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From Great Resignation to Quit Quitting.
Seldom have executives and management scientists given as much thought to termination and the relationship between companies and their employees as they do in 2022. This is not surprising.
Studies show
that
events that disrupt our usual routines, such as a pandemic or war, have great potential to trigger change.
This phenomenon is called habit discontinuity.
Researcher Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the London Business School, took a closer look.
What is absolutely crucial is what we do in the tight window that opens up after changes in our routines.
"If you're considering a career change, now is the time to decide if you want to use this time to make a real career change -- or if you want to go back to your old job and old patterns as if nothing happened."
This change takes place in 3 phases: detachment, transition, reintegration.
"It can be critical to our reinvention that we maintain a degree of detachment from the network of relationships that shaped our professional lives in the past," advises Ibarra.
Despite the increasingly tense economic situation: A number of managers lost team members in 2022.
Salaries up, flexible working hours, more home office - companies tried to keep their people with this formula.
However, it would be crucial to design jobs in such a way that they are more enjoyable, says Marcus Buckingham.
In his major article Do you love your job?
the best-selling author went into a random sample for which 50,000 employees worldwide had been interviewed.
The strongest predictors of employee retention, performance, and engagement were not pay, likeable colleagues, an attractive work environment, or strong belief in the company's mission.
All of these factors had some relevance.
However, none of them was as significant as the answers to the following three questions:
Did I enjoy going to work every day last week?
Did I have the opportunity to use my strengths every day?
Does work give me the opportunity to do what I am good at and love?
Managers need new skills
Such more personal questions reflect how much the expectations of managers have shifted.
They should serve instead of instruct, listen instead of make announcements, coach instead of control.
"Often they can't handle all the work that's dumped on them," wrote Diane Gherson and Lynda Gratton, associate professors at Harvard Business School and London Business School, in their post Managers Can't Do Everything.
The leadership role has changed in three ways:
1. Power: Bosses today have to work for the success of their teams, it used to be the other way around.
2. Skills: The leader changes from controller to coach.
3. Structure: The environment today is more in flux.
Companies need to support their leaders to change.
For decades, the motto of personnel development was: Those who are technically the most competent will be promoted.
But expertise says nothing about leadership quality.
Empathy, trust and dialogue require social skills.
"In my opinion, maturity is the decisive criterion for this," says Constanze Buchheim, founder of the personnel and organizational consultancy i-Potentials.
"Strong and mature leadership has to do with personality development. Companies do not reflect this properly either in the selection or in the further training for managers."
The hybrid exhaustion
The first large-scale study on hybrid work showed that the feared disadvantages do not exist.
The combined model can actually produce better results than pure office or home office work.
Nevertheless, for most managers and their employees, the change meant the pain of change.
Meetings had to be restructured, technical hurdles had to be overcome, individual approaches had to be found.
What is often overlooked: many of us were already exhausted before the pandemic.
During the pandemic, managers and employees almost used up their reserves: processes had to be rebuilt at breakneck speed;
the switch to mobile working happened in many places from one moment to the next.
This was not only unusual for the employees, but also very tiring.
The worries about looking after the children, health and the job also cost energy.
"Managers should therefore discuss with their teams how the cooperation should work and what expectations each individual has," advises Rahaf Harfoush in her contribution "Why working from home has to fail in many companies".
The scientist researches the effects of artificial intelligence and big data on the way we work.
"Questions such as: How much time do we give ourselves to answer e-mails or chat messages should definitely be clarified?"
Knowledge work today is also usually successful at team level - or fails.
For a long time, however, the debate about hybrid collaboration was not about the teams at all.
Instead, the discussions focused on the tension between individual needs and company requirements.
Business psychologist Carsten Schermuly has defined five clear criteria that teams can use to decide and determine which way of working suits their next task.
Strategy for turbulent times
At the strategic level, managers had to say goodbye to rigid budget and planning processes.
They have had to learn to look at new metrics that allow them to measure performance both early and regularly.
"Strategy must respond to unexpected changes in the market and competitive environment," write Bain partners Michael Mankins and Mark Gottfredson in "Strategy for Turbulent Times".
For companies, this means: They have to define the trigger points and signposts and continuously revise them.
The more up-to-date their signposts are, the better they can react to external shocks.
A second important approach in uncertain phases: Managers should concentrate on the essentials when it comes to strategy.
Not one stakeholder, but many
The pressure on the supply chains has increased with the Ukraine war.
Accepting long journeys for cheap labor – this calculation no longer works.
In 2022, top managers had to develop new strategies and deal with their global value chain.
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a key leadership factor.
The ESG criteria alone in connection with company valuations will have a significant impact on executive compensation.
The requirement profiles also change accordingly.
The stakeholders that managers need to keep an eye on today are made up of shareholders, employees, customers and society as a whole.
