|
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release U.S. management guru offers solution to combat worker disengagement Organizations can incorporate “UnManagement” and strengthen informal social relationships. (May 11, 2009, Bountiful, UT, USA) – Worker disengagement, a monumental problem facing businesses worldwide, can be remedied by expanding an organization’s “sweet spot” and incorporating the principles of “UnManagement,” a new model of leadership best suited for the current Knowledge Age. Dr. Charles (“Kalev”) Ehin, an authority on management and innovation, developed his new leadership model which he calls “UnManagement” after analyzing research on human nature which shows that human productivity is at its peak in informal, co-evolving relationships, as opposed to within formal systems where people are stifled by bureaucracy and not allowed to work openly with their counterparts and peers. In his latest management book, “The Organizational Sweet Spot: Engaging the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social Networks” (Springer, June 2009), Dr. Ehin claims that every organization has a “sweet spot”—a place where formal and informal communication among workers overlap. (See The Organizational Sweet Spot Fact Sheet.) The former Dean of the Gore Business School at Westminster College and the author of several groundbreaking management books, Ehin has discovered that this sweet spot is the place where the most productive and innovative work of an organization takes place largely because people tend to want to follow their self-interests and do so through developing informal social networks in the workplace. He explains that although every organization has a “sweet spot,” they need to grow this space to achieve maximum creativity and productivity. “The problem is that this sweet spot is generally very small in most organizations because they tend to follow a traditional “top-down” management model that was suited to the Industrial Age, which discourages informal communication. This reality contributes to chronic worker disengagement and low productivity.” According to the 2008 National Q12 Employee Engagement Survey, worker disengagement is at an all-time high in America, with close to 20 percent of American workers feeling disconnected from their jobs, at a cost of some $300 billion or more to the U.S. economy. (See Worker Disengagement Fact Sheet.) “Employee disengagement is one of the most pressing problems plaguing managers today and it hampers the innovation capacities of countless organizations,” says Ehin. In an environment of stagnating wages, massive layoffs, rising health care costs, and other factors that contribute to alienation, distrust, and apathy, finding a way to deal with this disengagement is necessary if organizations are to succeed. Ehin advises that to effectively combat worker disengagement and grow their organizational sweet spot, leaders need to be open to altering their management style to one that is less formal and more open to nurturing informal relationships, something he says is not every organization is ready to do. “When businesses are willing to entertain changes the context of their management to a model that is more suited for the current Knowledge Age, it can go a long way toward curbing or even eliminating worker disengagement.” About The Author
Dr. Charles (“Kalev”) Ehin is a Professor Emeritus of Business at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. A recognized management and innovation dynamics authority, Dr. Ehin has authored several groundbreaking management books, including Unleashing Intellectual Capital (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000) and Hidden Assets: Harnessing the Power of Informal Networks (Springer, 2004), which explains why people can be physically controlled but not managed. Dr. Ehin has an MBA from Syracuse University and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma. About the Book
Title: The Organizational Sweet Spot: Engaging the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social Networks (Springer, June 2009). This is Dr. Ehin’s newest book. It pinpoints where the formal and informal elements of an organization overlap, and explains how that “sweet spot,” the place where most of the productive work in an enterprise takes place, can be expanded This cutting edge management book offers guidance to business leaders searching for ways to increase the innovative dynamics , motivation and performance of their knowledge workers. (See Publishers’ website, www.springer.com.) About UnManagement
“UnManagement” is a new model of management developed by Dr. Ehin in 1995 that encourages the dual value of autonomy and interdependence. It recognizes that relationships are the key to an organization’s success or failure and encourages both formal and informal relationships to flourish. (See Media Backgrounder: UnManagement : A New Management Model for the Knowledge Era.)
|
News & Views 