An Email From Elon Musk Reveals Why Managers Are Always a Bad idea
By Chuck Blakeman Founder, Crankset Group @ChuckBlakeman
Survey.com's annual "Wasting Time at Work" report revealed that if you eliminate managers completely, you remove 75 percent of the reasons someone will leave your company. There is a simple reason for that. They're in the way, literally. Elon Musk knows that, and isn't alone.
Before Elon Musk, There Was Gore
Bill Gore, co-inventor of Gore-Tex and founder of the $3.3 billion company W. L. Gore, understood the idea implicitly and built his entire company around self-managed teams and the absence of managers of any kind. In 1976, he published a simple paper called "The Lattice Organization" that described how a company of any size (Gore has 10,200 staff) could run much better without managers. He expressed the simplicity of an organization designed around the Lattice concept in the following illustration.
The message: collaborate with whomever you need to, whenever you need to, without ever going through a manager to get to anyone.
This brilliantly simple illustration of an organization built around efficient and effective communications makes it very clear that if you need something from someone else in the organization, you go to that person. If your team needs something from another team, you go to that team. In the Lattice Organization, there are no managers, or inboxes and outboxes at multiple levels, or politics and departmental fiefdoms to wade through. Today, there are nearly a hundred very large companies like W. L. Gore that operate this way and thousands of smaller ones.
An Enduring Truth
The Lattice Organization continues to spread. An internal email, revealed only recently, from Elon Musk to all Tesla staff shows that Musk intuitively understands that managers add no value in pushing great ideas forward, but instead are more likely to slow down innovation, communications, and production. It's the Lattice concept clearly articulated once again, 40 years later by a business leader of the next generation:
From: Elon Musk
To: All Tesla Staff
Subject: Communication Within Tesla
There are two schools of thought about how information should flow. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it enhances the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company.
To solve a problem quickly, two people in different depts should simply talk and make the right thing happen. Instead, people are forced to talk to their manager, who talks to their manager, who talks to the manager in the other dept, who talks to someone on his team. Then the info has to flow back the other way again. This is incredibly dumb. Any manager who allows this to happen, let alone encourages it, will soon find themselves working at another company. No kidding.
Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company.
You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. The point here is to ensure that we execute ultra-fast and well. We obviously cannot compete with the big car companies in size, so we must do so with intelligence and agility.
One final point is that managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company that create an "us vs. them" mentality, or impede communication in any way. This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought. How can it possibly help Tesla for depts to erect barriers between themselves, or see their success as relative within the company instead of collective?
We are all in the same boat. Always view yourself as working for the good of the company and never your dept.
Thanks, Elon
W. L. Gore never had to send such an email, and if Musk is serious about keeping managers from being obstructionists, he would do well to eliminate them altogether as Gore and many other companies have done. But clearly Musk gets that they don't naturally add value to the communications and innovations chains. To the contrary, their natural obstructionism must be mitigated against as a firing offense.
Loyalty to the Hierarchy
Is your company addicted to serving hierarchies or getting things done? Musk warned that managers will get fired for even allowing communications to go through them. In almost all companies, people get fired for going directly to the source of an answer instead of paying homage and worshiping at the feet of the hierarchy. In companies with managers, Dilbert reigns, and the only solution is an email from the top of the pyramid demanding that managers stay out of the way.
As Musk says and Gore illustrates, this is all incredibly dumb. Yet most companies continue to allow managers to exist, slow things down, and gum up the works with power struggles and politics, in the face of simple logic that says they don't add value. Musk warns that people should get fired for getting in the middle of collaboration, yet that is at the very core of a manager's job -- to get in the middle of everything.
Unencumbered Communications
Do you want yours to be a great company with 100 percent engagement where everyone works for the company, instead of some incredibly dumb, departmental fiefdom? Eliminating the requirement to communicate through managers is a great step in that direction. A hundred large companies and thousands of smaller ones have already figured that out.
It's your turn.
原文链接：https://www.inc.com/chuck-blakeman/an-email-from-elon-musk-reveals-why-managers-are-always-a-bad-idea.html
Andre Lavoie
2017年10月31日
Andre Lavoie
如何将3类不易相处的员工转变成团队合作者
编者按：每个团队中都或多或少存在一些不易相处的员工，如何应对这些员工的问题，对于提高团队的生产力以及企业的健康发展至关重要。对此， ClearCompany 公司的 CEO Andre Lavoie总结了三种常见的不易相处的员工，并给出了相应的应对措施。
你花了许多时间招到一个完美的团队。他们个个身怀绝技，但不幸的是，总有人很难与团队一起工作。
作为公司管理者，你不能忽视员工之间的关系对公司的影响。TINYPulse 公司 2014年 的调查报告显示，在超过 20 万的被调查员工中，20％的人认为工作表现优秀的首要原因归于良好的同事关系。调查显示员工与同事的情谊是工作的头号动力。通过促进同事间的良好关系，你可以创建一个更高效和更具生产力的公司。
但是，创建一个强大的团队不是一件容易的事，无论你员工的技能有多强，彼此性格不合终究会让你功亏一篑。作为公司管理者，找到一个有效的方法来管理好员工是你义不容辞的责任。这里列举了三种很难相处的员工类型，并分别给出了如何将他们转变成团队合作者的建议：
1.马屁精
每个办公室都有这样的人：他们唯一的目标就是给老板留下深刻印象，并从老板那里赢得好评。他们给老板拿咖啡，帮老板取干洗衣服，并且乐此不疲。基本上，他们愿意把任何事情 “做好”，除了他们的实际工作。
老板也许高兴了，但马屁精的同事们经常会感到非常恼火，因为他们觉得奉承者获得的那些注意并不是依靠他们优秀的工作表现。其他同事们希望奉承者能把那些花在讨好老板的时间和精力用到提高工作上。
作为公司管理者，你必须让那些逢迎者知道，你的赞誉并不是最重要的认可类型。你需要去查看一下你的员工认可方案，看看付出和获得认可是否成正比。你还可以引入一个同事认可方案，以此来鼓励那些奉承者去考虑同事对自己的认可。这样他们就会认识到，做好本职工作，奉献于团队是大家都赞赏的，他们同事的赞誉与你的认可一样重要和有价值。
2.八卦者
并非所有形式的八卦都对团队有害。斯坦福大学 2014年 的研究发现，八卦的团体能合作得更好，因为他们有更高水平的问责制。但是，如果你的员工花个半天的时间偷偷讨论每个人的周末计划，那么就有问题了。
每个人都或多或少有些八卦的行为，但 “办公室八卦” 稍不注意就会把同事间的话题转向谈论别人的私人生活。散布谣言或者非常私人的消息会让一个团队的内部关系变得紧张。
管理这种类型的员工的关键是重新设定他们的社交话题方向。健谈的人是社交圈的中心。交给他们一些事情，将同事间讨论的话题引导到创造互动性的方向，比如策划公司培训或者假日聚会项目。这些任务将会让他们保持忙碌，以免他们分心去与同事八卦一些与工作无关的事。在最终的这些活动中，他们将会有一个合适的机会去谈论非业务相关的主题，看到他们的努力为团队带来更密切的关系，这也是一种奖励。
3.后进生
有时候，你聘请的员工有着超棒的简历和合适的经验。但是你却看到他只是一直在潜力线的下方徘徊。你本来指望他能充当团队其他人的模范，但他只是达到了他负责的每个任务或项目的最低标准。
由于高水平的员工并没有达到大家的预期，其他队员也开始做得更少。那些走在前面的员工也会不满后进生拖了后腿。
如果你坚信一个员工可以做得更好，付出得更多，但他们却表现平平，那是因为你们之间有脱节的地方。也许他做的每日工作并不是他所期望的，也许他只是觉得无聊。找到后进生进行交流，找出他在工作上喜欢和不喜欢的地方。看看他是否需要更多的具有挑战性的工作来激励他，或者他是否觉得他没有使用他最强技能的机会。这将需要你去重新定义他的位置，一旦位置正确，他就会按照你一直希望的那样蓬勃发展。
How to Transform Difficult Employees Into Team Players
You spend countless hours recruiting the perfect team. You train them and give them the tools they’ll need to be a successful workforce. You have your excellent customer service expert, Sherry, your human resource genius, Mike, and Bill and Brenda, your sales dynamic duo. Then there’s Karen, the best marketer you’ve ever hired. Unfortunately, nobody can stand to work with her.
As a manager, you can’t ignore the impact of your employees’ relationships with each other. In the 2014 report by TINYPulse, 20 percent of over 200,000 employees surveyed ranked their peers as the number-one reason to excel at work. Camaraderie with peers was the number-one motivator found in the survey. By fostering better co-worker relations, you can create a more productive and higher performing company.
However, creating a strong team isn’t easy -- no matter how strong your employees’ skills are, personalities clash. It’s your job to find a way to manage your employees, even the difficult ones. Here are three types of employees that are hard to work with and how to turn them into team players:
1. The suck-up
Every office has one: that one employee who’s only goal is impressing and garnering praise from the boss. They bring the boss coffee and offer to pick up his dry cleaning. Basically, they’re willing to do anything for a “good job,” except their actual job.
Co-workers of the suck-up are often annoyed, because they feel he is getting positive attention based on something other than the merit of his work. The rest of the team wants all the time and energy spent on flattering the boss to be diverted to getting quality work done.
As a manager, you have to show an apple-polisher that your recognition is not the most important type of acknowledgment. Take a look at your employee recognition program. Whose input affects the achievements that are most celebrated? Incorporate a peer-to-peer recognition program as a way to encourage suck-ups to consider the approval of their co-workers as well. Soon they’ll begin to realize that doing a good job and contributing to the team is appreciated by everyone, and that their peers’ praise can be as rewarding as yours.
2. The gossip
Not all forms of gossip are detrimental to a group. 2014 research from Stanford University found that groups that participated in gossip cooperated better due to higher levels of accountability. But when you have an employee that spends half of the day whispering about everyone’s weekend plans, you’ve got a problem.
Everyone is guilty of gossiping now and again, but “the office gossip” distracts the rest of her co-workers by constantly talking about others’ personal lives. Spreading rumors or deeply personal pieces of information can create tensions within a team.
The key to managing these types of employees is to redirect their social tendencies. Talkative people are social butterflies at heart. Give them projects that are geared towards creating interactions, like planning company retreats or holiday parties. These tasks will keep them busy -- and keep them from distracting co-workers with unprofessional chatter. During these events, they’ll have an appropriate time to talk about non-business related topics and will be rewarded by seeing how their productive efforts have brought the team closer.
3. The underachiever
Sometimes you hire an employee that has a stellar resume and all the right experience, only to see him repeatedly perform below his potential. You were counting on him to act as an example for the rest of the team, but he just does the bare minimum on every task or project he’s responsible for every day.
Instead of being inspired by this anticipated high performer, other team members also begin to do less. Those employees that continue to go the extra mile resent the underachiever for having to pick up the slack.
If you’re confident that an employee has more to give, there’s a disconnect between you somewhere. Perhaps the actual day-to-day job he’s doing isn’t what he expected it’d be, or maybe he’s just bored. Talk to the underachiever to find out what he likes and what he doesn’t like about his job. Find out if he needs more challenging work to motivate him, or if he feels he’s not being given the opportunity to use his strongest skills. This will allow you to redefine his position so he can flourish like you always knew he could.
What other types of employees are difficult to deal with, and what’s the best way to manage them?
来源：entrepreneur.com
Andre Lavoie
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