I like to get inspiration from books, which is why I have absorbed quite a few books on organizational management, leadership and personal development in general. Since each generation has to discover old truths in its own language, many of these publications discuss the same concepts by giving them new, up-to-date and original names. Occasionally, however, a book will fall into my hands that I will sit on for a longer period of time and show a whole new way of thinking. Such was the case with Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall’s “Nine Lies About Work,” which challenges popular beliefs and “revealed truths” repeated in most companies around the world.
In nearly 20 years of working in organizations in various industries, I have encountered many of these myths. Ba, I’ll admit that I even believed in them and helped implement processes that were based on them (forgive me for all of you using 9 pols at my urging to assess the “potential” of employees).
About some of these “truths “I had doubts even then, and others became obsolete for me gradually as the work environment changed. I have used the content from this book many times in training sessions, but today I will directly demonstrate how the beliefs the authors write about can be dangerous to our workplaces. I will also share tips on how to counteract certain patterns and build teams, organizational culture and the entire company based on solid foundations and effective management methods.
Lie 1: It matters to people what kind of company they work for.
But what do you mean? Why would that be a lie? After all, it’s clear that the company matters! That was my first reaction… The above truth is conjugated by all cases in HR departments (and not only). However, if you lean into this question, even if at the beginning you care about something that can be generally described as a company, once you join it, what matters is the team you work in.
It is through teamwork that we know what to focus on and what to do. It is the team that becomes the employee’s home. It is to it that we make a unique contribution, achieving our goals every day. A team is the best place to use individual talents and realize what could not be achieved alone. It is also a place that provides an opportunity to express one’s individuality. Organizational culture (another favorite of HR departments) is, according to the authors, too abstract a concept to define how we should behave on a daily basis.
What is the alternative? The authors propose a thesis with which I absolutely agree: People care about the team they work in.
Attention! This is great information for leaders! While they don’t always have a say in company policy, they can always build a strong team, set clear expectations, assign roles according to people’s strengths, appreciate and help people advance in their careers. This is influenced by.
It won’t come as a surprise to you if I tell you now that at Kingmakers we have seen for many years a growing interest among leaders in acquiring skills focused on developing their teams. By training them in team coaching, they manage to improve team relationships in a relatively short period of time, leading to increased efficiency and, importantly, talent retention in the company.
Lie 2: The best plan leads to success.
I assume that each of us has met a manager on our way who firmly believed that a good and detailed plan is a guarantee of success. This “lie” has already been undermined by the number, speed and complexity of the changes that are taking place. I observe situations in which those who create plans are far “behind the line” – without access to real situations and feedback from the market. This could be a sign of a serious problem in the organization: poor contact between managers and business reality, or a belief that they are the ones who interpret situations best.
At work, we operate most effectively in an environment that we understand and directly influence. This allows us to react and adjust our actions with the real world based on our own judgments. When the need to follow a leader’s detailed plan is imposed on us, it causes resentment and a decrease in motivation to act. Note: Neither I nor the authors of the book deny the need for a space to reflect on the information we have and try to organize it into a plan. The plans do not provide information on what needs to be done to improve the situation. Therefore, rather than slavishly executing plans, Buckingham and Goodall propose coordinating the team’s efforts in real time, making the most of the detailed “intelligence” information available to team members.
An alternative approach is: the best EXPERIENCE leads to victory.
From there, we always encourage leaders to give employees as much information as they can, to watch them closely to know which information is useful to them, and finally to believe that their people will understand the data themselves and make sense of it. For leaders to make this a reality, they should ask employees two simple questions each week: What are your priorities this week? And: How can I help you? This makes it possible to talk about what is important to the employee during the week, what obstacles are hindering his priorities and what solutions can be applied while doing real work.
Lie 3: The best companies cascade targets.
Goals at work are ubiquitous. It is rare to find a company that does not set goals for employees and then hold them accountable. In coaching and mentoring, we also urge people to set clear and measurable goals. Objectives function in organizations (or at least we believe they do) as a driver, a monitoring instrument and an evaluation tool. That’s why companies are willing to spend so much time, energy and money handling them. They believe that without targets, employees’ efforts will not be properly coordinated, and thus will be wasted. The cascading of goals is to ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction.
However, both my practice and the authors’ experience show that cascading goals serve more to record work than to increase organizational efficiency. Once the goals are set, managers rarely return to them and do not analyze them on an ongoing basis. The least pleasant part of managing by goals is the final self-assessment of their achievement, which the book’s authors call “an act of careful self-promotion and building one’s political position by figuring out what part of the truth to reveal honestly and what part to keep quietly to oneself.”
Goals are a world of theory and abstraction. Realistic is the work – the things that need to be done. It is the work that is concrete.
Work gives you a sense of agency, while goals make you feel like a mere cog in the machine. Work, as opposed to goals, gives the feeling that someone trusts us. Goals are only useful if they help manifest the values we hold and reflect the impact we want to have on those around us. The only good goals are those that we voluntarily set for ourselves and strive to achieve.
This approach leads to the third truth, which is that the best companies cascade SENS. They do this by externalizing values, i.e. setting a good example, rather than just saying what is important through rituals and stories.
We try to defuse these three lies by offering individual coaching or managerial education. We show how to conduct development talks with employees, create effective teams, show meaning and organize work based on intrinsic motivation. I am grateful for the trust that our clients and alumni have placed in us to work on these competencies. This gives me hope that modern organizations powered by such people will be based on solid management foundations and great leaders.
