Gallup – No-Managers Organizational Approach Doesn’t Work – Focusing on employee strengths works

Brandon Rigoni and Bailey Nelson, Business Journal February 5, 2016 – “Zappos may have discovered that employees need managers after all. The online shoe and clothing retailer’s holacracy management system doesn’t appear to be working. According to a recent New York Times article, Zappos continues to “hemorrhage employees” as a result of the companywide implementation of holacracy. A no-manager approach, holacracy is characterized by a fluid organizational structure in which teams are self-organized and individuals have high autonomy and authority to make decisions at a local level. According to Holacracy.org, holacracy is a “new way of running an organization that removes power from a management hierarchy and distributes it across clear roles, which can then be executed autonomously, without a micromanaging boss.”…One cornerstone of great management is focusing on employees’ strengths. Employees who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life than those who don’t, as Gallup research shows. Workers who know their strengths are 8% more productive — and teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5% higher productivity. In contrast, less talented managers tend to fixate on improving people’s weaknesses. This is bad news for performance: Teams led by managers who focus on their weaknesses are 26% less likely to be engaged than teams with managers who focus on their strengths. However, Gallup finds that being ignored is even worse for employee engagement than having a manager who dwells on weaknesses. Engagement plummets to just 2% among teams with managers who ignore their employees, compared with 45% for teams led by managers who focus on weaknesses and 61% for teams led by managers who focus on strengths…”