McKinsey & Company just dropped a 7-page report on Manager Effectiveness.
I created a TL;DR of the top challenges and recommendations to save you time.
Challenges:
1. Middle managers spend nearly 50% of their time on non-managerial work.
2. Only 20% of surveyed managers strongly agree that their organizations help them be successful people managers.
3. Organizational bureaucracy, excessive meetings, emails, and approval processes are cited as the most significant negative factors affecting middle managers.
4. There is a mismatch between what middle managers see as valuable work and what their organizations value, leading to inefficiencies.
5. Managers report spending, on average, less than a quarter of their time on strategy-focused work.
Recommendations:
1. Focus on talent development and employee growth: Shift managers from low-value tasks to talent needs, emphasizing coaching and development. 86% of respondents see coaching and 56% see employee development as their top value-adds.
2. Remove organizational hurdles: Reduce excessive bureaucracy to improve managers' work, giving them space to focus on talent management.
3. Provide personalized incentives: Cater to middle managers' motivations (e.g., autonomy, responsibility, bonuses, raises). Nearly 60% received new responsibilities and about 50% received autonomy and bonuses as rewards.
4. Strengthen the link between classic people management work and strategy work that can augment those efforts.
5. Encourage managers to spend more time on strategy and talent-related work by clarifying organizational priorities and expectations.
6. Determine which accomplishments should be reinforced with rewards, and ensure that new responsibilities do not detract from the work that matters most.
