Words&Dirt

Less than a year and a half ago, I had absolutely no business experience. Today, I am part of the management team for a small but steadily growing business in the town where I grew up and hope to live for the rest of my life. This has been the most unexpected and dynamic development of my young adulthood––one I attribute more to favorable timing and luck than anything else. Although I work hard and possess some helpful traits (both innate and learned), I don’t kid myself: a lot of other people could be doing my job just as well as I do, and plenty could do it better than I can. This realization generates a lot of gratitude; even on the toughest days, I strive to remember how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to help shape a new business in my community.

Gratitude for my newfound vocation motivates me to learn more about the nature and history of business management. While my daily duties do not require me to manage anyone directly, I’m often involved in conflict resolution and in the crafting of management strategy, which usually amounts to building stronger communication between different departments and/or team members. After my wife read 12: The Elements of Great Managing for an online course, she thought it would be a good way for me to explore how other businesses view and execute management strategies. She was right. This book, while not intellectually stimulating in the way I usually expect from nonfiction, provided a host of interesting examples of how managers succeed and fail, all framed within an acceptable theory of what constitutes effective management.

The titular twelve elements are the product of The Gallup Organization’s multi-decade quest to identify “the core of the unwritten social contract between employee and employer” (xi). They are as follows:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

The first thing I noticed about this list is that all of these statements are true for me. But 12 is not a book about how to help managers feel that their work is meaningful and promoting personal growth; it is about how the relationship between managers and the employees they manage can make the above statements ring true for everyone at a company, regardless of position or duration of employment. This is an admittedly impossible goal to achieve, but also a good ideal to strive for.

An overarching concern with the quality of emotional and interpersonal experience at work is the heart of what makes Wagner and Harter’s perspective a valuable one. The authors devote one chapter to each of the twelve elements, and also tack on a few extra chapters at the end (including a very insightful discourse on “The Problem of Pay”). Their method is accessible and engaging: each chapter introduces one of the twelve elements with a real-life example of a manager facing a particular problem, transitions to a general discussion of the theory(ies) underlying the element in question, and then returns to the initial example to show how the manager was able to succeed. The theoretical portions contain solid (if occasionally outdated) research from modern psychology and neuroscience; Wagner and Harter are particularly good at pointing out that human nature is not infinitely malleable and must be taken into consideration if practical solutions are to triumph over appealing but overly idealistic ones:

In the battle between company policy and human nature, human nature always wins. The evidence suggests people will fulfill their social needs, regardless of what is legislated. Companies do far better to harness the power of this kind of social capital than to fight against it. (141)

This is absolutely true in my (limited) experience, and also accords with my educational background. People will almost always seek connection with their colleagues that exceeds the minimum job requirements, and will become unhappy if they cannot do so. Any company seeking to provide something more than “just a job” for its employees must foster social engagement and opportunities for personal growth.

I think most managers understand this at an abstract level, but actually creating such a work environment proves much harder. Unlike profit margins and budgets, these are critical components of a company that can’t be easily quantified or measured with precision. Even the most fine-grained performance reviews can’t perfectly capture how an employee really feels about his or her work, and the innumerable daily/weekly/monthly interactions that occur between coworkers are impossible to track and analyze with any true rigor. A good manager, therefore, must be comfortable in the fuzzy spaces between people’s hearts and minds, and must relish the chance to root out and contravene our natural tendencies toward miscommunication, intolerance and impatience. 12 highlights and celebrates such managers, and effectively lifts the lid on what they do best. Most of the time, success boils down to a handful of commonsense directives: listen to your employees, care about their problems, compromise when necessary, be consistent, follow through, and don’t be a jerk.

Following these directives can be difficult enough in normal life, but doing so can be even more challenging at work. This is because of a truth that Wagner and Harter readily acknowledge, one that brings us back to the issue of human nature:

The correlations between each element and better performance not only draw a roadmap to superior managing; they also reveal fascinating insights into how the human mind––molded by thousands of years of foraging, hunting, and cooperating within a close-knit and stable tribe––reacts in a relatively new, artificial world of cubicles, project timelines, corporate ambiguity, and constantly changing workgroup membership. People neither were created to fit corporate strategies nor have evolved to do so. Rather than contest these facts, the most successful managers harness the drive, virtuosity, and spirit that come with employing humans, even as they understand the inevitable chinks in their armor. (xii)

Although Wagner and Harter do a great job of showing how this tricky landscape can be navigated by caring and intelligent managers, they don’t acknowledge the darker side of this picture, which is that modern economies (and perhaps all economies that take place in the context of resource scarcity) are essentially coercive. Yes, people want to work for all kinds of reasons, but most people work because they must, and not because they see their job as a “calling” or their “purpose in life.” A cynic would read this book as nothing more than a series of strategies for duping employees into thinking they are doing meaningful work, when really they are just cogs in an economic machine that neither cares for them nor will continue supporting them when the labor they offer becomes cheaper to acquire elsewhere or is rendered obsolete by automation. Ignoring this reality makes Wagner and Harter’s message more palatable but at least partially disingenuous.

Still, it would be tough to argue that Wagner and Harter’s hearts aren’t in the right place. They do truly want to help managers create a better work-life––and a better life all around––for themselves and those they manage:

Great managers achieve sustained profitability because they make a connection to something beyond profit. They see the results of their work in the life of each person they manage.

Their impact transcends mere business. For many it is an almost spiritual issue, no matter their particular faith. Their motivation stems from deeply held beliefs about their responsibility to those around them. Whether they believe it is Providence or pure chance that puts them in the same office or factory with their team, these managers understand viscerally the scientific truth that what they do will have a large effect––maybe a lifelong effect––on their colleagues…

Those who create the greatest financial performance start with the least pecuniary motivations. They work hard to do the right thing for their people, and they end up doing well. (202-3)

I’m not sure I’d characterize managing as a “spiritual issue,” but I do truly believe that trying to do the right thing can lead to success––financial and otherwise. I hope this belief is true now, and that it will remain true for as long as humans are expected to undertake the bizarre enterprise of “working for a living.”

Rating: 7/10