The previous conception of management transforms management. It is no more about being bossy with employees. It is about co-ordinating initiatives to make them deliver the strategic plan. Management gets back to its initial, French meaning “Ménagement” that translates as “attention”.

This implies a minima four things:

1. Share the strategic vision.

Build a vision based on an identity and a position rather than mere growth and profitability rates. The later are tactical objectives that help make the former happens. Nothing more. People need to understand where the group they belong to will go. It’s about sense-making and leadership. That is the best way to obtain employee adoption and prevent misunderstandings that are costly, particularly in co-ordination.

2. Support and facilitate initiatives.

If we finally accept that employees probably are the best persons to know what needs to be improved in their working environment to make things work better, then the role of management is to evolve from monitoring and correcting to supporting and facilitating. Attention to others does not prevent decision-making. Management is to listen employees, particularly those on the ground (client facing, product making), to get a sense of realities and from there make their mind and take decisions that in return will potentially impact the whole thing.

3. Revamp reporting and monitoring systems.

It is important to enrich existing metrics, particularly with qualitative ones, because existing ones do not help capture knowledge related work. Systems in place were developed in and for a world where production was physical, not intellectual. It is also important to have systems that collect employees (but also consumers, investors, citizens) feedback. Both shall help senior management take more relevant information.

4. Be ethical.

There is no point of developing a policy where the whole company has to make drastic savings while at the same time, Board Members gets a double digit salary increase. There is no point of protecting “political animals” or friends when they are in fault (misjudgment, sexual or moral harassment, and so on) and punish people who report (still a persistent habit high in the hierarchy). This type of misunderstood Machiavelism is out of date in a knowledge economy and makes people reluctant to share and collaborate. Simply put: without applied ethics, the organisation underperforms.