A week ago in the Wall Street Journal, the left hand column dealt with New Age management exercises that have been introduced at Royal Dutch Shell. The New Age exercises may be the reason why the company is becoming plain old Shell with a greater role for outside directors and a stronger cross-channel board. Shell’s recent public humiliation is attributed to its restating estimated oil reserves. The WSJ article was suggesting that people who didn’t understand the engineering culture that had made Shell great, for over a century, brought the New Age management exercises into management.
I just want to disavow any connection to New Age management. I have taught management and the book I use is Milton Moskowitz’s The Hundred Best Companies to Work For in America. The book makes clear that there are many types of management from severe and intensely competitive work places where you strive and work late or get fired --- to paternalistic mellow work places with nurseries and gardens for each employee. Different employees thrive in different environments.
I have never believed management can be taught. People learn management from jobs they have had or military service. It is totally experiential learning. Personnel issues can be taught.
Teaching communication is irrelevant. Communication is different in each corporate environment. The work place environment is unique. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply for the 40+ hours people work at a job. There is no right to free speech, no fair trial and no privacy.
The only two realities of management communication that I know of are standard Emily Post etiquette and honesty. In rare managerial circumstances (life and death environments like submarines, emergency rooms and aircraft carriers) candor may trump honesty.
One model of management, one norm for communication, New Age or anything else, is unrelated to commercial reality.