In the traditional corporate mindset, teamwork and leadership were more or less separate entities. There was a hierarchy, a corporate ladder. Everything was top-down. People led, and others followed. Teamwork existed, but it operated under the rules set by management and leadership. There was no room for innovation or inventiveness or creativity. That kind of mentality worked for years, but given the changes in the operating environment of today, companies and brands need to rethink their approach to running things. With millennials poised to take over not only the customer base but also the workforce in a couple of years, the way things function today are less anchored in the way things used to be done. That’s what Management 3.0 is changing.
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What is Management 3.0, anyway?
(Informally) Management 1.0 refers to the kind of management mindset that sees workers and employees as simple cogs in the machine. Little thought is given to their mental health, work-life balance, and even their potential to help the company. Hierarchy is very much enforced and people who are lower in the proverbial corporate food chain have no voice at all. This mindset involves management telling rank-and-file what to do, which must be followed to the letter at all costs. There is no room for suggestions that may help with efficiency, creativity and productivity.
The more progressive management mindset, Management 2.0, puts a lot more value in employees and workers, but is still highly dependent on the hierarchy system of doing things. There’s still a lot of “top-down” directives and initiatives where not all stakeholders are consulted.
And then comes Management 3.0. Jurgen Appelo is widely accepted to have coined the term in his eponymous book on the topic. But first things first. It’s hard to talk about Management 3.0 without talking about agile methodology and the agile organization. In essence, Management 3.0, along with Marketing 4.0, are key factors in enabling the agile organization to grow and flourish. Agile organizations have proven to be the way to go and have demonstrated enormous success for many companies, with successful organizations that have adopted the methodology find themselves as some of the most prepared and most equipped to propel themselves into the future. This in turn, also vindicates and legitimizes concepts like Management 3.0 in the process.
If the agile methodology is the whole vehicle a company or brand is riding on to bring them to the future, Management 3.0 is the engine that helps propel that vehicle forward. There is a consensus that Management 3.0 is the best way to maximize agile teams. The whole concept of Management 3.0 is that leadership is a shared responsibility in a team, instead of it resting on one or two individuals.
No more talking down or “need to know” mentality that isolates other team members and dismisses their potential to contribute to the betterment of the group as well as to the successful completion of the task at hand. In essence. EVERYONE works together to come up with the most efficient, effective and even profitable way for the group and the organization to realize its goals, both short-term and long-term. Such an organization promotes employee fulfilment and happiness, and also has the potential to remain relevant and usher in development and growth.
Management 3.0 sees and highlights the value of both teams and individual capability, experience and skill. Teams are no longer solely dependent on decisions from managers or even executives — instead, they are given a much larger sense of autonomy. This in turn will be based on the team’s characteristics like ability, competence, and dependability.
These same factors will also contribute to what kinds of tasks are assigned to that team, as well as to the turnover time required for the project to be completed. Management 3.0 also focuses on team growth rather than individual growth (because if the team grows, the individuals who belong to it grow as well), allowing teams to become more efficient and function as one cohesive and harmonious unit.
This focus on growth is a key characteristic of Management 3.0, which makes it a relevant and important method that brands and companies should consider if they want to continue being successful moving forward. Management30.com sums it up quite nicely: “As a result, improvement sometimes means taking two steps forward and one step back.
Teams must go through both gradual and radical changes, taking small steps and big jumps in order to navigate the often challenging landscape.” These changes are achieved through experimentation, mining and consolidating best practices from previous successes, as well as learning from other people who are willing to share their own best practices.
Management 3.0 rewards and pushes for growth, seeing any obstacles and challenges along the way as means to a great end. Change means evolution and continued relevance. To remain stagnant and complacent is a death sentence.
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The advantages of Management 3.0
With all its benefits, Management 3.0 should be a staple adapted by companies and organizations worldwide. Here some compelling reasons why:
1. It maximizes the workforce
By giving teams more autonomy, Management 3.0 allow people to tap into their skillset and experience more. The old top-down directive approach always only relied on the judgement of one or two people, while Management 3.0 gives value to everyone’s input. This means any problems can be solved faster since more minds are working on a solution; same thing when it comes to task completion the more heads coming together to see a project through means less mistakes and a more solid output than what would have come out otherwise.
2. It empowers employees and creates a good working atmosphere
Who doesn’t want to work in a space where one’s input is given value? Management 3.0 gives employees a much larger and significant sense of self-worth in terms of their value to the company since they play a more active role in its growth and development. This will also lead to less turnovers, and the company is better positioned to retain and even attract top talent. The good working environment leads to less conflicts among colleagues and less turf wars among teams — again key contributors to an organization’s efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and capability to complete tasks and accomplish goals.
3. It helps teams and groups become stronger and help them work with others better
Since Management 3.0 is all about team growth and teamwork, it follows that teams will be able to function better together — sort of like a “finish each other’s sentences” thing. There’s more harmony and cooperation in the team, which means tasks are completed faster, and the output is of significantly higher quality. In larger endeavors where large teams need to cooperate with one another, the Management 3.0 philosophy enables better understanding and rapport among teams and groups, again, which lead to improved productivity and profitability.
4. It’s essential for agile organizations
The agile organization methodology has proven itself to be one of the most effective ways a company or brand can grow and develop. Management 3.0 helps organizations realize their agile goals and is indispensable for keeping the said organization agile.
5. It promotes faster organizational growth and profitability
The whole nature of Management 3.0 is one that promotes a much faster pace of development, evolution and growth. This naturally leads of more cost-effectiveness as well as improvements in profitability. Especially when you put it beside the traditional management models where status quo is king, Management 3.0 shines and promises improvements not possible using the old management mentality.
6. It gives access to the right tools
Since teams are given more autonomy, they are also able to pick the tools they need to do their jobs better. Instead of relying on something an executive or manager decides on, it’s the users themselves who now have the power to decide what tools they would like to use. And given that they will be the ones doing the work, they are in a unique position to know the tools that they would need. Take the tools offered by Runrun.it, for example.
Its many features adapt to changing requirements, operating environments, and organizational cultures. In short, it’s customizable and adjustable. It helps promote change. The collaborative system also gels well with the group dynamic, allowing the team to better work together amongst themselves, as well as deal with other teams they need to collaborate with. The Smart Time Tracker is one example of an innovative tool that its (basic) timekeeping function aside, can also generate data on how time is being used — the time it takes a group to finish a task, how much time a particular project took to finish.
The Dashboard tool is capable of generating even more data, which helps teams assess their performance, determine key points of improvement, and build on best practices. Runrun.it’s pioneering approach to workflow management allows it to be an indispensable tool for all kinds of organizations. To see how Runrun.it can work for you, check out the free trial here.
