* If you wish that your people would care about your clients/customers, don't penalize them for going to bat, much less going to the mat for them in bad times.
* If you wish that your people would "think outside the box," don't put them in fabric colored boxes and boxes on org-charts and otherwise corral them via the martinets and gate-keepers that infest any workplace that's even slightly less than cutting-edge.
* If you wish that your people were more entrepreneurial/innovative, don't hand them a four-inch binder of Policies and Procedures. And for cryin' in yer beer, keep upper management and legal in the dark as long as humanly possible.
* If you wish that your people would think as if they ran the business, let them. Or at least open the books up to scrutiny so that anyone with basic Algebra skills can follow the money trail.
* If you wish that departments would cross-pollinate, fire the empire-builders and promote people from outside each department. Repeat as needed every so often.
* If you wish that your people would do a better job of communicating, check your ego at the door, shut up and listen.
Sheesh. I shouldn't have to be writing this. I mean, it's not like I'm some management savant, after all. I'm certainly self-directing. But I know my limitations when it comes to having to keep tabs on other people. I suck at that, truth be told.
But I am also So. Bloody. Tired. of the spiels--actually, make that the same spiel ad nauseum--about how global delivery--a euphemism for off-shoring in my circles--will change everything. Why? Because I know too darned well that management imagines that globalization magically stops at the middle management tier. Which basically means that expecting flunkies to morph into the satraps of your "colonials" in Taiwan, Eastern Europe, Russia or India is a doomed proposition. Simply put: You can't expect people to think (much less act) like managers if you continue to treat them like first-line employees. Something has to give, and that "something" needs to be the authority that goes with responsibility. Or you've just added another layer of inertia to your company.
Because to the flunkies who live outside the management bubble, it's the usual game of the company trying to have it both ways. E.g., be on call all weekend, work from home during parental leave, but don't even think about putting that internet connection to non-business use. Of course, I flatter myself that I'm adult enough to know that what people want, what they think they want, and what they say they want are typically three different things. (And management critters are people, just more brainwashed by B-school codswallop.) Lamentably, evolution in our species doesn't seem to select for self-awareness any more than it selects for, say, proficiency in Twister.
