Classic management failures
Managerial decision making is an intricate task. Managers face daily challenges and have to take difficult decisions that determine the growth of organizations. They have to be able to address the unique characteristics of each employee, identify their strengths and weaknesses and delegate suitable tasks to achieve shared goals. Moreover, managers should instill trust to motivate their subordinates and enhance organizational performance.
In today’s competitive business environment, some managers fail to meet their role as inspirational leaders due to factors that influence their ability to develop and implement strategies that can prevent problem-causing behaviors.
Some classic management failures are the following:
Failure to set clear goals
Clear goal setting is essential for effective managerial decision-making. By setting a clearly stated company mission that involves concrete policies and strategies all aligned toward meeting organizational goals, management sets organizational direction. To implement these goals, employee involvement is important and managers must ensure that every subordinate understands the value they bring to the organization. By setting organizational direction, employee motivation is increased and the level of commitment to the organization is heightened. In contrast, failure to set clear goals leads to strategic failure and organizational misalignment.
Failure to create clear communication strategy
Autocratic managers are too task-oriented and fail to disseminate information. Yet, the quality of strategic conversations within the organization is subject to the creation of effective communication channels. Managers must create a clear communication strategy to distribute information and remind all organizational members of the proper focus on corporate mission. Particularly, during times of organizational change, management must empower employees and encourage them to achieve corporate goals by instilling trust.
Failure to create a clear communication strategy leads to the creation of conflicts in the organization. Management needs to communicate in a positive manner in order to motivate all organizational members to improve their performance and seek common goals.
Failure to delegate
Autocratic managers fail to delegate in the fear of overcoming the psychological desire to be valuable for the organization. Because managerial work is interactive and interdependent, managers prosper on their sense of importance to other organizational members. Often, this makes them reluctant to delegate and trust their subordinates for optimal decision-making.
At every stage of the organizational hierarchy there are more experienced and better skilled subordinates, equipped to perform particular tasks. By delegating, managers take advantage of all available resources and have more time to develop a long-term approach to meet their goals strategically. Similarly, subordinates hone their skills and become experts in their field. On the contrary, failure to delegate leads to overwhelmed managers who cannot stay focused on corporate mission.
Failure to build team spirit
Building team spirit in organizations is critical for organizational success. Team structures are strongly favored in the contemporary working environment because they support the energetic and inter-reliant interaction of dissimilar individuals toward the achievement of shared goals. Common vision and mission, clearly defined roles, complementary skills, equal effort, synergy and equal responsibility are the basic attributes of a team, which alongside the advanced attributes - team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, adaptability and team orientation - facilitate team effectiveness.
Teams are structures that advance over time, going through phases that contribute to team effectiveness. Failure to build team spirit leads to organizational misalignment because the shared model of understanding is not acknowledged.
Failure to establish a feedback mechanism
Each organization is a well-knit social system where diverse individuals with unique characteristics are employed. To achieve organizational alignment, managers need to address the strengths and weaknesses of each individual separately and value each person equally.
The advantages of establishing a feedback mechanism include the monitoring of results; the timely strategic adjustment for the anticipation of altering market realities; and the implementation of strategies that promote the corporate mission. Moreover, knowledge is disseminated to all organizational levels allowing the employment of the best methods of work toward the achievement of organizational goals. In contrast, failure to establish a feedback mechanism leads to organizational misalignment because management cannot optimize maximum use of resources toward organizational development and larger success.
