Reading these articles for class on Wednesday serves to highlight the importance of good management when running a successful business. As a Graduate Assistant at the Small Business Development Center, I am constantly exposed to managers, potential managers, and people who hate their managers. Unfortunately, I can not give any specific examples of clients I deal with at the SBDC due to the fact that we sign a confidentiality agreement every semester to protect the people who work with us to start their dream of becoming their own bosses. However, I can talk about things I see without getting into specific instances and names.
Many times, the people that work with us have a desire to do the exact same job they are doing now, but they have a belief that they can do that job better on their own. If they had managers who were open to communication and discussion, perhaps they would be able to change the way things are done at their current places of work, or at least to ensure that they are heard, which is really what many of these people want. Even if their ideas are not taken and used, if their bosses sit down and hear what they have to say, many times they can come to an agreement about how to remedy the problem and placate these employees. There are times where people leave to go out on their own even if they like the management culture in their current workplace, but many times at the SBDC we hear people say "If they just did it this way...".
To wrap up this post, I wanted to include the quote from the end of the Senge article because I really liked it and thought it was applicable to my musings:
The wicked leader is he who the people despise
The good leader is he who the people revere
The great leader is he who the people say, "We did it ourselves." -- Lao Tsu
Tom
I really like your quote at the end of your post and if you do not mind I am going to use it in my weekly update at work under leadership lesion. I have found that the great ideas that have moved my company forward and help us with market share did not from the middle managers or front line supervisors but came from the entree level staff. Some ideas are undoable and if you explain it to them after you listen they will come back later with other ideas. But some of their ideas are so great you stop and wonder how come no one else thought of that. A saying I always tell my supervisors is all the blame for your team’s failure is yours, and all the credit for your team’s success is your teams.
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