We Have Always Done It That Way

For the past eight years I have had an “intesting” time observing my husband’s workplace – a news organization. The organization has been a part of the Gallup organization’s Q12 study (see www.marcusbuckingham.com) and has undergone 3 signficant reorganizations in eight years. Let’s just say that the organization’s leadership is wrought with individuals who are weak managers, but the reorgs continue.

So what can we learn from this brief profile? A few key lessons.

(1) Just because you are part of, volunteer for, or pay for a management analysis of your organization does not mean that you have good managers.

(2) If you are going to subject your employees to an organizational analysis, you’d better be ready to make changes because these studies often uncover the good, bad, and ugly.

(3) If you are leading an organization through an analysis and the reporting mechanisms uncover issues to your staff, and you choose not to make significant changes in weak areas, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to your employees.

(4) Not all people make good managers. Just because someone has been around a while in a functional area and done well there does not mean that they will make a good manager.

(5) Reorganizations do not fix disfunction. If you have bad managers, they are not going to get better by being moved to other divisions. They are just going to make more employees unhappy.

(6) Find valuable work for those with tenure but do not assume they want to be/have the ability to be a good manager.

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