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There are few business activities more prone to a credibility gap than the way in which executives approach organizational life. A sense of disbelief occurs when managers purport to make decisions in rationalistic terms while most observers and participants know that personalities and politics play a significant if not an overriding role. Where does the error lie? In the theory which insists that decisions should be rationalistic and nonpersonal? Or in the practice which treats business organizations as political structures?

Whatever else organizations may be (problem-solving instruments, sociotechnical systems, reward systems, and so on), they are political structures. This means that organizations operate by distributing authority and setting a stage for the exercise of power. It is no wonder, therefore, that individuals who are highly motivated to secure and use power find a familiar and hospitable environment in business.

At the same time, executives are reluctant to acknowledge the place of power both in individual motivation and in organizational relationships. Somehow, power and politics are dirty words. And in linking these words to the play of personalities in organizations, some managers withdraw into the safety of organizational logics.

As I shall suggest in this article, frank recognition of the importance of personality factors and a sensitive use of the strengths and limitations of people in decisions on power distributions can improve the quality of organizational life.

Political Pyramid

Organizations provide a power base for individuals. From a purely economic standpoint, organizations exist to create a surplus of income over costs by meeting needs in the marketplace. But organizations also are political structures which provide opportunities for people to develop careers and therefore provide platforms for the expression of individual interests and motives. The development of careers, particularly at high managerial and professional levels, depends on accumulation of power as the vehicle for transforming individual interests into activities which influence other people.

Scarcity & competition

A political pyramid exists when people compete for power in an economy of scarcity. In other words, people cannot get the power they want just for the asking. Instead, they have to enter into the decisions on how to distribute authority in a particular formal organization structure. Scarcity of power arises under two sets of conditions:

1. Where individuals gain power in absolute terms at someone else's expense.

2. Where there is a gain comparatively-not literally at someone else's expense-resulting in a relative shift in the distribution of power.

In either case, the psychology of scarcity and comparison takes over. The human being tends to make comparisons as a basis for his sense of self-esteem. He may compare himself with other people and decide that his absolute loss or the shift in proportional shares of authority reflects an attrition in his power base. He may also compare his position relative to others against a personal standard and feel a sense of loss. This tendency to compare is deeply ingrained in people, especially since they experience early in life the effects of comparisons in the family where-in an absolute sense-time and attention, if not love and affection, go to the most dependent member.

Corporate acquisitions and mergers illustrate the effects of both types of comparisons. In the case of one merger, the president of the acquired company resigned rather than accept the relative displacement in rank which occurred when he no longer could act as a chief executive officer. Two vice presidents vied for the position of executive vice president. Because of their conflicting ambitions, the expedient of making them equals drove the competition underground, but not for long. The vice president with the weaker power base soon resigned in the face of his inability to consolidate a workable definition of his responsibilities. His departure resulted in increased power for the remaining vice president and the gradual eliminnation of "rival camps" which had been covertly identified with the main contenders for power.

The fact that organizations are pyramids produces a scarcity of positions the higher one moves in the hierarchy. This scarcity, coupled with inequalities, certainly needs to be recognized. While it may be humane and socially desirable to say that people are different rather than unequal in their potential, nevertheless executive talent is in short supply. The end result should be to move the more able people into the top positions and to accord them the pay, responsibility, and authority to match their potential.

On the other side, the strong desires of equally able people for the few top positions available means that someone will either have to face the realization of unfulfilled ambition or have to shift his interest to another organization. ¹

Constituents & clients

Besides the conditions of scarcity and competition, politics in organizations grows out of the existence of constituencies. A superior may be content himself with shifts in the allocation of resources and consequently power, but he represents subordinates who, for their own reasons, may be unhappy with the changes. These subordinates affirm and support their boss. They can also withdraw affirmation and support, and consequently isolate the superior with all the painful consequences this entails.

While appointments to positions come from above, affirmation of position comes from below. The only difference between party and organizational politics is in the subtlety of the voting procedure. Consider:

In a large consumer products corporation, one division received almost no capital funds for expansion while another division, which had developed a new marketing approach for products common to both, expanded dramatically. The head of the static division found his power diminished considerably, as reflected in how seriously his subordinates took his efforts at influence (e.g., in programs to increase the profit return from existing volume).

He initiated one program after another with little support from subordinates because he could not make a claim for capital funds. The flow of capital funds in this corporation provided a measure of power gains and losses in both an absolute and a relative sense.

Power & action

Still another factor which heightens the competition for power that is characteristic of all political structures is the incessant need to use whatever power one possesses. Corporations have an implicit "banking" system in power transactions. The initial "capitalization" which makes up an individual's power base consists of three elements:

1. The quantity of formal authority vested in his position relative to other positions.

2. The authority vested in his expertise and reputation for competence (a factor weighted by how important the expertise is for the growth areas of the corporation as against the historically stable areas of its business).

3. The attractiveness of his personality to others (a combination of respect for him as well as liking, although these two sources of attraction are often in conflict).

This capitalization of power reflects the total esteem with which others regard the individual. By a process which is still not too clear, the individual internalizes all of the sources of power capital in a manner parallel to the way he develops a sense of self-esteem. The individual knows he has power, assesses it realistically, and is willing to risk his personal esteem to influence others.

A critical element here is the risk in the uses of power. The individual must perform and get results. If he fails to do either, an attrition occurs in his power base in direct proportion to the doubts other people entertained in their earlier appraisals of him.

What occurs here is an erosion of confidence which ultimately leads the individual to doubt himself and undermines the psychological work which led him in the first place to internalize authority as a prelude to action. (While, as I have suggested, the psychological work that an individual goes through to consolidate his esteem capital is a crucial aspect of power relations, I shall have to reserve careful examination of this problem until a later date. The objective now is to examine from a political framework the problems of organizational life.)

What distinguishes alterations in the authority structure from other types of organizational change is their direct confrontation with the political character of corporate life. Such confrontations are real manipulations of power as compared with the indirect approaches which play on ideologies and attitudes. In the first case, the potency and reality of shifts in authority have an instantaneous effect on what people do, how they interact, and how they think about themselves. In the second case, the shifts in attitude are often based on the willingness of people to respond the way authority figures want them to; ordinarily, however, these shifts in attitude are but temporary expressions of compliance.

One of the most common errors executives make is to confuse compliance with commitment. Compliance is an attitude of acceptance when a directive from an authority figure asks for a change in an individual' position, activities, or ideas. The individual complies or "goes along" usually because he is indifferent to the scope of the directive and the changes it proposes. If compliance occurs out of indifference, then one can predict little difficulty in translating the intent of directives into actual implementation. ²

Commitment, on the other hand, represents a strong motivation on the part of an individual to adopt or resist the intent of a directive. If the individual commits himself to a change, then he will use his ingenuity to interpret and implement the change in such a way as to assure its success. If he decides to fight or block the change, the individual may act as if he complies but reserve other times and places to negate the effects of directives. For example:

In one large company, the top management met regularly for purposes of organizational planning. The executives responsible for implementing planning decisions could usually be counted on to carry them out when they had fought hard and openly in the course of reaching such decisions. When they seemed to accept a decision, giving all signs of compliance, the decision usually ended up as a notation in the minutes. Surface compliance occurred most frequently when problems involved loyalties to subordinates.

In one instance, a division head agreed to accept a highly regarded executive from another division to meet a serious manpower shortage in his organization. When the time came to effect the transfer, however, this division general manager refused, with some justification, on the grounds that bringing someone in from outside would demoralize his staff. He used compliance initially to respond to the problem of "family" loyalties to which he felt committed. Needless to say, the existence of these loyalties was the major problem to be faced in carrying out organizational planning.

Compliance as a tactic to avoid changes and commitment as an expression of strong motivation in dealing with organizational problems are in turn related to how individuals define their interests. In the power relations among executives, the so-called areas of common interest are usually reserved for the banalities of human relationships. The more significant areas of attention usually force conflicts of interest, especially competition for power, to the surface.

Interest Conflicts

Organizations demand, on the one hand, cooperative endeavor and commitment to common purposes. The realities of experience in organizations, on the other hand, show that conflicts of interest exist among people who ultimately share a common fate and are supposed to work together. What makes business more political and less ideological and rationalistic is the overriding importance of conflicts of interest.

If an individual (or group) is told that his job scope is reduced in either absolute or proportional terms for the good of the corporation, he faces a conflict. Should he acquiesce for the idea of common good or fight in the service of his self-interest? Any rational man will fight (how constructively depends on the absence of neurotic conflicts and on ego strength). His willingness to fight increases as he comes to realize the intangible nature of what people think is good for the organization. And, in point of fact, his willingness may serve the interests of corporate purpose by highlighting issues and stimulating careful thinking before the reaching of final decisions.

Secondary effects

Conflicts of interest in the competition for resources are easily recognized, as for example, in capital budgeting or in allocating money for research and development. But these conflicts can be subjected to bargaining procedures which all parties to the competition validate by their participation.

The secondary effects of bargaining do involve organizational and power issues. However, the fact that these power issues follow debate on economic problems rather than lead it creates a manifest content which can be objectified much more readily than in areas where the primary considerations are the distributions of authority.

In such cases, which include developing a new formal organization structure, management succession, promotions, corporate mergers, and entry of new executives, the conflicts of interest are severe and direct simply because there are no objective measures of right or wrong courses of action. The critical question which has to be answered in specific actions is: Who gets power and position? This involves particular people with their strengths and weaknesses and a specific historical context in which actions are understood in symbolic as well as rational terms. To illustrate:

A large corporation, General Motors in fact, inadvertently confirmed what every seasoned executive knows: that coalitions of power to overcome feelings of rivalry and the play of personal ambitions are fragile solutions. The appointment of Edward Cole to the presidency followed by Semon Knudsen's resignation shattered the illusion that the rational processes in business stand apart or even dominate the human emotions and ties that bind men to one another. If any corporation prides itself on rationality, General Motors is it. To have to experience so publicly the inference that major corporate life, particularly at the executive levels, is not so rational after all, can be damaging to the sense of security people get from belief in an idea as it is embodied in a corporate image.

The fact that Knudsen subsequently was discharged from the presidency of Ford (an event I shall discuss later in this article) suggests that personalities and the politics of corporations are less aberrations and more conditions of life in large organizations.

But just as General Motors wants to maintain an image, many executives prefer to ignore what this illustration suggests: that organizations are political structures which feed on the psychology of comparison. To know something about the psychology of comparison takes us into the theory of self-esteem in both its conscious manifestations and its unconscious origins. Besides possibly enlightening us in general and giving a more realistic picture of people and organizations, there are some practical benefits in such knowledge. These benefits include:

Increased freedom to act more directly; instead of trying to "get around" a problem, one can meet it.

Greater objectivity about people's strengths and limitations, and, therefore, the ability to use them more honestly as well as effectively.

More effective planning in organizational design and in distribution of authority; instead of searching for the "one best solution" in organization structure, one accepts a range of alternatives and then gives priority to the personal or emotional concerns that inhibit action.

Power Relations

Organizational life within a political frame is a series of contradictions. It is an exercise in rationality, but its energy comes from the ideas in the minds of power figures the content of which, as well as their origins, are only dimly perceived. It deals with sources of authority and their distribution; yet it depends in the first place on the existence of a balance of power in the hands of an individual who initiates actions and gets results. It has many rituals associated with it, such as participation, democratization, and the sharing of power; yet the real outcome is the consolidation of power around a central figure to whom other individuals make emotional attachments.

Faulty coalitions

The formal organization structure implements a coalition among key executives. The forms differ, and the psychological significance of various coalitions also differs. But no organization can function without a consolidation of power in the relationship of a central figure with his select group. The coalition need not exist between the chief executive and his immediate subordinates or staff. It may indeed bypass the second level as in the case of Presidents of the United States who do not build confident relationships within their cabinets, but instead rely on members of the executive staff or on selected individuals outside the formal apparatus.

The failure to establish a coalition within the executive structure of an organization can result in severe problems, such as paralysis in the form of inability to make decisions and to evaluate performance, and in-fighting and overt rivalry within the executive group.

When a coalition fails to develop, the first place to look for causes is the chief executive and his problems in creating confident relationships. The causes are many and complex, but they usually hinge around the nature of the chief executive's defenses and what he needs to avoid as a means of alleviating stress. For example:

The "palace revolt," which led to Semon Knudsen's departure from Ford Motor Company, is an illustration of the failure in the formation of a coalition. While it is true that Henry Ford II named Knudsen president of the company, Knudsen's ultimate power as a newcomer to an established power structure depended on forming an alliance. The particular individual with whom an alliance seemed crucial was Lee Iacocca. For some reason, Knudsen and Iacocca competed for power and influence instead of using cooperatively a power base to which both contributed as is the case with most workable coalitions. In the absence of a coalition, the alternate postures of rivalry and battle for control erupted. Ford ultimately responded by weighing his power with one side over the other.

As I have indicated, it is not at all clear why in Knudsen's case the coalition failed to develop. But in any failure the place to look is in the personalities of the main actors and in the nature of their defenses which make certain coalitions improbable no matter how strongly other realities indicate their necessity.

But defensiveness on the part of a chief executive can also result in building an unrealistic and unworkable coalition, with the self-enforced isolation which is its consequence. One of the most frequently encountered defensive maneuvers which leads to the formation of unrealistic coalitions or to the isolation of the chief executive is the fear of rivalry.

A realistic coalition matches formal authority and competence with the emotional commitments necessary to establish and maintain the coalition. The fear of rivals on the part of chief executives, or the jealousy on the part of subordinates of the chief executive's power, can at the extreme result in paranoid distortions. People become suspicious of one another, and through selective perceptions and projections of their own fantasies create a world of plots and counterplots.

The displacement of personal concerns onto substantive material in decision making is potentially the most dangerous form of defensiveness. The need for defenses arises because people become anxious about the significance of evaluations within existing power coalitions. But perhaps even more basic is the fear and the rivalry to which all coalitions are susceptible given the nature of investments people make in power relations. While it is easy to dismiss emotional reactions like these as neurotic distortions, their prevalence and impact deserve careful attention in all phases of organizational life.

Unconscious collusions

All individuals and consequently groups experience areas of stress which mobilize defenses. The fact that coalitions embody defensive maneuvers on those occasions where stress goes beyond the usual level of tolerance is not surprising. An even more serious problem, however, occurs when the main force that binds men in a structure is the need to defend against or to act out the conflicts which individuals cannot tolerate alone.

Where coalitions represent the aggregation of power with conscious intention of using the abilities of members for constructive purposes, collusions represent predominance of unconscious conflict and defensive behavior. In organizational life, the presence of collusions and their causes often becomes the knot which has to be unraveled before any changes can be implemented.

The collusion of latent interests among executives can become the central theme and sustaining force of an organization structure of top management. For a collusion to take hold, the conflicts of the "power figure" have to be communicated and sensed by others as an overriding need which seeks active expression in the form of a theme. The themes vary just as do the structures which make a collusion. Thus one common theme is the need to control; another is the need to be admired and idealized; and still another is the need to find a scapegoat to attack in response to frustrations in solving problems.

If people could hold on to and keep within themselves areas of personal conflict, there would be far fewer collusions in organizational life. But it is part of the human condition for conflicts and needs to take over life situations. As a result, we find numerous instances of collusions controlling the behavior of executives. To illustrate:

A multidivisional corporation found itself with a revolution on its hands. The president was sensitive to the opinions of a few outside board members representing important stockholder interests. He was so concerned that he would be criticized by these board members, he demanded from vice presidents full information on their activities and complete loyalty to him. Over a period of years, he moved divisional chief executives to corporate headquarters so he could assure himself of their loyalty. Other executives joined in to gratify the president's need for control and loyalty.

The result of this collusion, however, was to create a schism between headquarters and field operations. Some of the staff members in the field managed to inform the board members of the lack of attention to and understanding of field problems. Discontent grew to such an extent that the board placed the president on early retirement.

Subsequently, the new president, with the support of the board, decentralized authority and appointed new division heads who were to make their offices in divisional headquarters with full authority to manage their respective organizations. One of the lingering problems of the new president was to dissolve the collusion at headquarters without wholesale firing of vice presidents.

Just as power distributions are central to the tasks of organizational planning, so the conservation of power is often the underlying function of collusions. Thus:

A manufacturing vice president of a medium-sized company witnessed over a period of 15 years a procession of changes in top management and ownership. He had managed to retain his job because he made himself indispensable in the management of the factory.

To each new top management, he stressed the importance of "home rule" as a means of assuring loyalty and performance in the plant. He also tacitly encouraged each supervisor to go along with whatever cliques happened to form and dominate the shop floor.

However, over time a gradual loss of competitive position, coupled with open conflict among cliques in the form of union disputes, led to the dismissal of the vice president. None of his successors could reassert control over the shop, and the company eventually moved or liquidated many of the operations in this plant.

'Life Dramas'

Faulty coalitions and unconscious collusions, as I have illustrated, can result from the defensive needs of a chief executive. These needs, which often appear as a demand on others to bolster the self-esteem of the chief executive, are tolerated to a remarkable degree and persist for a long time before harmful effects become apparent to outside stockholders, bankers, or boards of directors which ultimately control the distributions of power in organizations. Occasionally, corporations undergo critical conflicts in organizational politics which cannot be ignored in the conscious deliberations which affect how power gets distributed or used.

Intertwined with the various expressions of power conflicts in organizations are three underlying "life dramas" deserving careful attention:

The first portrays stripping the powers of a parental figure.

The second portrays the predominance of paranoid thinking, where distortions of reality result from the surfacing of conflicts which formerly had been contained in collusions.

The third portrays a ritualistic ceremonial in which real power issues are submerged or isolated in compulsive behavior but at the cost of real problem solving and work.

Parental figure

The chief executive in a business, along with the heads of states, religious bodies, and social movements, becomes an object for other people. The term "object" should be understood, in a psychological sense, as a person who is the recipient of strong emotional attachments from others. It is obvious that a chief executive is the object because he controls so many of the levers which ultimately direct the flow of rewards and punishments. But there is something to say beyond this obvious calculation of rewards and punishments as the basis for the emotional attachments between leader and led as object and subject.

Where a leader displays unusual attributes in his intuitive gifts, cultivated abilities, or deeper personal qualities, his fate as the object is governed by powerful emotions. I hesitate to use the word "charismatic" to describe such a leader, partially because it suggests a mystique but also because, in its reference to the "great" man as charismatic leader, it expands to superhuman proportions what really belongs to the psychology of everyday life.

What makes for strong emotional attachments is as much in the need of the subject as in the qualities of the object. In other words, the personalities of leaders take on proportions which meet what subordinates need and even demand. If leaders in fact respond with the special charisma that is often invested in them at the outset, then they are parties to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, the qualities demanded have to be present in some nascent form ready to emerge as soon as the emotional currents become real in authority relationships.

The emotional attachments I am referring to usually contain mixtures of positive and negative feelings. If the current were only of one kind, such as either admiration or hostility, then the authority relationship would be simpler to describe as well as to manage. All too often, the way positive feelings blend into the negative sets off secondary currents of emotion which intensify the relationships.

On the one side, subordinates cannot help but have fantasies of what they would do if they held the No. 1 position. Such fantasies, besides providing fleeting pleasures and helping one to regulate his ambitions, also provide channels for imaginative and constructive approaches to solving problems. It is only a short step from imagining what one would do as chief executive to explaining to the real chief executive the ideas which have been distilled from this flight into fantasy. If the chief executive senses envy in back of the thoughts, he may become frightened and choke off ideas which can be used quite constructively.

Critical episode:

But suppose a situation arises where not one but several subordinates enjoy the same fantasy of being No. 1? Suppose also that subordinates feel deprived in their relationship with the chief executive? Suppose finally that facing the organization there are substantive problems which are more or less out of control. With these three conditions, and depending on the severity of the real problems besetting the enterprise, the stage is set for a collusion which, when acted out, becomes a critical episode of displacing the parental figure. To demonstrate:

In November 1967, the directors of the Interpublic Group, a $700 million complex in advertising and public relations, moved for the resignation of the leader and chief executive officer, Marion Harper, Jr. Briefly, Harper had managed over a period of 18 years to build the world's largest conglomerate in market services, advertising, and information on the base of a personally successful agency career. In expanding from this base, Harper made acquisitions, started new companies, and widened his orbit into international branches and companies.

As often happens, the innovator and creative person is careless in controlling what he has built so that financial problems become evident. In Harper's case, he appeared either unwilling or unable to recognize the seriousness of his financial problems and, in particular, the significance of allowing cash balances to go below the minimum required in agreements with lending institutions.

Harper seemed careless in another, even more telling, way. Instead of developing a strong coalition among his executive group, he relied on individual ties to him in which he clearly dominated the relationship. If any of the executives "crossed" him, Harper would exile the offender to one of the "remote" branches or place him on partial retirement.

When the financial problems became critical, the aggrieved executives who had once been dependent on Harper and then cast out, formed their own coalition, and managed to garner the votes necessary to, in effect, fire the head man. Although little information is available on the aftermath of this palace revolution, the new coalition had its own problems-which, one would reasonably judge, included contentions for power.

A cynic viewing this illustration of the demise of a parental figure could conclude that if one seeks to maintain power by dominance, then one had best go all the way. This means that to take some but not all of the power away from rebellious sons sets the stage for a cabal among the deprived. With a score to settle, they await only the right circumstances to move in and depose the aggressor.

While this cynical view has its own appeal, it ignores the deeper issues of why otherwise brilliant men fail to recognize the realistic needs for coalitions in the relationships of superior and subordinates. To answer this question, we would need to understand how powerful people operate with massive blind spots which limit vision and the ability to maneuver in the face of realistic problems.

The one purpose that coalitions serve is to guard against the effects of blind spots, since it is seldom the case that two people have identical limitations in their vision and ability to respond. The need to control and dominate in a personalistic sense is perhaps the most serious of all possible blind spots which can affect a chief executive, because he makes it difficult for people to help him, while creating grievances which sooner or later lead to attacks on him.

The unseating of a chief executive by a coalition of subordinates seldom reduces the emotional charge built up in the uncertain attachments to the ousted leader. A new head man has to emerge and establish a confident coalition. Until the contentions for power subside and the guilt reactions attached to deposing the leader dissolve, individuals remain vulnerable to their own blind spots and unconscious reactions to striving for power.

The references to a parental figure in the preceding discussion may appear to exaggerate the meaning of power conflicts. In whatever ways it exaggerates, it also condenses a variety of truths about coalitions among executives. The chief executive is the central object in a coalition because he occupies a position analogous to parents in the family. He is at the nucleus of a political structure whose prototype is the family in which jealousy, envy, love, and hate find original impetus and expression.

It would be a gross error to assume that in making an analogy between the family and formal organizations the parental role is strictly paternal. There are also characteristics of the mother figure in certain types of chief executives and combinations of mother-father in the formation of executive coalitions.

Chief executives can also suffer from depersonalization in their roles and as a result become emotionally cold and detached. The causes of depersonalization are complex but, in brief, have some connections to the narrow definitions of rationality which exclude the importance of emotions in guiding communication as well as thought.

For the purpose of interpreting how defensive styles affect the behavior of leaders, there is some truth to the suggestion that the neutrality and lack of warmth characteristic of some leaders is a result of an ingrained fear of becoming the object for other people-for to become the object arouses fears that subordinates will become envious and compete for power.

Paranoid thinking

This is a form of distortion in ideas and perception to which all human beings are susceptible from time to time. For those individuals who are concerned in their work with the consolidation and uses of power, the experience with suspiciousness, the attribution of bad motives to others, jealousy, and anxiety (characteristics of paranoid thinking), may be more than a passing state of mind.

In fact, such ideas and fantasies may indeed be communicated to others and may even be the main force which binds men into collusions. Organizational life is particularly vulnerable to the effects of paranoid thinking because it stimulates comparisons while it evokes anticipations of added power or fears of diminished power.

To complicate matters even more and to suggest just how ambiguous organizational decisions become, there may be some truth and substance in back of the suspicions, distrust, and jealousies which enflame thinking. Personality conflicts do affect decisions in allocating authority and responsibility, and an individual may not be distorting at all to sense that he had been excluded or denied an ambition based on some undercurrents in his relationships with others. To call these sensitivities paranoid thinking may itself be a gross distortion. But no matter how real the events, the paranoid potential is still high as a fallout of organizational life.

Paranoid thinking goes beyond suspiciousness, distrust, and jealousy. It may take the form of grandiose ideas and overestimation of one's power and control. This form of distortion leads to swings in mood from elation to despair, from a sense of omnipotence to helplessness. Again, when acted out, the search for complete control produces the tragedies which the initial distortions attempt to overcome. The tragedy of Jimmy Hoffa is a good case in point. Consider:

From all indications, Hoffa performed brilliantly as president of the teamsters' union. He was a superb organizer and bargainer, and in many ways a highly moral and even prudish man. There is little evidence to support allegations that he used his office to enrich himself.

Hoffa's troubles stemmed from his angry reactions when he could not get his way in managing the union's pension fund and from his relations with the government. In overestimating his power, Hoffa fell victim to the illusion that no controls outside himself could channel his actions. At this writing, Hoffa is serving a sentence in Lewisburg Penitentiary, having been found guilty of tampering with a jury.

It is interesting to note that Hoffa's successor delegated considerable authority to regional officers, a step that removed him from direct comparisons with Hoffa and served to cement a coalition of top officers in the teamsters.

Executives, too, can be victims of their successes just as much as of their failures. If past successes lead to the false sense of omnipotence which goes unchecked in, say, the executive's control of the board of directors, then he and his organization become the victims of changing times and competitive pressures along with the weakening in perception and reasoning which often accompanies aging.

One could speculate with some reason that paranoid distortions are the direct result of senility and the inability to accept the fact of death. While intellectually aware of the inevitability of death, gifted executives can sometimes not accept emotionally the ultimate in the limitations of power. The disintegration of personality in the conflict between the head and the heart is what we come to recognize as the paranoid potential in all forms of our collective relations.

Ritualistic ceremonial

Any collective experience, such as organizational life with its capacity for charging the atmosphere in the imagery of power conflicts, can fall victim to rigidities. The rigidities I have in mind consist mainly of the formation and elaboration of structures, procedures, and other ceremonials which create the illusion of solving problems but in reality only give people something to act on to discharge valuable energies.

The best example of a ritualistic approach to real problems is the ever-ready solution of bringing people together in a committee on the naive grounds that the exchange of ideas is bound to produce a solution. There are even fads and fashions to ritualism as in the sudden appearance of favorite words like "brainstorming" or "synergism."

It is not that bringing people together to discuss problems is bad. Instead, it is the naive faith which accompanies such proposals, ultimately deflecting attention from where it properly belongs. Thus:

In one research organization, professionals faced severe problems arising from personal jealousies as well as differences of opinion on the correct goals and content for the research program. Someone would periodically suggest that the problems could not be solved unless people came together, preferably for a weekend away from the job, to share ideas and really get down to the "nitty-gritty" of the problem. (It is interesting to note that no one ever defines the "nitty-gritty.") The group would indeed follow such suggestions and typically end the weekend with a feeling of euphoria brought on by considerable drinking and a sumptuous meal.

The most concrete proposal for action was in the idea that the basic problem stemmed from the organization's increased size so that people no longer knew one another and their work. The solution which appeared, only shortly to disappear, was to publish a laboratory newsletter that would keep people abreast of their colleagues' newest ideas.

In a more general vein, ritualism can be invoked to deal with any real or fancied danger, with uncertainty, ambivalent attitudes, or a sense of personal helplessness. Rituals are used even in the attempt to manipulate people. That power relations in organizations should become a fertile field for ritualism should not surprise anyone.

As I have tried to indicate, the problems of organizational life involve the dangers associated with losses of power; the uncertainties are legion especially in the recognition that there is no one best way to organize and distribute power, and yet any individual must make a commitment to some form of organization.

Ambivalent attitudes, such as the simultaneous experience of love and hate, are also associated with authority relationships, particularly in how superior-subordinate become the subject and object for the expression of dependency reactions. In addition, the sense of helplessness is particularly sensitized in the events which project gains and losses in power and status.

Finally, superior and subordinate in any power structure are constantly tempted to manipulate each other as a way of gaining control over one's environment, and the more so when there is a lack of confidence and credibility in the organization's efforts to solve problems in realistic ways.

The negative effects of ritualism are precisely in the expenditure of energy to carry out the rituals and also in the childlike expectation that the magic formulas of organizational life substitute for diagnosing and solving real problems. When the heads of organizations are unsure of the bases for the exercise of power and become defensive, the easy solution is to play for time by invoking rituals which may temporarily relieve anxiety.

Similarly, when executives fail to understand the structure and potential of the power coalitions they establish (either consciously or unconsciously), they increasingly rely on rituals to deflect attention away from their responsibilities. And, when leaders are timid men incapable of initiating or responding, the spontaneous reaction is to use people to act out rituals. Usually, the content and symbolism in the rituals provide important clues about the underlying defensiveness of the executive.

Obsessional leaders:

The gravitational pull to ceremonials and magic is irresistible. In positions of power, obsessional leaders use in their public performances the mechanisms of defense which originate in their private conflicts. These defenses include hyper-rationality, the isolation of thought and feeling, reactive behavior in turning anger into moral righteousness, and passive control of other people as well as their own thought processes.

Very frequently, particularly in this day and age of psychologizing conflict, obsessive leaders "get religion" and try to convert others into some new state of mind. The use of sensitivity training with its attachment to "openness" and "leveling" in power relations seems to be the current favorite.

What these leaders do not readily understand is the fallacy of imposing a total solution for the problem of power relations where reality dictates at best the possibility of only partial and transient solutions. To force openness through the use of group pressure in T-groups and to expect to sustain this pressure in everyday life is to be supremely ritualistic. People intelligently resist saying everything they think to other people because they somehow have a deep recognition that this route leads to becoming overextended emotionally and, ultimately, to sadistic relationships.

Intelligent uses of power:

The choice fortunately is not between ritualistic civility and naive openness in human relationships, particularly where power is concerned. In between is the choice of defining those partial problems which can be solved and through which bright people can learn something about the intelligent uses of power.

We should not lose sight of the basic lesson that people in positions of power differ from "ordinary" human beings mainly in their capacity to impose their personal defenses onto the stage of corporate life. Fortunately, the relationships are susceptible to intelligent management, and it is to the nature of this intelligence that I wish to address the conclusion of this article.

Coming Full Circle

The main job of organizational life, whether it concerns developing a new political pyramid, making new appointments to executive positions, or undergoing management succession at top levels, is to bring talented individuals into location for the legitimate uses of power. This is bound to be a highly charged event in corporate relationships because of the real changes in power distributions and the emotional reactions people experience along with the incremental gains and losses of power.

The demand, on the one hand, is for objectivity in assessing people and needs (as opposed to pseudorationality and rationalizing). This objectivity, on the other hand, has to be salvaged from the impact of psychological stresses which impel people to act out fantasies associated with power conflicts. The stresses of change in power relations tend to increase defensiveness to which counterreactions of rationalizing and of myth making serve no enduring purpose except perhaps to drive underground the concerns which make people react defensively in the first place.

Stylistic biases

Thought and action in the politics of organizational life are subject to the two kinds of errors commonly found in practical life: the errors of omission and those of commission. It is both what people do and what they neglect to do that result in the negative effects of action outweighing the positive. But besides the specific errors of omission and commission (the tactical aspects of action), there are also the more strategic aspects which have to be evaluated. The strategic aspects deal both with the corporate aims and objectives and with the style of the leaders who initiate change.

In general, leaders approach change with certain stylistic biases over which they may not have too much control. There is a preferred approach to power problems which derives from the personality of the leader and his defenses as well as from the realities of the situation. Of particular importance as stylistic biases are the preferences for partial, as contrasted with total, approaches and the preferences for substance over form.

Partial vs. total:

The partial approaches attempt to define and segregate problems which become amenable to solution by directive, negotiation, consensus, and compromise.

The total approaches usually escalate the issues in power relations so that implicitly people act as though it were necessary to undergo major conversions. The conversions can be directed toward personality structure, ideals, and beliefs, or toward values which are themselves connected to important aspects of personal experience.

When conversions become the end products of change, then one usually finds the sensitization of concerns over such matters as who dominates and who submits, who controls and who is being controlled, who is accepted and who is rejected. The aftermath of these concerns is the heightening of fantasy and defense at the expense of reality.

It may come as something of a disappointment to readers who are favorably disposed to psychology to consider the possibility that while organizations do have an impact on the attitudes of their constituent members, they cannot change personality structures or carry out therapeutic procedures. People may become more effective while working in certain kinds of organizations, but only when effectiveness is not dependent on the solution of neurotic conflict.

The advocates of total approaches seem to miss this point in their eagerness to convert people and organizations from one set of ideals to another. It becomes a good deal wiser, if these propositions are true, to scale down and make concrete the objectives that one is seeking to achieve.

A good illustration is in the attention given to decentralization of authority. Decentralization can be viewed in the image of conversion to certain ideals about who should have power and how this power should be used responsibly, or through an analytical approach to decide selectively where power is ill-placed and ill-used and to work on change at these locations. In other words, the theory of the partial approach to organizations asserts priorities and depends on good diagnostic observation and thought.

Substance vs. form:

Leaders can also present a stylistic bias in their preference for substance or form. Substance, in the language of organizations, is the detail of goals and performance-that is, who has to do what with whom to meet specific objectives. Form directs attention to the relationship of "who to whom" and attempts to achieve goals by specifying how the people should act in relation to each other.

There is no way in which matters of form can be divorced from substance. But students of organization should at least be clear that attention to form ahead of substance threatens a person's sense of what is reasonable in undertaking actions. Attention to form may also present an implicit attack on one's conception of his independence and freedom from constraint.

Making form secondary to substance has another virtue: it can secure agreement on priorities without the need of predetermining who will have to give way in the ultimate give-and-take of the negotiations that must precede decisions on organization structure.

The two dimensions of bias, shown in the Exhibit I matrix, along with the four cells which result, clarify different executive approaches to power. The two dimensions define the executive's cognitive biases in: (1) selection of goals (partial vs. total), and (2) orientation toward action (form vs. substance).

Exhibit I Cognitive Management Styles in Organizational Life

In the bureaucratic approach-that is, partial goals and attachment to form as a mode of acting-the emphasis is on procedure and the establishment of precedent and rule to control the uses of power.

The appeal of this approach is its promise of certainty in corporate relationships and in the depersonalization of power. The weaknesses of the bureaucratic approach are too familiar to need detailing here. Its major defect, however, is its inability to separate the vital from the trivial. It more easily commands energy over irrelevant issues because the latent function of the bureaucratic approach is to bypass conflict.

My contention here is that few important problems can be attended to without conflict of ideas and interests. Eventually organizations become stagnant because the bureaucratic approaches seldom bring together power and the vital issues which together make organizations dynamic.

The conversion approach (total-form) is notable through the human relations and sensitivity training movements as well as ideological programs, such as the Scanlon Plan and other forms of participative management. The popularity of "management by objectives" bears some scrutiny as a conversion movement directed toward power figures.

Another "total" approach which differs from conversion in its emphasis on substance is compliance with the directives of the powerful leader. This is the arena of the authoritarian personality (in both the leader, who has the power, and in the led, who seek submission), for whom personal power gets expressed in some higher goal that makes it possible for ends to justify means. The ideals may, for example, be race, as with dictator Adolf Hitler, or religion, as with Father Charles Coughlin, a dictator-type of the depression. In business, the illustrations are of a technological variety as with Frederick Winslow Taylor's "scientific management" and Henry Ford's automobile and assembly line.

Almost any technology can assume the proportions of the total approach if it is advanced by a charismatic leader and has deep emotional appeal. This explains the popularity of "management information systems," "value analysis," and "program planning and budgeting" which lead to a belief that the system itself is based on order, rationality, and control; therefore, the belief in turn helps to counteract the fears of chaos and lack of control which make people willing to demand total dependence and compliance in power relations. The effects of this fear on how people seek to arrange power relations in business, government, and the community cannot be overestimated.

Problem-solving approach

It should be perfectly obvious by now that my favored approach to organizational life combines the biases in Exhibit I of the partial substantive quadrant which I have designated "problem solving." From observation of competent business executives, we know it is precisely their ability to define problems worthy of thought and action and to use their organization to evolve solutions which characterize their style.

The contrary notion that executives are primarily caretakers, mediators, and seekers of consensus is more a myth than an accurate portrayal of how the competent ones attach themselves to power. To have power and not direct it to some substantive end that can be attained in the real world is to waste energy. The difficulties with the problem-solving approach are in risking power in favor of a substantive goal.

While there are no absolute right answers in problem solving, there are ways of evaluating the correctness of a program and plan. With a favorable average, the executive finds his power base enhanced and his ability to take risks increased.

The problem-solving approach to organization structure operates according to certain premises:

1. That organization structure is an instrument rather than an end. This means that a structure should be established or modified quickly instead of stringing out deliberations as though there actually exists a best and single solution for the problem of allocating power.

2. That organization structure can be changed but should not be tinkered with. This means that members of an executive organization can rely on a structure and can implement it without the uncertainty which comes from the constant modification of the organization chart.

3. That organization structure expresses the working coalition attached to the chief executive. In other words, the coalition has to be established de facto for the structure to mean anything. If the structure is out of line with the coalition, there will be an erosion of power and effectiveness. If no coalition exists in the minds of participants, putting it on paper in the form of an organization chart is nothing more than an academic exercise and a confusing one at that.

4. That organization structure represents a blend of people and job definitions, but the priority is in describing the structure to accommodate competent people. The reason for this priority lies in the fact that competent executives are hard to find. Therefore, as an action principle, one should ensure the effective uses of the scarcest resources rather than conform to some ideal version of power relations.

5. That organization structure is a product of negotiation and compromise among executives who hold semiautonomous power bases. The more the power base of an executive is his demonstrated competence, the greater his autonomy of power and therefore capacity to determine the outcome in the allocations of power.

The basic criticism of the problem-solving approach is in the danger of defining issues narrowly and ultimately undermining the moral-ethical basis of leadership. This criticism is valid, but as with so many problems in practical affairs, it can be overcome only by leaders who can see beyond the limits of immediate contingencies. In fact, I have tried to show throughout this article how the limitations of leaders, in both their cognitive and their emotional capacities, become the causes of power problems.

We have therefore come full circle in this analysis: because power problems are the effects of personality on structure, the solutions demand thinking which is free from the disabilities of emotional conflicts. This insight is often the margin between enduring with what exists or taking those modest steps which align competence with institutional authority in the service of human needs.

A version of this article appeared in the May 1970 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Power and Politics in Organizational Life

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There are few business activities more prone to a credibility gap than the way in which executives approach organizational life. A sense of disbelief occurs when managers purport to make decisions in rationalistic terms while most observers and participants know that personalities and politics play a significant if not an overriding role.

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This week I had a visit with Salt Lake entrepreneur Amelia Wilcox, founder and CEO of Incorporate Massage. She started her company four and a half years ago, to provide corporate massage services for a variety of organizations. In that time she's established presence for organizations in the intermountain U.S. and most recently is opening locations in Texas and Philadelphia. Research on the prevalence of corporate massage is scarce, but most sources indicate its popularity is growing, and an article in the Financial Times quotes at least one company reporting a 25% decrease in time off for workplace injuries and a $200,000 decrease in compensation claims when it implemented a corporate massage program.

As programs have become more prevalent Wilcox has differentiated and specialized her company's offerings by pioneering a software platform to provide full-service scheduling, reminders, reporting and billing. This is particularly compelling for large companies who want to share the cost of massage services with participating employees but prefer to not be encumbered with administrative details.

Wilcox reached out to me after watching the video of a presentation on entrepreneurship I gave at Utah's Snow College last year. As we talked about the growth of her service, the conversation led to the many ways organizations, large and small, can reward and motivate their employees beyond the obvious reward of a raise (which, ironically, is well away from the biggest motivating factor for today's employees according to leadership expert Joe Folkman).

So I invited Amelia to share her own favorite strategies for motiving team members. She provided six ideas, as follows:

1. Give them a reason to believe. Your employees are part of something bigger than themselves, but do they know it? From the first interview, potential candidates need to understand and share in the vision of what you are doing as an organization. That vision alone will motivate and inspire your team, down to its junior members, which comes back full circle in effectively facilitating company growth. For her company, as an example, the company's true purpose is "Improving Lives" as every team member is aware. The team is directly improving the lives of the individuals they provide massage therapy for, but is also improving the lives of HR teams by administrating the entire massage program fully, leaving them free to do their own jobs. Additionally, they improve the lives of CEOs and stockholders by improving employee retention and morale and decreasing worker's comp claims and health insurance cost. And they improve the lives of people in local communities by helping businesses succeed, which improves the local economy and creates additional jobs.

2. Show you care. Recognize every single employee's birthday. Send gifts for new babies and weddings. Be involved in employees' lives to let them feel loved and valued not only as employees, but also as family members and as human beings. "When people are loved, they will give more than you can imagine they could for you and your cause," Wilcox says. In her company, she sends gifts to employees around every possible event in their lives. "Employees are the lifeblood of our operation. We want to make taking care of them our highest priority and to make sure they are ridiculously happy at all times."

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6 Ways To Increase Employee Morale And Performance (Without Giving A Raise)

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This week I had a visit with Salt Lake entrepreneur Amelia Wilcox, founder and CEO of Incorporate Massage. She started her company four and a half years ago, to provide corporate massage services for a variety of organizations. In that time she's established presence for organizations in the intermountain U.S.

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Working folks who aspire to integrate that work with a meaningful, fun, and fulfilling life are often lone rangers -- desperately and individually striving to achieve all they want to achieve at work, at home, in their communities, and within themselves. But the pursuit of work-life balance doesn't have to be a lonely endeavor. There are things an employer can do to help all employees balance work with their other passions -- but those things might not be what you think.

Take this job and balance it!

In a recent study by the Hay Group, fully 39% of respondents indicated that they did not have a good balance between their work and personal lives. More importantly, 27% of employees who said they worked for a company that didn't support work-life balance indicated that they planned to leave their companies within the next two years.

On the other hand, only 17% of folks who worked for companies that really support employees having meaningful, fun, and fulfilling lives at work and elsewhere said they would leave.

When we don't feel like we can get the balance right -- and it seems like our employer doesn't care -- we often feel like we have no choice but to quit. And even when well-meaning employers put programs in place like flexible work arrangements, work-from-home options, and other measures intended to help us live rich, complete lives, those programs often fall short because other elements of the organizational culture -- like expectations about "face time" and other non-flexible work biases -- prevent them from truly delivering their promised benefits.

Don't just empower -- enable

What the Hay research discovered was that flexible working arrangements and the like are important and valuable, but the organizations that really make employees feel like work-life balance was valued are the ones that enable those employees to do their jobs as efficiently and effectively as possible. In other words, the cultures of these organizations create an environment in which folks can do good work and then get the heck out of there! Some of the traits of these cultures include:

Ensuring that employees have adequate tools and resources

Investing in training and development to ensure that employees have the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need

Encouraging and enabling cross-functional collaboration

Implementing policies and procedures that distribute workloads evenly

Providing clear organizational direction that enables employees to prioritize their work

Interestingly, this aligns pretty closely to research first conducted by Robert Karasek and Tores Theorell in the '70s (and confirmed since) on the relationship between the demands of a job, support given on the job, and the degree of strain felt at work. Karasek and Theorell developed the "demand-control model" to illustrate their findings, and it looked something like this:

Essentially, Karasek and Theorell's research foreshadowed the Hay study, finding that folks with high demands and low control or support in their jobs experienced a great deal of strain (which is likely to lead to burnout or loud obscenities in a conference room), while folks with high demands and high control or support were active and engaged in their work.

What does a work-life balance culture look like?

In a 2008 study, Steingerdur Ólafsdottir researched an Icelandic software consulting company that had been identified by employees as being very supportive of balancing work, community, family, and self-development needs. Ólafsdottir found the following traits, among others, in the culture of the organization:

Fun

Ambition

Flexibility

Openness

Cooperation

Informality

Flat organizational structure

Trust

Responsibility

Support

Pride

Within this organization, Ólafsdottir identified several things that managers and leaders did to create this culture:

They were understanding of employees needs and concerns

They made themselves available to employees

They were supportive of employees when they encountered challenges

They demonstrated trust of their employees

They gave their employees feedback on their work

Sounds like just plain good management, doesn't it? In a way, that's what it all comes down to. Organizational cultures that are managed intentionally, consciously, and with an eye toward enabling employees are more likely to attract and retain employees who lead meaningful, fun, and fulfilling lives in which they feel better able to balance the demands of work, home, community, and self.
The research shows that those of us who insist on leading rich, dynamic lives of purpose don't have to be lone rangers. We can build organizational cultures that make this meaningful mission possible for everyone.
Eryc Eyl is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant who helps working folks integrate their work with a meaningful, fun, and fulfilling life, so they can keep their heads and their hearts while keeping their jobs. You can find out more and subscribe to his weekly newsletter by visiting eryceyl.com.
Photo illustration courtesy of chanpipat/freedigitalphotos.net
Fancy illustration of the Karasek-Theorell job demand-control model by Eryc Eyl

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How Organizational Culture Affects Work-Life Balance

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Working folks who aspire to integrate that work with a meaningful, fun, and fulfilling life are often lone rangers -- desperately and individually striving to achieve all they want to achieve at work, at home, in their communities, and within themselves. But the pursuit of work-life balance doesn't have to be a lonely endeavor.

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Career Partners International Congratulates Dan Haneman on His Nomination as HR Consultant of the Year Human Resources is a Profession...

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There are several different processes of management, but four old-fashioned, but key functions that provide the "technology of management" are identified as: Planning, Organizing, Motivating, and Controlling.

Whether you run your own business, are starting a business, manage a department or just work hard, these four elements are imperative to ensure smooth operation and to meet your necessary operational goals.

1. Plan
First and foremost, management must create and stick to a plan. Setting goals is an invaluable task that must be done to establish order within a department or organization. Planning is the base function, as well as the foundation for management. Planning requires looking into and understanding the present state of the company or department and deciding where you want the company or department to be. Once the desired future has been determined, strategic planning must take place in order to get to where the company to that future.

Planning is a never-ending story. The minute planning ceases, the company or department will begin to deteriorate. Internal and external factors must be considered when planning is on the table. There will be times that long-term planning must take the back seat when short-term planning becomes a necessity or an emergency.

2. Organize
Once plans have been made and are ready to be implemented, organization comes into play. It is impossible to organize until plans have been set; once set, then organization has purpose. Organization combines the resources available to the team or company. These resources might include money, talent, technology, or tools.

The compilation of these resources is the most efficient way of accomplishing company and/or departmental goals. Management will systemize the division of labor and resources, as well as determine where authority and responsibility lie once organizational efforts have been established. Organization is the next logical step when planning has reached a certain point. Being that planning never ceases, it can be logically be assumed that organization is an ongoing task, as well.

3. Motivate
Once planning has been established and organization has begun, motivation becomes necessary to carry out said plans and maintain the established organization. Motivating (or directing) is also necessary in order to determine where each company or team member should dwell within the organizational confines. Motivation plays a significant part in influencing how each organizational or departmental goal is to be reached. Included in this process is open communication and supervision.

Building relationships of trust and camaraderie will aid the efforts of management in leading the company and/or department to success. This can be achieved through communication - supervisors communicating with employees, and executives communicating with supervisors, co-workers to co-workers, team members to team members. These are all part of the motivating/directing function.

4. Control
Controlling involves evaluating the efforts of the organization in goal achievement. Providing feedback from every corner plus follow-up and follow-thru to evaluate progress and achievement. Cross-functional team meetings and departmental gatherings allow for comment and response or in determining when a change of course is necessary.

This function allows for resolution and change that is compulsory. Through this process, predictors are in place and crisis can be prevented and/or averted. This is a continuous process in that the company and department will forever need to be challenged, controlled, and managed.

It is possible to reach goals and attain success through faithful participation in an old-fashioned but timeless management process.

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There are several different processes of management, but four old-fashioned, but key functions that provide the "technology of management" are identified as: Planning, Organizing, Motivating, and Controlling. Whether you run your own business, are starting a business, manage a department or just work hard, these four elements are imperative to ensure smooth operation and to meet your necessary operational goals.

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"Don't be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented."

The list goes on, reading like a whiteboard gag from an episode of "The Office."

"My first reaction was, that's it?" says Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for "people operations," which is Googlespeak for human resources.

But then, Mr. Bock and his team began ranking those eight directives by importance. And this is where Project Oxygen gets interesting.

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they'll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock's group found that technical expertise - the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep - ranked dead last among Google's big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees' lives and careers.

"In the Google context, we'd always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you," Mr. Bock says. "It turns out that that's absolutely the least important thing. It's important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible."

Project Oxygen doesn't fit neatly into the usual Google story line of hits (like its search engine) and misses (like the start last year of Buzz, its stab at social networking). Management is much squishier to analyze, after all, and the topic often feels a bit like golf. You can find thousands of tips and rules for how to become a better golfer, and just as many for how to become a better manager. Most of them seem to make perfect sense.

Problems start when you try to keep all those rules in your head at the same time - thus the golf cliché, "paralysis by analysis." In management, as in golf, the greats make it all look effortless, which only adds to the sense of mystery and frustration for those who struggle to get better.

That caveat aside, Project Oxygen is noteworthy for a few reasons, according to academics and experts in this field.

H.R. has long run on gut instincts more than hard data. But a growing number of companies are trying to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions.

"Google is really at the leading edge of that," says Todd Safferstone, managing director of the Corporate Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, who has a good perch to see what H.R. executives at more than 1,000 big companies are up to.

Project Oxygen is also unusual, Mr. Safferstone says, because it is based on Google's own data, which means that it will feel more valid to those Google employees who like to scoff at conventional wisdom.

Many companies, he explained, adopt generic management models that tell people the roughly 20 things they should do as managers, without ranking those traits by importance. Those models often suffer "a lot of organ rejection" in companies, he added, because they are not presented with any evidence that they will make a difference, nor do they prioritize what matters.

"Most companies are better at exhorting you to be a great manager, rather than telling you how to be a great manager," Mr. Safferstone says.

PROJECT OXYGEN started with some basic assumptions.

People typically leave a company for one of three reasons, or a combination of them. The first is that they don't feel a connection to the mission of the company, or sense that their work matters. The second is that they don't really like or respect their co-workers. The third is they have a terrible boss - and this was the biggest variable. Google, where performance reviews are done quarterly, rather than annually, saw huge swings in the ratings that employees gave to their bosses.

Managers also had a much greater impact on employees' performance and how they felt about their job than any other factor, Google found.

"The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier - they do everything better," Mr. Bock says. "So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?"

In Project Oxygen, the statisticians gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers - across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports. Then they spent time coding the comments in order to look for patterns.

Once they had some working theories, they figured out a system for interviewing managers to gather more data, and to look for evidence that supported their notions. The final step was to code and synthesize all those results - more than 400 pages of interview notes - and then they spent much of last year rolling out the results to employees and incorporating them into various training programs.

The process of reading and coding all the information was time-consuming. This was one area where computers couldn't help, says Michelle Donovan, a manager of people analytics who was involved in the study.

"People say there's software that can help you do that," she says. "It's been our experience that you just have to get in there and read it."

GIVEN the familiar feel of the list of eight qualities, the project might have seemed like an exercise in reinventing the wheel. But Google generally prefers, for better or worse, to build its own wheels.

"We want to understand what works at Google rather than what worked in any other organization," says Prasad Setty, Google's vice president for people analytics and compensation.

Once Google had its list, the company started teaching it in training programs, as well as in coaching and performance review sessions with individual employees. It paid off quickly.

"We were able to have a statistically significant improvement in manager quality for 75 percent of our worst-performing managers," Mr. Bock says.

He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team.

"He's brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team," Mr. Bock recalls.

Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching - the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved.

"And a year later, it's actually quite a bit better," Mr. Bock says. "It's still not great. He's nowhere near one of our best managers, but he's not our worst anymore. And he got promoted."

Mark Klenk, an engineering manager whom Google made available for an interview, said the Project Oxygen findings, and the subsequent training, helped him understand the importance of giving clear and direct feedback to the people he supervises.

"There are cases with some personalities where they are not necessarily realizing they need a course correction," Mr. Klenk says. "So it's just about being really clear about saying, 'O.K., I understand what you are doing here, but let's talk about the results, and this is the goal.' "

"I'm doing that a lot more," he says, adding that the people he manages seem to like it. "I've gotten direct feedback where they've thanked me for being clear."

GOOGLE executives say they aren't crunching all this data to develop some algorithm of successful management. The point, they say, is to provide the data and to make people aware of it, so that managers can understand what works and, just as important, what doesn't.

The traps can show up in areas like hiring. Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them. So Google compiles elaborate dossiers on candidates from the interview process, and hiring decisions are made by a group. "We do everything to minimize the authority and power of the manager in making a hiring decision," Mr. Bock explains.

A person with an opening on her team, for instance, may have short-term needs that aren't aligned with the company's long-term interests. "The metaphor is, if you need an administrative assistant, you're going to be really picky the first week, and at six months, you're going to take anyone you can get," Mr. Bock says.

Google also tries to point out predictable traps in performance reviews, which are often done with input from a group. The company has compiled a list of "cognitive biases" for employees to keep handy during these discussions. For example, somebody may have just had a bad experience with the person being reviewed, and that one experience inevitably trumps recollections of all the good work that person has done in recent months. There's also the "halo/horns" effect, in which a single personality trait skews someone's perception of a colleague's performance.

Google even points out these kinds of biases in its cafeteria line. The company stacks smaller plates next to bigger ones at the front of the line, and it tells people that research shows that diners generally eat everything on their plate, even if they are full halfway through the meal. By using the smaller plate, Google says, they could drop 10 to 15 pounds in a year.

"The thing that moves or nudges Googlers is facts; they like information," says Ms. Donovan, who was involved in the management effectiveness study and the effort to encourage healthier eating. "They don't like being told what to do. They're just, 'Give me the facts and I'm smart, I'll decide.' "

The true test of Google's new management model, of course, is whether it will help its business performance of the long haul. Just a few hours after Mr. Bock was interviewed for this article in mid-January, Google surprised the world by announcing that Larry Page, one of its co-founders, was taking over as C.E.O. from Eric E. Schmidt.

Though Mr. Schmidt explained the move on Twitter by writing, "Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed," the company made clear that the point was to speed up decision-making and to simplify management.

Google clearly hopes to recapture some of the nimbleness and innovative spirit of its early years. But will Project Oxygen help a grown-up Google get its start-up mojo back?

D. Scott DeRue, a management professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, applauds Google for its data-driven method for management. That said, he noted that while Google's approach might be unusual, its findings nevertheless echoed what other research had shown to be effective at other companies. And that, in itself, is a useful exercise.

"Although people are always looking for the next new thing in leadership," he said, "Google's data suggest that not much has changed in terms of what makes for an effective leader." Whether Google's eight rules will still apply as the company evolves is anyone's guess. They certainly aren't chiseled in stone. Mr. Bock's group is continuing to test them for effectiveness, watching for results from all the training the company is doing to reinforce the behaviors.

For now, Mr. Bock says he is particularly struck by the simplicity of the rules, and the fact that applying them doesn't require a personality transplant for a manager.

"You don't actually need to change who the person is," he says. "What it means is, if I'm a manager and I want to get better, and I want more out of my people and I want them to be happier, two of the most important things I can do is just make sure I have some time for them and to be consistent. And that's more important than doing the rest of the stuff."

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Google's 8-Point Plan to Help Managers Improve

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"Don't be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented." The list goes on, reading like a whiteboard gag from an episode of "The Office." "My first reaction was, that's it?" says Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for "people operations," which is Googlespeak for human resources.

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A ruler who lacks understanding is a great oppressor...

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Don't be lazy...
The hand of the diligent will rule, But the lazy man will be put to forced labor.

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In all labor there is profit, But idle chatter leads only to poverty.

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Indeed I have given him as a witness to the people, A leader and commander for the people.
Isaiah 53:4

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Professor Maner has analyzed leadership styles by administering questionnaires and by watching people interact in lab settings. He has found that dominant people exhibit behavior like speaking more often and more loudly, while prestige types spend more time listening and synthesizing other people's contributions.

"Dominant leaders hoard information and ostracize talented group members. They closely monitor talented group members to make sure they don't get out of line, and they prevent their subordinates from forming close social bonds with one another," he said, drawing on research he has done with Charleen R. Case and with Nicole L. Mead.

Whereas dominant leaders want to be in control of everything, "prestige is about leading in the domains in which you have expertise," Professor Maner said.

The presidential election offers up an example of the two styles: Donald J. Trump is a dominant leader, while Hillary Clinton has more prestige-leaning qualities, Professor Maner said. Steve Jobs of Apple, who was known for his brash, uncompromising style, was a classic example of a dominant leader. Warren Buffett, who has a less forceful demeanor, falls into the prestige category, according to the professor's classifications.

The dominant style has a negative cast and can lead to damaging behavior like bullying. Over all, the prestige style tends to work better in our culture, he said.

But dominance is not always bad for an organization, he added. "If you're running a company and you have a very strong vision for the direction the company needs to move, and your job as a leader is to get everybody aligned and moving toward that vision, then dominance actually works quite well."

Dominance can also be effective in times of organizational crisis, he said. "You want somebody to come in and lead the charge - there isn't time for a big brainstorming session."

The prestige leadership style is most effective when a leader does not have a strong vision and instead wants employees to come up with innovative and creative strategies, he said.

In a working paper that Professor Maner has written with Ms. Case, he details the way that the prestige style can get leaders into trouble. Because they gain their prestige by building relationships, they will sometimes make a popular decision over a wise one, he said, and "they also have trouble giving negative feedback to employees."

While most leaders tend to lean toward dominance or prestige, the best ones know how to use both styles - and to deploy the right one at the right time for the good of their organization, Professor Maner said.

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Bossy vs. Buddy: Two Leadership Styles, Each With Its Place

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Professor Maner has analyzed leadership styles by administering questionnaires and by watching people interact in lab settings. He has found that dominant people exhibit behavior like speaking more often and more loudly, while prestige types spend more time listening and synthesizing other people's contributions. "Dominant leaders hoard information and ostracize talented group members.

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What's your leadership style? You have a particular style, of course, but do you know what it is and how it compares to the styles of other leaders?

Over the past two decades of studying leaders, my team and I have found that there are really four fundamental leadership styles: Pragmatist, Idealist, Steward and Diplomat. Leaders can be effective or ineffective within each of these four styles, and there are a million subtle variations, but these four styles give us a way to pinpoint some major philosophical differences between leaders. (There's a free leadership styles assessment to assess yourself.)

One major philosophical difference that separates the four leadership styles is the extent to which leaders are directive or open. For example, do your like your employees to complete their tasks the way you prefer them to do it? Or, do you let your employees complete tasks the way they want to do it?

Another major philosophical difference is the extent to which leaders are collaborative or competitive. For example, is it important for you to genuinely like the people on your team? Or do you not care about that, as long as your people are smart and perform well?

Of course, there's a lot more to the four leadership styles than just these two philosophical differences. But as a starting point, these are emblematic of the myriad ways that leaders see the world.

Here are descriptions of each of the four leadership styles (Pragmatist, Idealist, Steward and Diplomat). See which style you think resonates with you, and take the leadership styles assessment to corroborate your intuition.
The Pragmatist
Pragmatists have high standards, and they expect themselves, and their employees, to meet those standards. Pragmatists are driven, competitive, and they value hitting their goals above all else. They can be bold thinkers, unafraid of taking the road less travelled (even when others struggle or feel anxious). They are also hard-driving and often enjoy smashing through obstacles.

Working for Pragmatists can be difficult but rewarding. The job is not for the feint-of-heart or thin-skinned, but the opportunities to learn and become expert under the Pragmatist's tutelage are second-to-none. The job can sometimes feel like an apprenticeship to a master artist or professor. This offers the potential for exceptional intellectual growth, but also for burnout and criticism. It's a great situation for the right individuals, but employees who work for Pragmatists may find that bottom-line results can sometimes outpace softer measures like employee engagement.

The Pragmatist style is the least common of all the leadership styles, accounting for around 8-12% of American leaders. But, it's interesting to note that top-level executives have a higher percentage of Pragmatists than other groups, like Managers, Directors and Vice Presidents.

Based on my observations, I consider Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) and Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) to be Pragmatists.

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Which Of These 4 Leadership Styles Are You?

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What's your leadership style? You have a particular style, of course, but do you know what it is and how it compares to the styles of other leaders? Over the past two decades of studying leaders, my team and I have found that there are really four fundamental leadership styles: Pragmatist, Idealist, [...]

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At the risk of sounding immodest, I'm going to admit that I'm good at managing my time. Co-workers, clients and friends often comment on how much I can produce and the range of work I can cover. I think of myself as one of those people who just gets stuff done. (There's a dark side to this, in that I can be task-mastery and frustrated by distractions, but that's a post for another day.)

So it's been a rude awakening for me this year when I've found myself dropping some balls -- or barely catching, as when a to-do pops in your mind like a last minute save. It seems I finally reached overload status between a demanding and varied work schedule, recurring travel, and a busy family -- and my well-honed systems started breaking down. For the first time in my life, I started thinking I needed a systematic approach to time management.

I've coached my clients around time management for years, so luckily I had a well of advice to draw from and put into practice. In our overstuffed days, it's a typical professional lament to just have a few more hours in a day. We don't want much really, just to produce more, and better. Never mind that we're asked to do more than our predecessors were ever asked to do, and by the way, to do it around the clock.

For all of you out there who want to get better at time management, I wish I had a magic bullet for you. All I can offer are my best tips. They've worked for me, and perhaps they will for you as well.

1. Start with a daily plan.

Peter Bregman, author of the bestselling time management book 18 Minutes, advises to make a plan as the first thing to do when you begin your day. In this Forbes article, he discusses the power of setting priorities up front -- before even checking email. How often do we get to our computer, power up email, and get lost in minutia? I've had clients so governed by email, that they go through their inbox at midnight to get a jump start before the morning. Email rules way too many of our waking hours.

By taking a strategic step back, you can set priorities for your day and determine what will make your precious time most rewarding. Part of this list-making is also attitude. Rather than feeling stressed by a list, try to feel empowered. Bregman puts it this way, decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful?"

2. Be ruthless.

We're bombarded with requests, and saying no can be difficult. Especially when you want to do everything! For me, this is a by-product of doing work that I love. But the reality is that you can only do a limited amount of things well. As a friend says, the work is infinite but our time is finite.

As author Karen Burns advises in this list of time management advice, what's important is not always urgent. And vice versa. She suggests being ruthless about what you take on, and then prioritizing from there. By finishing the most important tasks first, you'll find yourself feeling less stressed and better able to focus on all the other items on your list.

3. Put it all in the calendar.

I can still remember the first time I put a fitness class on my Outlook calendar. It felt like I was cheating work in some way. Fast forward, and now everything goes on one calendar -- from work, to workouts, to my kids' activities. I'm one person, so I need one schedule. This is a strategy I swear by.

Bregman believes that what gets scheduled gets done. He says that making a list isn't enough. You need to put those items on your calendar.

He cites studies where certain percentages of groups gave precise times and locations for accomplishing goals, while others did not. The results are striking: those who defined a where and a when had a far higher success rate than those who did not. For Bregman, it's simple: "If you want to get something done, decide when and where you're going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list."

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At the risk of sounding immodest, I'm going to admit that I'm good at managing my time. Co-workers, clients and friends often comment on how much I can produce and the range of work I can cover. I think of myself as one of those people who just gets stuff done.

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Culture tends to spin around the core work process of an organization. It may either enable or hinder the work processes that we spend so much time trying simplify. Lean implementers generally agree that the most difficult part of achieving a truly lean organization is changing the culture.

A Framework for Lean Culture

A good place to start is with a simple framework of what comprises the culture of any organization. Cultures are whole systems, like the human body or the economy. They are complex, interdependent systems and should be redesigned with an understanding of how the different components interact with one another.

Every culture must adapt to the external environment: changes in technology, economy, climate, social trends, resource availability and even the political environment. Having spent a number of years working with oil exploration and production companies, I am well aware how little control they have over the economy, the climate, or political events, which have huge impacts on their business. They cant control them, but they must sense and respond to these changes.

At the heart of any culture are the values, vision or beliefs of the culture. The cultures of the United States, Middle Eastern countries, or any corporation are built on a value system. It is the job of leaders to manage this cultural core and align behavior and other factors to the core beliefs. Symbols and stories often do the most to pass on and preserve the values of a culture.

The factors that are most controllable and which often inhibit lean implementation are the Structure, Systems, Skills, and Style. If one examines great companies like Toyota, Honda, Intel and others, you will find distinct differences in the Ss of the culture that are essential to their ability to sustain high performance and to adapt to changes in the environment.

Lets take a look at how organization structure may inhibit or enhance improvement efforts.

The Structure of Change Efforts

Change efforts are often structured to their own detriment. Continuous improvement efforts often follow a model that is very similar to the Quality Circle idea (repackaged, of course) of forming teams to address specific problems. These teams use good problem-solving methods, make a recommendation and then dissolve. This can and often does result in useful improvements.

Management is often attracted to this model because it does not require them to make fundamental changes in the way they do their own work or to address the real systems and structure that drive the culture. Lets face it -- initiating a problem-solving team is easy for management. It sells well.

There is, however, a serious problem with this approach. If a temporary team is formed to find and eliminate waste, one might ask the question, Who created that waste? Did the problem-solving team create the waste? Do they have the power to make truly significant changes? Will they be the ones to follow through on the implementation of solutions, evaluate and learn from those solutions?

Generally, not.

Power resides in the line management teams. Invariably, it was the line management team who made decisions that resulted in the creation of waste. In fact, the management teams own behavior is often a major source of waste in the organization. Their behavior and poor decisions are often the root cause. Why, then, are the line management teams not the ones who are analyzing the problem, using good problem-solving tools and making decisions to solve the problems?

The answer is simple: It is much easier for management to appoint a temporary team, with no formal authority, to study and make a recommendation, than it is to look in the mirror and address their own behavior and solve their own problems.

Consultants are often guilty of being enablers of the problem. It is easier to say to management, Lets form a temporary team, throw some money at it, well take care of it, and you can continue to function as you do, unscathed by the improvement effort.

That may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

If you want to create serious and sustained change in the culture of the organization, you MUST address the functioning of the line management teams. This is the core management structure, this is where power resides. This is where the big money decisions get made.

Structures that Create Teamwork Follow the Flow

I was once asked by a senior executive, Why do we need any structure at all? The question surprised me because it is one of those things we all just take for granted. But, it is a good question to ask.

When you consider what an organization does, it takes in input, processes that input, changes its state in some way, then sells the output to a customer. This is the core work of the organization. Everything, and I mean everything, must add value to this core work. The structure of the organization should be designed for one purpose: to facilitate, and not interrupt, the flow of the core work process.

Second, the structure should be designed to maximize the ability to solve problems and make improvements in the process. Ask yourself whether or not the structure of your organization accomplishes these two objectives. Or, does it inhibit the work flow, creating walls, interruptions in decision making, and separating people who need to solve problems as a unified team?

Most of the organizational structures of our corporations were created in an age in which lean, flow, and rapid improvement was not the basis of organization design. They were not designed to optimize the horizontal flow that serves customers. They were not viewed from the eye of the customer. Rather, they were viewed from the perspective of functional specialization. The focus was on moving up the ladder in the engineering, manufacturing, or marketing department. Up mattered more than sideways teamwork. The customer view is entirely horizontal, and our organization design should first and foremost meet the needs of our customers.

I spent considerable time working with a major petroleum exploration and production company to redesign the deep-water exploration and drilling work process and culture, in other words, the whole system. The process is massive. It requires years of work to explore a property, do exploratory drilling, analyze the results, and develop the well for production.

As the design team mapped the process, one thing became clear: There were dozens of handoffs from geologists, to economists, to explorationists, to various engineering departments, etc. Each handoff resulted in redo loops, blame between one group and the other, and delays. But, one thing was missing. No one owned the project and process from beginning to end. It was like a child who was handed off to new parents each couple of years, parents who specialized in the development during those years. By the time the child reaches maturity he would be an orphan for whom no one would take responsibility. Fortunately, we dont raise children that way!

The redesign of this process resulted in one project owner team, who managed the project from womb to tomb. They brought in expert teams as those teams were needed, but they maintained the horizontal view and they were given the necessary authority to make the important decisions that guided the process.

That process now takes less than half of the time it did before the redesign. The primary reason for this success was the creation of organizational structure and decision processes that enabled rather than disrupted the process.

Design from the Bottom Up

When designing the whole system of organizations, I have found it most helpful to design the structure from the bottom up -- a zero-base design process. You start with the work process only. You then ask how best to group first-level employees who do the real value adding work. How can you group them around the process to give them maximum control over the process, create maximum learning and improvement? You design the tools, the training, the information flow, and anything else you can think of to optimize their ability to do their work. These are your work teams.

Once you have done this, you then ask, What help do they need? You dont ask, What is the job of supervisors? You ask the question from the perspective of what will optimize the work of those who create value to customers. Then you form those first-level managers into teams. Again, you ask, What help do they need?

By starting from the bottom and seeking to optimize the ability of each team level, you will find that you often need fewer levels than when you started. You will also create a team structure that follows the flow rather than interrupting the flow. You will create not only a customer-focused process, but also a customer-focused organization design.

Lawrence M. Miller has been doing organizational change consulting for 35 years, beginning with his work creating a free economy in prisons. He has worked with Honda, Shell Oil, and dozens of other corporations. He is the author of nine books, most recently Lean Culture The Leaders Guide. His website and blog is www.ManagementMeditations.com.

See Also:

Lean Survey Says Managers Have a Lot to Learn

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Lean Culture and Continuous Improvement Require Enabling Structures

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Culture tends to spin around the core work process of an organization. It may either enable or hinder the work processes that we spend so much time trying simplify. Lean implementers generally agree that the most difficult part of achieving a truly lean organization is changing the culture.

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Managers in the workplace have a unique role to play with multiple and continuously evolving responsibilities. They must instill a high-performance mindset while creating a culture whose foundation promotes teamwork and competitiveness for the betterment of a healthier whole. Additionally, managers must touch the business and stay active. More than ever managers must have just as strong of a pulse on the business (internally and externally) as those who are managing it on the front lines. Most importantly, managers must quickly earn trust from their colleagues to inspire team unity and collaboration that is centered on the fundamental principles of loyalty, communication and transparency.

The best managers get it: no explanation required. They are proactive in addressing the needs of their team. They go out of their way to be creative and find new ways to uniquely motivate each member of the team. They are always aware of moods, mindset, attitude, and engagement levels. The best managers are the ones who "take one for the team" and can quickly turn around times of duress into rewarding opportunities.

But in the end, it is the level of trust you have with your manager that makes or breaks the team, your performance and the developmental journey within the organization you serve. A bad manager can make or break your career. Equally, if a manager is ineffective at earning trust - the lack of team performance will speak for itself and turnover will become increasingly apparent. You can't hide if you are an ineffective manager who has trouble earning trust.

Here are five ways to help you build trust quickly as a manager (or to help keep your manager on their game):

Building rapport is no easy task. It requires you to be a great listener (not just a good one). Managers who are listening take good notes, are quick to follow through, and are responsible enough to proactively address your immediate needs and requirements to help you be more successful.

Effective managers are also good at engaging with difficult personalities and situations. For example, early in my career, I learned a valuable lesson: people don't like having a much younger boss. Instead of viewing them merely as difficult people, I made it my responsibility to empower them and help them to be more successful. After they received their well-deserved recognition and bonuses, they quickly forgot about my age. If there was envy, it was converted into opportunity.
2. Take a Diplomatic Approach
Learning how to be politically (and authentically) correct is a requirement. This means a manager must always be mindful of doing the right thing - and at times making trade-offs in order to be given new opportunities and have greater influence down the road.
3. Establish Credibility
An effective manager exercises good judgment and knows how to pick and choose his battles. He is all about supporting the team and believes in consensus-building methods to create harmony (especially when there are many egos involved). Strong managers recognize that perception is reality and thus will play the political game accordingly to protect his team and mobilize their agenda.

Effective managers must establish their credibility (and I am not talking about past positions/previous titles). The most effective managers always follow-up, are true to their word, have a proven track record, and have a reputation of getting things done.

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Effective Managers Earn Trust Quickly By Doing 5 Things Well

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Managers in the workplace have a unique role to play with multiple and continuously evolving responsibilities. They must instill a high-performance mindset while creating a culture whose foundation promotes teamwork and competitiveness for the betterment of a healthier whole. Additionally, managers must touch the business and stay active.

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Accountability - aka, effectively handling the "control" aspect of management - is a surprisingly pervasive problem in business. I recently came across a couple of data points that highlighted this problem, and made me give thought to ways organizations and individual managers could systematically improve it.

First, the data. In a study in Harvard Business Review, 46 percent of high-level managers were rated poorly on the measure, "Holds people accountable - firm when they don't deliver." A second study, this one from Towers Watson, noted that 24% of companies responding to their survey awarded bonuses to employees "who fail to meet even the lowest possible performance ranking." Net-net, the macro-level picture isn't a pretty one, showing a significant number of managers not holding employees sufficiently accountable and a significant number of companies rewarding employees when they don't perform. An unfortunate combination from a management standpoint. Accordingly, for frustrated CEOs and senior managers, here are five suggestions on how to improve accountability in your organization.

Eliminate dysfunctional compensation policies - This is an easy one. Review your organization's incentive comp policies and make sure that they are in fact doing what they're intended to. Nearly one-quarter of companies paying bonuses to failing performers, as in the Towers Watson study? Ludicrous. I managed for over two decades in an incentive comp environment, with comp plan features changing with some frequency - but never once were failing performers bonused. All that does is reward behavior you don't want to reward while potentially demoralizing those doing excellent work.

Make annual objective-setting a serious business function, not a bureaucratic exercise - Too many managers (and I saw a considerable amount of this over my own career) regard annual employee objective-setting as a tedious bureaucratic exercise rather than important business. If the standards by which performance is to be measured aren't well-conceived and clear, how can managers hope to hold people accountable to high levels of productivity? Bringing rigor to the objective-setting process is a solid foundation to build on.

Make candid evaluations a priority - This is the payoff to well-planned employee objectives. If these objectives are meaningful and measurable, then managing becomes a great deal easier - a rational not emotional process. Are the clear and agreed-upon standards being met? Excellent. But if they're not - and this should be easy to determine, given well-designed standards - well, that's a problem that needs to be candidly addressed. Different organizations, of course, have different employee evaluation arrangements. But it doesn't really matter if evaluations are formal or informal... annual, semi-annual or quarterly... so long as employees' objectives are clear. Then management has a readily available yardstick for accountability, a measuring tool to make evaluations a fact-based, not emotion-driven, discussion.

Make the avoidance of "conflict avoidance" a priority - In short, teach managers how to manage. Management involves conflict, and holding people accountable involves conflict. That's why so many managers prefer to avoid it: It's easier. Interpersonal conflict can be nasty and unpleasant. Unfortunately, dealing with it effectively is part of management. When managers are trained to face conflict and work to resolve it constructively, rather than looking the other way and avoiding it, that too becomes a key element of accountability.

Model the behavior yourself - When leaders are visibly holding their own direct reports accountable, this sends a powerful leading-by-example message to the rest of the organization. There are no favorites here. This is how the game is played. If senior management is doing it, then we certainly should too...

Improving accountability in an organization is complex process, not something done by flipping a switch. But it can be accomplished over time by building a management infrastructure that supports it. Sound compensation policies, results-driven standards, and managers with integrity who are trained to confront difficult issues head-on are all part of a culture that values accountability - and therefore productivity. The title of the Harvard Business Review study noted above is One Out of Every Two Managers Is Terrible at Accountability. That's a strong statement and a huge problem. Addressing that problem is a worthy management goal.

* * *
Victor is author of The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World (Prentice Hall Press).

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How To Improve Management Accountability In Your Organization

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Accountability - aka, effectively handling the "control" aspect of management - is a surprisingly pervasive problem in business. I recently came across a couple of data points that highlighted this problem, and made me give thought to ways organizations and individual managers could systematically improve it. First, the data.

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Make a list of the 5 leaders you most admire. They can be from business, social media, politics, technology, the sciences, any field. Now ask yourself why you admire them. The chances are high that your admiration is based on more than their accomplishments, impressive as those may be. I'll bet that everyone on your list reaches you on an emotional level.

This ability to reach people in a way that transcends the intellectual and rational is the mark of a great leader. They all have it. They inspire us. It's a simple as that. And when we're inspired we tap into our best selves and deliver amazing work.

So, can this ability to touch and inspire people be learned? No and yes. The truth is that not everyone can lead, and there is no substitute for natural talent. Honestly, I'm more convinced of this now - I'm in reality about the world of work and employee engagement. But for those who fall somewhat short of being a natural born star (which is pretty much MANY of us), leadership skills can be acquired, honed and perfected. And when this happens your chances of engaging your talent increases from the time they walk into your culture.
Let's Take A Look At Tools That Allow For Talent To Shine:
Emotional intelligence. Great leaders understand empathy, and have the ability to read people's (sometimes unconscious, often unstated) needs and desires. This allows them to speak to these needs and, when at all possible, to fulfill them. When people feel they are understood and empathized something, they respond PERIOD and a bond is formed.

Continuous learning. Show me a know-it-all and I'll show you someone who doesn't have a clue about being human. Curiosity and an insatiable desire to always do better is the mark of a great leader. They are rarely satisfied with the status quo, and welcome new knowledge and fresh (even if challenging) input. It's all about investing in yourself.

Contextualize. Great leaders respond to each challenge with a fresh eye. They know that what worked in one situation may be useless in another. Before you act, make sure you understand the specifics of the situation and tailor your actions accordingly.

Let Go. Too many people think leadership is about control. In fact, great leaders inspire and then get out of the way. They know that talented people don't need or want hovering managers. Leadership is about influence, guidance, and support, not control. Look for ways to do your job and then get out of the way so that people can do theirs.

Honesty. Not a week goes by that we don't hear about a so-called leader losing credibility because he or she was dishonest. Often this is because of pressure to try and "measure up" and it's not coming from a place of being real - often this relates to fear of not being accepted for your true self. We live in age of extraordinary transparency, which is reason enough to always be true to your core - your mission will be revealed, your motivations will show by your behaviors. But it goes way beyond this. It's an issue that sets an example and elevates an organization. If you have a reputation for honesty, it will be a lot easier to deliver bad news and face tough challenges. Are you inspiring people from your heart?

Kindness and respect. Nice leaders (people) don't finish last. They finish first again and again. Ignorance and arrogance are leadership killers. They're also a mark of insecurity. Treating everyone with a basic level respect is an absolute must trait of leadership. And kindness is the gift that keeps on giving back. Of course, there will be people who prove they don't deserve respect and they must be dealt with. But that job will be made much easier, and will have far less impact on your organization, if you have a reputation for kindness, honesty and respect.

Collaboration. People's jobs and careers are integral to their lives. The more your organization can make them a partner, the more they will deliver amazing results. This means, to the greatest extent possible, communicating your organization's strategies, goals and challenges. This builds buy-in, and again is a mark of respect. People won't be blindsided (which is a workplace culture killer) by setbacks if they're in the loop.

Partner with your people. As I said above, people's careers are a big part of their lives. That seems like a no-brainer, but leaders should have it front and center at all times. Find out what your employees' career goals are and then do everything you can to help them reach them. Even if it means they will eventually leave your organization. You will gain happy, productive employees who will work with passion and commitment, and tout your company far and wide. This an opportunity to brand your greatness.

Leadership is both an art and a science. These tools are guidelines, not rigid rules. Everyone has to develop his or her own individual leadership style. Make these tools a part of your arsenal and use them well as you strive to reach people on an emotional level. Be Human. This Matters.
Also on Forbes:

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Make a list of the 5 leaders you most admire. They can be from business, social media, politics, technology, the sciences, any field. Now ask yourself why you admire them. The chances are high that your admiration is based on more than their accomplishments, impressive as those may be.