Responsible Workers Demand — Responsible Management!

Peter Drucker says in Management:

"Nothing quenches motivation as quickly as a slovenly boss."

A responsible work force does indeed make very high demands on managers.  It demands that they be truly competent—and competent as managers rather than as psychologists or psychotherapists.  It demands that they take their own work seriously.  It demands that they themselves take responsibility for their jobs and their performances.

Responsibility is a harsh taskmaster.  To demand it of others without demanding it of oneself is futile and irresponsible.  The worker cannot assume the  burden of responsibility for his own job, work group, and work-community affairs unless he can be confident of the seriousness, responsibility, and competence of his company.  He must be able to have confidence that the boss knows his own job and work.  He must take it for granted that the boss provides the tools the worker himself needs to be able to do productive work and the information the worker needs to direct and control himself.

Nothing quenches motivation as quickly as a slovenly boss. People expect and demand that managers enable them to do a good job and work productively and intelligently.  People have indeed a right to expect a serious and competent superior.

(Management (2007), p. 302-303.)
And this is why Drucker says that Knowledge Workers must supervise themselves:  No one else understands what they are doing.  Drucker states:  "Managing means making the strengths of people effective.  Neither the welfare approach, nor the personnel management approach, nor the control and fire-fighting approach address themselves to strength, however.  People are weak; and most of us are pitifully weak.  People cause problems, require procedures, create chores.  And people are a cost and a potential 'threat.'  But these are not the reason why people are employed.  The reason is their strength and their capacity to perform.  And, to say what will be said many times in this book, the purpose of an organization is to make the strengths of people productive and their weaknesses irrelevant." (Ibid., p. 307.)  He adds, " . . . unlike a union, an achieving work force does not exert its pressure as an adversary.  It exerts it in cooperation.  It 'plays on the same team.'  But for this reason it expects team captains and team leaders, that is, managers, to hold themselves to high standards and to take their own jobs seriously." (p. 303.)

Take Time to make Decisions: Cultivate Negative Feedback

"People inevitably start out with an opinion; to ask them to search for the facts first is even undesirable. The will simply do what everyone is far too prone to do anyhow: look for the facts that fit the conclusion they have already reached. And no one has ever failed to find the facts he is looking for."

Peter Drucker, Management (1974), p. 471.

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., is reported to have said at a meeting of one of the GM top committees, "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here." Eeryone around the table nodded assent. "Then," continued Mr. Sloan, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about."

(Ibid., p. 472.)

Commitment to Excellence an Antidote

Peter F. Drucker writes in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974):

We hear a great deal today about the organization man and about alienation of people in organizations. I doubt whether there is more conformity in today's organization than there was in yesterday's small village with its tremendous pressures of class and kin, of caste and custom. I doubt seriously whether there is more alienation today than in earlier societies. . . . But whether conformity and spiritual despair are greater or less today than they used to be, the one effective counterforce to both is the individual's commitment to self-development, the individual's commitment to excellence.