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Bad Managers Hide in Plain Sight
The last twenty years have been a time of radical transformation in how we all work. Advances in technology have led to greater flexibility, convenience, and comfort for legions of people now able to work remotely. Improvements in diversity, equity, and inclusion have expanded the talent pool for employers and created opportunities for employees. Whole industries and categories of work have emerged, while others have faded away, or disappeared suddenly. Organizations are in a state of constant flux. Job security is barely a memory. Traditional attitudes about authority have evaporated. There are upsides to this era of profound change, but not for those charged with managing and supervising employees.
Twenty years ago, in 2004, my firm RainmakerThinking, Inc. released our landmark study titled, “The Undermanagement Epidemic,” in which we reported that nine out of ten managers were failing to practice the basics of management with their direct reports regularly and consistently, at least once a week. We found widespread undermanagement in organizations of all shapes and sizes in nearly every industry. And we determined that the measurable costs of undermanagement were monumental.
Our study back in 2004 demonstrated clearly that, while the dreaded “micromanagement” was a household word, it was extremely rare, and its measurable costs minimal. We found that the term “micromanagement” was usually invoked by managers as an excuse for hands-off management (“I wouldn’t want to be a micromanager”) or as a shield wielded by employees who wanted to evade accountability (“don’t micromanage me”). Most important, we showed that the practices that sometimes looked like “micromanagement” were usually forms of “undermanagement” in disguise, wrongly calibrated direction and feedback for that person with that task at that time, deriving from a failure to practice the basics.
That first Undermanagement study hit a nerve. There was extensive coverage in business and mainstream media, I spoke about the study at dozens of conferences, and “undermanagement” entered the general nomenclature of management and took its place as the mountainous antipode of the molehill that is “micromanagement.”
In the twenty years since 2004, our research has continued and intensified. Our last update on the undermanagement epidemic was published in 2019, roughly six months prior to the pandemic lockdown. Since that 2019 publication, we have conducted management practices assessments and/or back-to-fundamentals management seminars in 129 different organizations in a wide range of industries, including more than tens of thousands of Individual participants. Altogether, since 1993, more than half a million individuals from more than four hundred organizations have participated in our management practices assessment surveys, interviews, and focus groups, as well as our back-to-fundamentals management seminars. All participants in our research and our clients are guaranteed strict confidentiality and anonymity.
While these twenty years have been an era of profound change, in and out of the workplace, the undermanagement epidemic stubbornly persists in most organizations, usually hiding in plain sight. The costs of undermanagement are monumental. But there are proven solutions for organizations and managers who are dedicated to pursuing those solutions.
Since our first undermanagement study, we have defined undermanagement as the condition in which a manager fails to deliver regularly and consistently to any employee directly subject to their authority any of the five basics of management:
- Clear statements of performance requirements and standard operating procedures related to recurring tasks and responsibilities.
- Clear statements of defined parameters, measurable goals, and concrete deadlines for all work assignments for which the direct report will be held accountable.
- Accurate monitoring, evaluation, and documentation of work performance.
- Clear statements of specific feedback on work performance with guidance for improvement.
- Rewards and detriments distributed fairly.
As we did twenty years ago in our landmark study, still today we find that undermanagement is deep and widespread among managers at all levels, throughout organizations of all sizes, in every industry. The numbers, overall, have remained remarkably consistent over the last twenty years:
What makes undermanagement even more pernicious is that it hides in plain sight. Most managers are unaware of their deficiencies, overestimating their management acumen, practices, and efficacy. Managers almost always rate themselves substantially higher than they are rated by their direct reports and their immediate managers. At the same time, very few organizations hold managers accountable for regularly delivering the management basics, and most don’t even set standards for, or regularly assess or audit, their managers’ management acumen, practices or efficacy.
In cases we have studied in which organizations have systematically committed to the management basics, the difference is profound. When organizations commit to assessing management skills and practices, providing management training for all those with supervisory authority, and holding managers accountable for delivering the management basics, these organizations develop leadership/management cultures by design, with high levels of shared beliefs, language, practices, skills and habits.
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