So how do we balance control and empowerment? How do we create a high trust, high accountability workplace? We do so by installing a clear set of guardrails and guidelines within which the organization can function. Said differently, we install a “management operating system.”

The point I’m driving at is that while you as a leader may do just fine with the ambiguity of unfinished goals—simultaneously cleaning up last year’s mess and rolling out shiny new initiatives, many of your people detest loose ends, unfinished business, and incomplete goals.

To illustrate how this course will be different, on the first day of class, we’ll be discussing the concept of the accidental manager, and the importance of aligning one’s personal purpose with a chosen vocation. We’ll have a group discussion on several concepts that are essential to building resilience and a healthy relationship with work. Those concepts are self love, curiosity, courage, compassion, gratitude, agility, situational awareness, and self-awareness, just to name a few.

This is why measurement and transparency are key components of any effective management operating system. If everyone has access to the same information and that information is shared consistently through time, then the gap, dare I say gulf, that can exist between the information that makes its way up to the C-suite and the reality of operations at ground level can be closed. 

By being clear about what the company does and its differentiator(s), the average individual change management curve gets shorter and individual morale/competence improves–all else the same. Since the average individual curve shortens and individual outcomes improve, the organizational change curve (aggregated curve) gets shorter and overall outcomes improve.

The concept of a management operating system has been around for years, but has encountered limitations on adoption as existing models focus primarily on structures, processes, and systems that work together. Our approach is different in that we’re purposefully recognizing the impact of philosophy, the human element of business, and specifically engineering the operating system to promote the movement of organizational culture toward high trust and high accountability.