What drives managers and keeps them awake at night? Fredmund Malik asked decision-makers in companies this question. The management expert offers seven insights to help them survive the transformation – and make use of complexity.
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“Real leaders don’t need charisma,” Fredmund Malik once said. Scandals like those involving Sam Bankman-Fried or Elon Musk are unlikely to have surprised the management consultant. The same applies to the current system crisis. “What was working reliably until recently is suddenly falling apart,” writes the bestselling author, who used to teach at the University of St. Gallen, in his new book. But how do you prepare for a future that is uncertain?
Malik has been warning for well over ten years about a massive upheaval that he calls the “Great Transformation”. This has been a recurring topic in his newsletter, which he says has been published without interruption since 1993 (initially monthly, later once a week). The author of the standard work “Leading, Performing, Living” has now summarized a selection of previously unpublished texts since 2019 in the book “What keeps you awake at night? First aid for managers”.
Malik (born 1944) asked the title question to a number of top executives. According to him, they mentioned seven insights that are crucial for a successful future:
#1 The country needs new managers
“We can no longer master today’s challenges with conventional means,” warns Malik. The emphasis is on “conventional”. The managers he interviewed understood that the special challenges of our time require a new type of management, with its own practices, methods and tools.
#2 “Many people know what to do. But how?”
There is often no lack of insight. But implementation is often disappointing, writes Malik, citing digitization as an example. The reason for this disappointment is obvious to him. “Because the previous processes have remained largely unchanged,” he warns against only apparent modernization. “So you have digitized processes – but they are still the same old ones. Really new solutions also require a radically new type of implementation.”
#3 Change prevents change
Malik agrees with the widespread criticism of change managers. The current form of change management is not strong enough for the massive upheavals. “Expectations arise that cannot be fulfilled. People are disappointed and discouraged,” warns the author. His demand: “Leave people as they are.” In his view, a good example is the triumph of the smartphone. It has seamlessly integrated into users’ habits and thus brought about a fundamental change without disruption: “As a result – not as a cause – people have also developed new communication habits.”
#4 Three strategies for the future
Malik believes that just one grandiose strategy for transformation is not enough. He advocates a three-pronged transformation:
- Strategy 1 for the still usable processes of the “Old World”
- Strategy 2 for building the potential for the “New World”
- Strategy 3 as transformation management for the transition
#5 Digitalization leads to complexity
Digitalization was already an issue in the 1970s. “Frequent use of the word ‘digitalization’ does not achieve anything in a company,” criticizes Malik. The key is to understand what lies behind it, namely networking. But that makes things more complex. “The stronger the networking, the more complex the system,” the management expert points out. So anyone who hopes that digitalization will make everything simpler will be rudely surprised by the (often global) dynamics of digital processes.
#6 Complex is not complicated
For Malik, however, “complex” is by no means the same as “complicated”. “Complexity should be reduced,” he says with regard to bureaucracy. For the expert, however, complexity is the “gold mine” of the future. “Complexity is the source of intelligence, creativity and innovation,” he emphasizes.
#7 Culture as a scapegoat
“We have culture stress,” writes Malik in his new book. In his opinion, however, this is largely self-inflicted. Everything that is not going well in companies is often attributed to a lack of or incorrect corporate culture. According to Malik, however, when something does not work, it often has completely different causes. “Inadequate strategies, unsuitable structures, incorrect personnel decisions, inadequate management knowledge and dysfunctional communication,” he lists. All of this also has a negative effect on the culture: “But the causes for this usually lie elsewhere.”
Source: Stern
