(A
Management Paradigm for the 21st Century)
This
article explores the link between “nurturing and monitoring pivotal
relationships” as the key to developing the inner strength of
organizations—the route to increased productivity, organizational
effectiveness and competitive strength.
Organizations
who are not “nurturing and monitoring pivotal relationships” are likely to
have workforces operating at less than 50% of their capability, stress levels
are likely to be triple what they should be, three-quarters of their workforce
are likely to be “disengaged” from their work, and actively distrust
management, and employee perceptions of job security is 33% lower than it
should be. At least this is what
a number of recent studies of the Canadian workforce strongly suggest.
While
these issues may present organization-wide, the genesis of these problems
reside at the individual supervisor-employee or “pivotal relationship”
level. Pivotal relationships are the structures on which the inner strength of
an organization depends. The process by which these relationships are managed
involves both nurturing and monitoring. The inability of organizations to
manage effectively these internal relationships is the root cause of more
organizational inefficiency than any other business management shortcoming.
What
are Pivotal Relationships?
Pivotal
relationships include the relationship between each employee and his/her
supervisor/manager (leader) as well as the peer relationships of each leader
throughout an organization. S.
Kossen in A Practical Guide to First Line Management,” (Harper and
Row, 1981) wrote, “Supervisors are, so to speak, the ligaments, the tendons
and the sinews of an organization. They
provide the articulation. Without
them, no joint can move.” In
other words, they are pivotal.
The
bulk of an organization’s potential productivity improvement depends upon
the ability of leaders to get cooperative effort from those they lead.
With this understanding it’s easy to appreciate the value of these
relationships. They are
constitute the core of an organization’s inner strength yet managing pivotal
relationships can be an organization’s most significant weakness.
Pivotal
relationships exist in all organizations, throughout all sectors, and are
common to all organization structures, including matrix organizations. Most
employers have avoided dealing directly with pivotal relationship management
in part in the hope that individual leaders in their organizations will be
equal to the challenge, and in part due to the absence of tools and technology
to facilitate this task.
It’s
easy to see why organizations have not tackled this issue head on. An
organization of 300 employees can have more than 650 pivotal relationships.
With
the introduction of new methodologies, supported by specialized computer-based
technology, these relationships can actually be managed simply, efficiently
and accurately.
Nurturing
Contemporary
management practice has long recognized the importance of “nurturing”
employees. However for the most
part, nurturing activities have focused on the employee
to the exclusion of the relationship. This nurturing can best be accomplished through the use of
interventions that encourage sharing responsibility and improving
communication and understanding between employee and supervisor.
The
ingredients of a healthy, vibrant working relationship are similar to those
found in any positive relationship, and include co-operation,
compassion, mutual trust, respect, support, and friendship.
In the absence of these components, employees act as any other party to
a dysfunctional relationship—they leave it.
Pivotal
Relationships and Competitiveness
The
ability of an organization to manage effectively its pivotal relationships is
fundamental to the organization’s competitive strength. Improving pivotal
relationships improves core organizational strengths including focus and
flexibility, which can have a far greater impact on organizational
productivity than any other single business component, including technological
change.
When
an organization achieves quality pivotal relationships throughout, it can
enjoy a competitive edge based upon a culture of teamwork, cooperative effort
and trust. Employees seek out greater responsibility for impacting business
outcomes, reach consensus more quickly, meet commitments, tend to be more
innovative and deliver higher quality products and services. Moreover, pivotal
relationships are the underpinnings of employee loyalty and commitment.
In
North America, for the past decade or more, mergers and acquisitions have
become a key driver of business growth. Yet
the majority of these mergers and acquisitions have failed to capitalize on
expected synergies and efficiencies and have been disappointments for both
shareholders and managers.
A
key failure of mergers and acquisitions relates to the underestimation of
workforce reaction to the uncertainty such moves generate, the impact of the
inevitable layoffs as the company workforce is “rationalized” and the
failure of reintegration plans to deal with perceptions of winners and losers
in the process. For the most part, management focus on “the numbers”, to
the exclusion of human factors such as pivotal relationships, has resulted in
a tendency for these organizations to lose, rather than gain shareholder
value.
In
an economic downturn, organizations that have developed and maintained strong,
supportive, pivotal relationships are in a better position to weather
necessary workforce cutbacks. Where
organizational leaders have built strong relationships with their direct
reports, they are able to work through the necessary restructuring without
significant loss of loyalty and commitment. According to David Stum of The Aon
Loyalty Institute, Ann Arbor Michigan, “the American worker knows quite well
that change is never-ending. How
it’s handled is what can lead a worker to be secure or insecure.”
When it is not handled well, the most talented employees are often the
first to “jump ship.”
Canada
has a high percentage of unionized workplaces and at the same time ranks at
the bottom of the G7 in terms of productivity.
There seems to be a tendency for employers of unionized workforces to
abandon their obligation to assume responsibility for the development and
maintenance of positive and effective supervisor/subordinate relationships in
the face of organized labor’s interests. There is a marked tendency for
management reactions to be adversarial and abandon the employee relations
field to shop stewards and employee relations specialists.
At the same time, organizational maximum performance depends more on
the health of the pivotal relationship between leader and worker, than on the
employer/union relationship.
A
serious problem that can undermine the potential success of an organization is
the impact of weak leaders who may unwittingly support the development of the
“we/they” adversarial relationship. The activities of a few incompetent
leaders can drive a wedge between good leaders and their direct reports.
Regular monitoring of pivotal relationships offers early identification
of problem leaders and permits intervention before matters reach crisis
proportion.
Pivotal
Relationships and Trust
A
key component that determines success or failure in any relationship is trust.
Current research has suggested that in Canadian enterprises, levels of
employee trust in management are very low.
A recent study (1999) conducted by Goldfarb Consultants on behalf of
the Canadian Federation of Independent Business indicate that only 25 - 30% of
employees (businesses larger than 50 employees) trust management in private
sector organizations with more than 50 employees.
Trust levels are even lower in public sector workplaces.
Similar findings were disclosed in a Watson Wyatt Worldwide study a few
years earlier.
Management,
particularly North American management, has largely ignored the role of trust
in human relationships since first identified by the sociologist Emile
Durkheim in 1893. Durkheim’s thesis was that in the absence of mutual
trust, the rational individual will never live up to his or her agreements
and will never trust others to live up to theirs.
The presence or absence of mutual trust in the workplace determines
employee productive effort. Supervisors
are the key to trust building, and similarly are most often responsible when
trust is broken.
Work/Life
Balance
Employees spend approximately half of their
waking hours either at work or in transit to and from work.
The other half is spent with their friends or family. With such a
ratio, a change (either negative or positive) in one sphere can significantly
impact the other. Contemporary
management describes this relationship as “work/life balance.”
A decade of near constant social change in North America has left many
employees with a perceived work/life imbalance.
A study entitled, “Supportive Managers:
What are They? Why do They Matter?” by Linda Duxbury, Ph.D., (School of
Business, Carleton University) and Christopher Higgins, Ph.D. (Richard Ivey
School of Business, University of Western Ontario) suggests the answer to
work/life balance lies in the supervisor/employee relationship.
The study is considered the largest of its
kind ever undertaken in Canada and spanned the ten years between 1986 and
1996. Over this period, the
authors:
·
Surveyed almost 10,000 public
servants and 40,000 private sector employees, living in 408 Canadian
population centers, on issues relating to balancing work and family;
·
Interviewed over 3,000
employees on coping with conflicting work and family demands and supportive
work environments;
·
Followed the experiences of
more than 700 couples to ascertain how changing conditions at work, in the
community, and at home affect the ability to balance work, family and
life.”
Their findings included the following:
Employees
who perceived their supervisors as “supportive”, reported significantly
higher levels of trust, perceptions of job security and job satisfaction.
At the same time, these employees reported lower levels of both job
related stress and general (not related to the workplace) stress.
Other
studies have suggested that the factors identified by Duxbury and Higgins
linked to a supportive workplace are associated with significant monetary
rewards for organizations. Consulting
giant Watson Wyatt Worldwide in their research related to their Human Capital
Index have associated trusting employees and related factors with up to a 42%
increase in shareholder value.
Employee
stress is a key factor in employee absenteeism, which is rapidly assuming
runaway proportions in the workplace. The
depression rate among Canadian workers is now topping 10%, with an estimated
annual cost of $16 billion dollars in lost productivity, treatment and
associated social costs according to research undertaken by the Business &
Economic Roundtable for Addiction & Mental Health.
Again,
the majority of efforts to deal with these challenges have focused on the
employee, not the relationship. If a key part of a supervisor’s job is to
manage relationships, they must have the proper tools to perform the task.
Simple, cost effective tools are required to promote the nurturing
environment and monitor the behaviors of employees.
In
the absence of these tools, organizations are forced to ignore nurturing and
monitoring pivotal relationship entirely.
Many well-intentioned initiatives whose objective is the creation of
employee commitment, including employee stock options, profit sharing, and
payroll share purchase plans have been found wanting.
Others such as employee attitude surveys most often elevate both
employee expectations and employee frustration with management when
expectations aren’t met.
The
ability to nurture and monitor pivotal relationships, is a breakthrough
technology. Professional managers and consultants have been constantly
frustrated by the absence of a methodology for sustaining their effects of
their initiatives—creating a culture where their recommendations can take
root and flourish for their employers and clients.
Positive pivotal relationships are at the core of this culture and
offer the framework necessary for continuous improvement.
