspectives of management 3.0 allow us to look at the daily challenges differently. Each perspective should inspire different actions or approaches. There is no specific order to follow and sometimes moving towards one perspective will be enough to overcome the challenge. Although the name management 3.0 implies that it is primarily a management approach, proposals can also come from non-management employees. The ultimate goal of management 3.0 is to create a healthy work environment, where people have fun working, where they can develop their skills, where there is trust and some form of collegiality in the decision making process to contribute to customer satisfaction.
Management 3.0 is above all a state of mind, a different way of looking at the challenges of the organization. For a manager (but not only), approaching the needs of the team through these perspectives maximizes the opportunities to support them and make them more effective.
Management is everyone's business, not just the "leader's".
To go further:
Management 3.0: The Agile Leadership Techniques
