Mobility of Management

A Deadly Disease of Mediocrity

4. Mobility of management. A company whose top management are committed to quality and productivity, with roots, does not suffer from uncertainty and bewilderment. But how can anyone be committed to any policy when his tenure is only a few years, in and out?

J. Noguchi, managing director of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, made the remark in conversation with a client of mine that “America can not make it because of the mobility of American management.”

The job of management is inseparable from the welfare of the company. Mobility from one company to another creates prima donnas for quick results. Mobility annihilates teamwork, so vital for continued existence. A new manager comes in. Everyone wonders what will happen. Unrest becomes rampant when the board of directors go outside the company to bring someone in for a rescue operation. Everyone takes to his life preserver.

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis (MIT Press) (pp. 120-121).

In Japan, I met a man who worked for a meat packing company. For seven years he delivered meat. At 4:00 each morning he delivered to stores, hotels, and restaurants. He knew the disappointment of a customer who could not get the cut of meat he wanted. He knew the problems when a truck broke down. He understood the business… After seven years, he was ready for management. Managers in Japan do not jump from company to company or from industry to industry. They have no mobility of management.

Latzko, William J., Saunders, David M. Four Days with Dr. Deming (p. 126). Addison Wesley.

THE AIM of today’s post is to revisit the fourth of seven Deadly Diseases of Management that Dr. Deming brought to the world’s attention in his book, Out of the Crisis which I first examined in my October 8th newsletter.

I was inspired to take this second, closer look after a recent conversation with a colleague about a manager we both knew and worked with assisting/coaching who left their role at a large company for a similar one in another, demonstrating the well-known phenomena of the “lateral promotion”, and exemplary of the deadly disease of Mobility of Management, which is as prevalent today as it was in the time Dr. Deming was first warning top-management of its destructive effects.

The Lateral Zig-Zag Promotion Problem

We’re all familiar with the scenario: A manager reaches a certain ceiling above which they can no longer rise due to politics or some other real or imagined limitation or frustration in their current company, and are faced with a decision to either languish in-place or take a role in another company with the hopes that there’s a clearer path to promotion there. It’s been about three years, and time’s a-wastin’, so they move to another company via direct recruitment or networking - there may even be a bonus for employees who recruit successful management candidates into the company.

Once at the new company, the manager may find they are in the same predicament after a few years of making waves, and decides that now is the time to head back to the original company at an elevated role and pay scale, armed with new skills and knowledge that the original company didn’t have to pay to acquire.

From beginning to end, the process can take anywhere from one to several years, and while the manager may feel some satisfaction in achieving their goal, both they and the involved companies have suffered losses.

Unknown and Unknowable Losses

Dr. Deming teaches us that the customer is a rapid learner and expects what we and our competitors have led them to expect. I posit that managers are equally adept learners who have come to prize mobility over constancy of purpose, a means for enacting win/lose competition to get ahead. Total losses to the business due to this mode of management are of course unknown and unknowable, but assuredly are almost never considered as a contributing cause for troubles in achieving the aims of the business. The departing manager will leave projects and staff in limbo and set off a series of battlefield promotions to fill the gaps they leave behind. Teamwork and morale consequently take a hit as management switches to a problem-solving/fire-fighting mode.

However, the losses don’t stop here: the company who takes on the departing manager is also going to incur unknown and unknowable losses as he/she is quickly trained and guided in their role without the benefit of deep understanding of the new company’s culture, products, services, and customers that comes from years of experience. They will bring with them ideas and techniques fostered in their last company which won’t fit in their new context, which they may have been expressly hired to do, and cause more problems as a result. And of course, if they decide to once again job hop back to their original firm, they will incur the same losses here as they did there.

For the employees who work under this system of management ambition and caprice, the consequences are directly telegraphed to them, as well. An old management consulting adage advises that if you want to quickly assess the culture of a company, observe who gets hired, who gets fired, and who gets promoted. This lesson isn’t lost on direct reports who develop their own malaise and begin to look to escape their predicament, which in combination with the movements of management begins to corrode and drag on the performance of the whole organization. In Out of the Crisis, Dr. Deming observed:

Mobility of labor in America is another problem, almost equal to the mobility of management. A strong contributing factor is dissatisfaction with the job, inability to take pride in the work. People stay home or look around for another job when they can not take pride in their work. Absenteeism and mobility are largely creations of poor supervision and poor management.

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis (MIT Press) (p. 121). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Rx: Constancy of Purpose, Joy in Work

The game of job hopping is a feature of the prevailing style of management - a consequence of Management by Objective and Management by Results, and a loss of Constancy of Purpose for the organization and Joy in Work for the individual.

For Dr. Deming, his sense was that along with these losses comes the host of dysfunctions that plagues the organization. Dr. Henry Neave notes Deming as observing:

What do you have without pride of workmanship? Just a job, to get some money. There’s not much joy in that…

People are unable to contribute what they’d like to contribute to their jobs; they have to concentrate on getting a good rating.

Joy in work and innovation become secondary to a good rating. People find out what’s important for merit and do it. Can you blame them?

Stay in line; don’t miss a raise. The aim becomes to get a good rating, to please the boss.

Can anyone take pride and joy in his work in that situation?

Neave, Dr. Henry. The Deming Dimension (pp. 377, 378-379). SPC Press.

Correction, Deming argues, comes from management rediscovering their aim and purpose with help from outside knowledge, which doesn’t necessitate expensive consultants, just intellectual curiosity and a desire to learn and try new approaches. Primary among them? Elimination of practices that foster win/lose competition. The aim of good management isn’t to get a promotion or raise, it’s to help improve the organization for the benefit of everyone.

A question remains, however: For all the energy expended by everyone involved in a lateral zig-zag promotion, why was none of it dedicated to helping understand the motivations of the frustrated manager if the end results were the same? While the candidate may feel they have achieved their goal, we can ask “At what cost?”. Have things manifestly changed to improve conditions to eliminate further zig-zagging or not?

Reflection Questions

Consider the excerpts of Dr. Deming’s observations and thinking at the top of this post in the context of your own experiences. Do they still hold? How many leaders or managers do you know who have spent more than seven years with a company prior to entering management? Are they still with their firms? Why? What has been the consequence?

Consider the “lateral zig-zag promotion problem”: Have you observed this phenomena in your company or in another? What were the short and long term consequences to the organization? Have you personally benefited from this scheme What was the long-term consequence? Did you gain purpose and pride/joy in work for the bargain? Why?

If you have been a manager for some time, did you progress through promotion? What enabled that to happen? What have you observed about those who job-hop to get ahead? Have you done so in your career? What motivated this behaviour?

How many people in your organization have been with the company for more than a decade? Why do you think that is? What would it take to restore joy in work for managers and staff? Who would make the change? How? By what method?