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.)