management blog

Is management ultimately just an elaborate waste of time? This might sound like a career-limiting question for a management writer to ask. But I am forced to think the unthinkable after reading a new book, called Management Rewired, by the US consultant Charles Jacobs (which I have reviewed here).

The author makes some startling assertions. “The managers who produce the best results are the ones who do the least managing,” he says. “The biggest challenge is for managers to stop doing most of what they’re doing now.”

Mr Jacobs bases his approach on the discoveries made by neuroscientists in recent years. He argues that, now we know so much more about how the brain works, we need to move on from the standard management practices which, he says, are ill-suited to human beings, given the way we react to the world around us.

As animals, our emotional responses are more powerful than our rational ones, he says. Logic evolved later. Cool, rational feedback is bound to upset people. Appraisals are basically destructive.

“When it comes to organising large numbers of people, we’ll get better results if, rather than trying to thwart their natural inclinations, we just accept how people behave and make the most of it,” Mr Jacobs writes. Currently, management is “more suited to forms of life lacking the ability to think.”

Blimey. My rational, logical side wants to disagree (we need order, not chaos!). But perhaps that’s just because my inner chimpanzee is feeling threatened. I’ll have a banana, and think about it…