In the world of companies and organizations there is a process of incessant change and transformation. It goes through a winding and difficult transition process in which the production, work organization and management model of people is in a terminal crisis.
But despite having a consensual death certificate, in daily practice he is still in good health. On the other hand, the management model that accounts for the challenges posed by the new sectors of production and services, has been having a complex process of gestation in which successive attempts at childbirth give unequivocal signs of the imminent pregnancy, but The new birth cannot be certified yet. In other words, we are experiencing a period of transition, a time of progress and setbacks, where different paradigms of work management coexist and people are subjected to the duality of this coexistence of models.
Many transformations have taken place in the business world and much has been experienced in the ways of organizing and managing work with the aim of improving business competitiveness, through increased organizational productivity. Various fashions in the field of management have been happening and have proven not to be the panacea they promised to be, but in turn have left some important contribution in this complex process of change that we described above.
For the purposes of framing what is the picture of the situation in which this challenge of change is posed, we will describe what are the main dimensions in which the transformation of the paradigm of the traditional company towards a new way of organizing and managing work is manifested..
1. From management by tasks to management by objectives
One of the central characteristics of manual work –which underpins what is known as the Taylorist model– is that the tasks to be performed can be disaggregated, their execution planned, predicting their sequentiality and work rhythm, and that once the production routine is easily controllable. On the contrary, the work of knowledge implies, by definition, that it is not repetitive or routine and, therefore, it cannot be planned or controlled by establishing actions and times for carrying them out. This means that objectives must be set and agreed upon, and from there the people involved commit to putting their knowledge, skills, creativity and motivation to work to overcome all kinds of challenges or inconveniences. a los efectos de lograr el objetivo planteado.
Take Bill Gates, for example, when he brings together a team of specialists and sets them the goal of developing a new computer program. The team members will ask you what resources of time, money and facilities they require to fulfill the proposed objective and once all these aspects have been agreed upon, the team will get down to work. What Gates, or the manager who leads the project, will be able to control is the evolution of the project and the fulfillment in time and form of the established objective, but he will never be able to supervise the tasks since neither he nor the team members can establish them in advance. The same could be said of a creative team that must design and launch an advertising campaign, or a marketing team that must develop a new product,or a sales team that must achieve billing goals in various geographic areas.
Who can determine what tasks or what work process a financial analyst, business consultant, conductor, or urban planner must complete to effectively accomplish the proposed objectives? In all these cases and in any other in which the work of people who produce with their knowledge is managed, the key to productivity will not be in the planning and control of fragmented tasks, but in the mobilization of knowledge and collective initiative..
This is why the current trend in many companies is to have centrality in strategic decisions, and decentralization and autonomy in operational decisions. In this context, what Peter Senge calls the Shared Vision becomes important, as the discipline that creates the idea or image towards which an organization is heading, establishes a common direction, a way of working and a set of values that in turn they give meaning to the specific objectives of each work area and it makes the people who share that project commit themselves and feel motivated to put the best in each one.
2. From group work to the work team
The concept of work team was non-existent in the traditional company model and this was because the idea of managing manual work through the disaggregation of individual tasks that were routinely and interruptedly repeated, did not require it. When it was necessary to establish a coordination between these tasks, the production line was implemented, which not only generated an order in which they had to be carried out, but also implemented a rhythm and a time for their execution. Just remember the unforgettable Charles Chaplin in his movie "Modern Times".
The concept of work teams is relatively new, since it emerged as a relevant topic in the last decades of the 20th century. The need for teamwork emerges when it is understood that in order to manage knowledge and collective initiative, work areas must be generated where the different knowledge can be exchanged and complemented and tasks, roles and processes coordinated in accordance with the achievement of the established objectives..
When people from different disciplines must coordinate their actions to carry out complex tasks, each one has specific knowledge that must necessarily be combined and complemented by the others. Everyone must think and act interdependently, and therefore the only way to do it is to act as a team.
3. From obedience and discipline, to self-control and personal responsibility
When driving based on assigning and controlling specific tasks, the important thing is to establish obedience and discipline. On the contrary, when leading with the purpose of mobilizing collective knowledge, the important thing is that all the members contribute not only their knowledge and skills, but also their creativity and capacity for innovation in work processes. In these cases, external control is no longer functional, but what is required is that people are imbued with the team spirit, committed to the objectives to be fulfilled, motivated with the tasks to be carried out and who assume the ethics of responsibility for the results. If this is so, what arises is self-control, self-regulation and personal responsibility.
Traditionally these characteristics were not valued, compliance was appreciated more than initiative and obedience was preferred to creativity. In this way, motivation and personal involvement with the work carried out were blocked. In the new management styles, the central task of those who lead is not in giving orders and demanding discipline, but in transferring power (empowerment) so that everyone can contribute their capacity and knowledge, generating value for the task. Consider, for example, a team of health professionals who are attending to an emergency or performing a highly complex operation: both the surgeon, the anesthetist and the nurses know better than anyone what actions they have to take and how they must coordinate with the other team members.
4. From compliance to commitment and fear of trust
In organizational settings where the expected and valued behaviors are compliance and discipline, collective emotion is marked by fear and mistrust. It is through this emotionality that the attitude of obedience and submission prevails. On the contrary, when the commitment, motivation and ability to add value that each individual and the team as a whole can contribute are valued, an organizational culture based on the emotionality of trust and enthusiasm must be generated.
5. From task to result
These different management models involve different types of evaluation and reward systems. In one case, what will be evaluated is the fulfillment of the established task. In this way, people are not responsible for the final result of the work process, nor for achieving the proposed objectives, since in many cases they do not even know them. Their responsibility is restricted to the fulfillment of the entrusted task.
Conversely, when team members commit to achieving goals, they allocate resources and determine tasks and roles in whatever way they see fit; they design processes and evaluate work based on the value they generate for the organization and the client, taking responsibility for the results obtained.
In this case, individual and group performance is evaluated. Assuming responsibility as a work team implies taking charge, not only of individual action but of how this action is coordinated and complements effectively and efficiently with that of the other members. This way of managing and evaluating individual and collective performance generates a team spirit and a style of cooperative interrelation.
6. From standardization to learning and continuous improvement
Knowledge work management involves solving highly complex problems, where the actions to be carried out cannot be foreseen or stipulated a priori and where generally there is no single-track path, but rather decisions must be made considering various factors and with a high level of uncertainty. Even when pre-established tasks can be determined, it is the people who perform them that establish the quality with which they are executed and add value and particularity to them.
This type of work, far from being a routine and repetitive activity, demands innovation and continuous improvement. The incessant adaptation of products, processes and ways of doing work, requires changes and learning, both individually and organizationally. Acting effectively in constant change requires lifelong learning and for this it is essential to be able to generate organized companies to learn and create knowledge.
To carry out this behavior, it is necessary to correct the separation that, from the old paradigm, was established between work and thought, between action and reflection. From incorporating this logic of lifelong learning and continuous improvement, it will be necessary for knowledge workers to develop the competence that Donald Schon calls reflection in action, which allows them to carry out a reflective practice in order to generate an incessant enrichment of their doing.
7. From manager-foreman to manager-leader
In the traditional model, the function of the driver is to determine the tasks, the sequentiality and the work rhythm and then control that it is carried out as established. This is replicated at all levels of the organization and implies that the controller must also be controlled and, therefore, the foreman controls the worker, the supervisor the foreman, the boss the supervisor, the manager the boss and so on until reaching to the general manager.
This manager-foreman profile goes into crisis when we face the challenge of knowledge work productivity. It is here where the concept of leadership becomes important and central. Just as we pointed out that the idea of work teams was absolutely foreign to the traditional company, so was the idea of leadership.
The manager-foreman can perform his role based on the command power delegated to him by the company, but the boss or manager who leads knowledge workers must carry out his role based not only on that formal power, but also on the authority conferred by the workers themselves. This informal authority is what allows the manager-leader to have ascendancy over the members of his team and also with those over whom he does not exercise formal power, be they colleagues, clients or hierarchical personnel of the company. This authority comes from ability, integrity, and achievement.
Exercising management from the leadership implies creating working conditions so that people can display their work potential. It means giving recognition and power to individuals to effectively develop their capacity for action. Summon and motivate to achieve the proposed objectives and generate emotional states at the level of people and teams, creating trust and commitment so that actions can happen.
When driven from the role of manager-foreman, usually what is accomplished is people's demotivation and widespread discomfort and dissatisfaction. Workers formally fulfill the indicated tasks but without committing themselves to achieving the proposed objectives and without adding value, creativity or innovation to the job. All this leads to lower productivity and business competitiveness.
8. From technical to generic competences
From the analysis of the scope and implications of the process of change and implementation of a new management style, a new dimension of analysis begins to emerge that focuses on people and the skills they must incorporate to embody this process and be able to act. and interact effectively.
To advance in this analysis, we must make a distinction in the competences that are at stake in the tasks that each one performs. In this sense, we can say that in job performance there are two types of skills that affect job effectiveness: technical and generic skills.
When we are faced with the implementation of new management models, we can affirm that technical skills are absolutely necessary, but totally insufficient. When we talk about generic competences we are realizing the capacities necessary to carry out a very diverse set of actions, such as generating a network of links, transmitting ideas and concepts clearly and convincingly, interacting in interdisciplinary groups, leading work teams, negotiate and generate agreements, make collective and consensual decisions, resolve conflicts, work simultaneously and cooperate with the different actors involved, manage projects, select, use, communicate and share knowledge.As a person moves up the hierarchical scale of an organization, the nature of its activities will be increasingly related to this type of competencies.
