Executive summary

Management Paradigm

What if your company or business unit was zipping along in a flow state never before experienced? What if your employees were totally engaged? Improvements in engagement of 50% or more. What if both internal and external customers were commenting on how effectively your organization responds to their needs and requests? What if you had a mindset shift enabling you to see new opportunities? What if your self-confidence, managerial skill and experience at work was transformed spilling over to improved health and connectivity with others both inside the company and in your life in general? What if positivity became your modus-operandi?

Perhaps this sounds like pie in the sky. But it is not. Would you be willing to participate in a 12-month transformational experience guarantying significant sustainable growth for not only your company but you and your team members?

Management Paradigm, one of Appleton Greene’s newest program offerings, does just that. In Management Paradigm a multi-year program you will be introduced to managerial processes, self-management processes, scientific principles, increased EQ and selfcare skills and tools that support total transformation.

Management Paradigm will provide you with a new framework from which to view organization effectiveness and identify the supportive processes you can institute which provide insight into how work gets done. Introducing management processes which enable greater facilitation of work getting done and manage employees with deep connectivity, while valuing their efforts. Management Paradigm is a two-pronged system introducing managerial processes the company can embrace while at the same time providing opportunities for individual participants to learn and grow. The knowledge in Management Paradigm is sustainable as well as transportable. In the end, everyone is a winner. The company realizing increased employee engagement, and release of creativity and innovation among its workforce. Connected, respected and engaged workers transform a company. Concurrently, participants will be demonstrating new managerial processes and skills enabling them to experience greater satisfaction at work. A stronger sense of self. When your human capital is fully engaged success is close at hand.

The devaluation of effective accountable managerial leadership has not happened overnight. Out of academia during the 1980’s we witnessed a plethora of books touting leadership emerging. For those who were yet to be born, this was the time when the Viet Nam War was coming to an end. Many Americans were angry at what had transpired. Soldiers returning home were vilified and emphasis was on the military industrial complex’s failures. It’s command and control management (aka ways of getting work accomplished) was devalued. At the same time a shift took place in corporate America emphasizing the importance of shareholder value. Corporations’ purpose was to provide profits for their shareholders. This led to the requirement of quarterly earnings reports. Fear of stock price declines resulted in an emphasis on meeting short term market analyst analysis. This confluence of sociological phenomena took root and like a tree takes years to grow into fullness the damage to the business community has taken years to flourish. Leadership was in, and management out. Shareholder value took top priority. Companies were required to report earnings quarterly, CEO salaries grew exponentially, and long-range planning fell by the wayside. Management training programs were abolished. Employees were suddenly informed they had to be leaders.

Corporations’ value is not only for shareholders. It is how we provide for our citizenry to create security for their families. Corporations are anchors for communities. We are forty years into the decline, and we are now seeing and experiencing levels of worker disengagement never seen before. The middle class is rapidly disappearing before our eyes, poverty and homelessness is on the rise. Work has seen dramatic changes over the last three to four decades. Emphasis shifted from developing and engaging the workforce to profitability and shareholder returns. Salaries of CEOs, Presidents and other key executives skyrocketed. In some cases, 300+% that of the average workers. Salary incentivization has also grown for the mid and top tier of the employment ranks. While average wage-earners salaries remained stagnant. Although the workforce is likely now to be 51% female women still earn significantly less per dollar than men do.

Many in managerial leadership roles believe the only way to get people to work harder, aka really do their jobs, is to incentivize them. It’s the old carrot and the stick philosophy. What no one actually discusses is what beliefs and values lie beneath these decisions. What is the non-expressed value underlying these decisions? What message are incentives sending to workers? “I/we can’t trust you to give your full attention to the tasks assigned to you”. Another way of putting this is “I can’t trust you to apply your full effectiveness to the tasks assigned to you in the role you are in.” The pandemic has demonstrated that the belief people really don’t want to work, and the demonization of workers as being out only for themselves doesn’t hold up. First responders, front line and essential workers have continued to go to work providing necessary medical care, safety and stocking grocery shelves regardless of the potential of catching the virus themselves and impact on their own families.

Additionally, a number of factors have come into play recently, affecting the worldwide corporate landscape. Industry disruptions, economic uncertainty, and an attempt to satisfy stockholders’ thirst for profitability, particularly in the US, many companies are scrambling to stay afloat. Many have lost sight of the importance of accountable management. In recent decades quarterly earnings have taken priority, sometimes by whatever means possible, while workforce issues took a back seat. Many people have lost their jobs. Some of those have started their dream business. Others however have focused on get rich quick schemes, which more often than not have failed. Still others have been enticed by scams and get rich quick schemes which have developed into them preying on others for their own financial benefit. The number of scams in the US has been on a steady increase. Not everyone can be a business owner or independent contractor. Most of the world’s population just wants to be told what to do at work, do it effectively and go home and enjoy family and or hobbies.

Concurrent with an emphasis on shareholder earnings, is the focus on leadership attributes. Books by academics have flooded the marketplace each with their own “unique” take on leadership, inadvertently, devaluing good management in some cases. Companies’ strive for success whether measured by profitability, employee engagement or both. Despite dramatic increases in technological innovation and industry disruptions the human factor is still the key differentiator to sustained organization effectiveness. Foundational underpinnings form the bedrock of both corporate and personal success. For work to get done effectively and efficiently in organizations, accountable managerial leadership is necessary. Unfortunately, the world has shifted to appreciate more superficial knowing. Management Paradigm provides a process by which the organization entity and its employees will learn, advise and teach key organization players a process which emphasizes the necessity of excellence in both organization and self- management.

The recent global pandemic has taken its toll on companies throughout the world. It has uncovered bloat in organization hierarchies, while demonstrating people can work effectively remotely. Human beings are social animals. We thrive on relationships, are goal directed and desire to be recognized, appreciated and respected. Most want to do a good job and experience a sense of accomplishment at work. When people’s efforts are acknowledged, and their contribution validated engagement occurs. We don’t know how working from home, often isolated from actual in person connections, will affect worker mental health and overall effectiveness on the job. Time will tell. Management Paradigm actually provides a process by which workers can not only be accountable for their effectiveness in their role but also empowers them to be proactive about their work, the impact their self-awareness can have on their work experience and how to care for themselves in stressful environments.

Without worker engagement companies are unable to realize true success. Management Paradigm is infused with a passion and appreciation for the experience of employees at work. Yet we must compare this with global trends like aging populations throughout most of the world. Foreign Affairs Magazine Nov/Dec 2020 edition has an interesting article by Michael Beckley in which he highlighted a few significant trends. In 2018 there were more people over 64 than under 6 years of age. That being said, the US, Australia and Canada will have growing populations of adults 20-49 until 2070. How might this phenomenon play out in these countries. Will there be enough jobs for people in these countries? Or will it encourage workers from these countries to travel abroad where their skills and expertise are needed? The rise of machine learning is another trend. These new machines combine the number crunching of computers with the brute strength of industrial machinery fortifying AI and human dexterity. The result: 50% of today’s jobs are likely to be automated by the 2030’s. That being said, new jobs will emerge. Presently there is a shortage of skilled labor. The question remains, Will today’s workforce have the initiative to learn new skills? How do you educate an older workforce which may not be digitally proficient in the first place?

Years ago, people advocated retiring as early as possible. An aspect of the American dream. More recently the 4-hour work week. There is only so much golf or tennis you can play. Much of the workforce lost significant wealth especially in retirement accounts during the recession and now again with the Pandemic. How will they cope? How will they refill their coffers? How will those who can retire, or perhaps more importantly those that cannot replace their work, use their free time? How will they live?

Corporations are the lifeblood of communities throughout the world. Dr Elliott Jaques’ whose Requisite Organization (RO) principles inform the Management Paradigm process, used to say and I paraphrase, the role of corporations is to support the development of thriving economically viable communities. In one of his earliest writings, he discusses that a company set up in a requisite fashion enables people to relate to one another with confidence while rooting out suspicion and trust. A July 2020 article in Workplace discusses the most significant drop in worker engagement since Gallup started tracking worker engagement in 2000. Of the 68 % identifying as not engaged, 14% identify as “actively disengaged” meaning they actively undermine efforts to improve corporate culture and communication. As many institutions have begun to crumble, think about the cause and effect, connection between the impact of a primary focus on quarterly shareholder earnings on the steadily increasing rise of worker disengagement. Jim Hartner, author of the Workplace article states: “Improving employee engagement starts with clarity among leaders and managers.” The decades-long emphasis on leadership has been a tsunami traveling through the world’s corporations. Leadership has nothing to do with the role you are in. Rather, it’s about characteristics and behaviors individuals have. Leadership requires followers. There is nothing said about work being done, in leadership.

Management on the other hand, is an authorized role in companies the purpose of which is to ensure that the service or product is delivered or made to the company’s standards of excellence. Until we recognize that management is what enables the work of the business to get done, hard-working people will be chasing their tail never realizing their goal. Frustrations will continue to rise, and distrust continue to be viral. Remember workers and people in general are social animals. We need to learn how to communicate effectively with one another. Corporations despite their financial successes have not served their workforces. The absence of managerial processes and development opportunities has resulted in workers being viewed as robots. Interchangeable. A colleague recently told a story worth repeating here to make the point. “When complaining to a clerk early AM in a grocery chain, the customer asked to see the manager on duty. She was told there was no manager available and should come back later in the day to make her complaint. Irate she did go back later and spoke to the manager. She was advised “We don’t pay them to think we pay them to ring up numbers”. Management Paradigm designer Bova refers to this as “the dumbing down of the workforce’. It’s time to appreciate the unique contributions each of us can make.

Management Paradigm is a comprehensive system illustrating the importance of management and clarity of communications. It provides participants with knowledge, processes, and skills that are transferable. Participants will recognize the portability and transferability of what they’ve learned as a key to their own self confidence and personal empowerment. They can take their knowledge of accountable managerial processes and organization dynamics coupled with their own appreciation of their natural tendencies and heightened self- awareness with them, ensuring they can proactively manage their work life experience wherever they are.

Management Paradigm is a unique training program which focuses on both the company and their employees. Providing foundational principles and processes for each becoming and achieving their best. During each session there will be input on management and organization dynamics and processes to initiate organization learning. Concurrently, attendees will learn skills to heighten their own self-awareness and self-care heightening their overall effectiveness. Thirdly there will be attempts to build community. The knowledge and skills are portable.

Management Paradigm is a unique process synthesizing knowledge from a variety of systems into a comprehensive program which allows individual workers to be their best while concurrently introducing management principles and processes upon which to build a profitable organization built upon a foundation of trust and integrity. Companies providing employees with empowering foundational processes and skills succeed to new heights. At the same time, addressing the age-old worker question “What’s in it for me? Concurrently, these same companies can renovate their infrastructures by eliminating bloated hierarchies, using scientifically proven methods to design role relationships that by their very nature eliminate corporate politics.

Albert Einstein once said, “the mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size”. Think of Management Paradigm as an adventure in transforming how you think, see, feel and even smell the world of work and in particular your company. It’s a quest for you to be your best and to assist your company and in particular the unit you manage to excel in new and different ways. The world needs people at every level of organization life working in an engaged or flow-state fashion. Only then will we realize we are one. Management Paradigm is the first step in the process.