In their HBR article, Does Management Really Work?, authors Bloom, Sadun, and Reenen make a case for better-managed companies by stating that when they focus on three specific management practices—Targets, Incentives, and Monitoring—organizations perform better. Although the initial part of the article is based on the manufacturing sector, later in that same article they expand their study and analysis to other industries that include healthcare, education, and services.

This is a good article to understand how the practice of management got started when Frederick Winslow Taylor published his pioneering book, The Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. With its publication he quickly went on to become the first-ever management consultant. Since then an entire industry that deals with making management a science and educating hoards of professionals has sprung up. B-Schools, countless management courses, management consultants, software tools, executive coaching, and countless books that are published on this topic end up in billions of dollars being spent in this sector to make the topic of management better understood and practiced throughout the various industries, governments, NGOs, and non-profits. Yet, the overall results are discouraging.

Why do I say this?

At the macro level this article provides ample evidence of companies and organizations throughout the world where the authors found major gaps in how they evaluated each of their 8,000 or so global subject companies in this study and how the companies themselves evaluated their success. Large gaps in these two assessments are a concern to the authors and they suggest a remedy to get back on track. They also offer their view of what rewards companies can enjoy if they follow their prescription.

For example, the authors point out that a one point increment in management score in each of the three areas they focus on (on a 1-5 scale) there is a 23% productivity gain, 14% market-cap jump, and a 1.4% in annual sales growth. So, the authors are imploring the leaders of all companies to focus on improving their own scores on each of the three areas and also together. To anyone looking at this clinically it may seem simple and obvious, but as the reality shows us that it is not that simple or easy. This is where this whole practice of prescribing a remedy stops being a science and start becoming something more subjective.

And, here’s why! Originally, when Taylor, as a man of science and a mechanical engineer, approached the task of management as a scientific problem, with cause-and-effect driving the outcomes of a predictable process. As we all know any organization and its endeavor involve a very non-linear and unpredictable element: its people. This is further compounded by all the other factors that drive the outcomes of any organization: economic and political factors, unions, peoples’ biases, team dynamics, and other variables. So, getting too scientific about any of the issues when it involves this complexity is both naïve and futile. Scientific methods must be tampered with the commonsense approach to dealing with any issues that require change.

For example, in one of the cases cited in this article of a school, where students were getting poor grades and where some were even failing because the teacher did not have a loud enough voice to reach the students beyond the first two rows. Students in the back could not hear her soft voice despite many complaints from the parents, countless remedial measures by the school’s principal, and other expensive interventions for many years. Students continued to suffer because the teacher, a union employee, could not be fired.

As an outsider looking at this as a “management” problem I ask, Why did someone not think of giving her a microphone with speakers placed throughout the classroom so that everyone could hear her? This could have been done early in the process and for a few hundred dollars, when those in charge realized that other interventions just did not and would not work. Have we abandoned all commonsense in our desire to “manage” things better by applying all the bookish principles and rules that do not make any sense?

At the micro level, which is where I ply my trade—career coaching—I find that most managers are ill equipped to deal with the daily challenges they face in making their role effective. In majority of the cases that I encounter through my clients’ perspective this is what I find:

1. Most managers—at all levels—lack the basic understanding of their role as a manager AND as a leader. They fail to understand what their employees expect from them as a leader and what they must do as their manager (two interrelated roles that require different points of focus and mindsets). A leader needs to inspire them to act and to take them to a place, where they cannot go on their own. A manager on the other hand must provide the basic framework, a work environment, and a set of rules and guidelines that allow everyone in that workgroup to succeed.
2. Most managers waste their time remedying the performance of the laggards rather than spending their precious time mentoring and coaching the top performers to make them even better at what they do. In most cases improving marginal employees is a hopeless cause. But, making good employees great is a worthy one. Very few managers know or understand this simple fact.
3. Most (managers and employees) do not know how to have critical conversations about their relationships and what works and what does not. Often, such off-track relationships continue until they derail and cannot be salvaged. Early conversations about differences in styles, approaches, or expectations can have profound effect on how a relationship emerges and how it can transform an employee to contribute and to succeed. A relationship between an employee and their boss is at the heart of how loyalties are founded. People often quit because of their managers, not because of their companies.
4. Most managers bide their time by maintaining the status-quo or seeking their next promotion. They fail to realize that they are the change agent and that they must provide an environment to their employees to be productive. As the famed management guru—Peter Drucker—said, Managers work on the system and their employees work in the system they create.
5. A good boss plays the role of both a leader, who inspires action, and of a manager that provides a safe and productive environment to their employees. In each of these roles applying commonsense to most problems (remember the soft-voiced school teacher?) at hand can be a prime force in how you can solve major problems of the day and use sophisticated management tools and techniques only when intuition and commonsense no longer provide the means to conquer the challenge at hand. So, know what tool to use when and never abandon your commonsense and gut instinct.
Good management is not a one-way street. Both sides—managers and employees—must work as a team to do their best and to make a difference in what they create by driving it to make this more a science than as a practice of black magic.

Good luck!