A (3:47)

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so our outline for today's cast is three parts. First, we're going to debunk the myth of managerial style. Then we'll talk about how management is the most important system in every organization. And finally, managers are obligated to manage as part of the organization.

B (4:06)

Yeah, I really want to start the whole managerial style debunk thing because I've said this. I couldn't believe the other day when I was thinking about manager tools cast for this year that, that I had never actually put this fully into a cast. And so that's why we're starting 2026 with this one. Look, folks, there are a lot of systems in your organization, in all modern organizations. They pervade our everyday professional lives. Those systems make things better in the vast majority of cases, even when we are involved in them. But we may not quite understand their purposes. But the fact that we don't understand them or that they frustrate us doesn't necessarily make them inherently bad or ineffective or inefficient. Our lack of appreciation for some processes and systems, or even many of them, is more a result of a lack of organizational communication, which, by the way, is a system in and of itself about them. We are just not told what your role is and why your role is important and how the system ultimately rolls up to something that is going to be useful for the output of the organ.

A (5:16)

Yeah. So Mark, to. To help our audience try and picture this, think about these systems. That is, let's give them a few examples. Now, folks, we suspect that many professionals in the manager tools community and in every workplace that exists really are required to wear a badge to work. Now, certainly that's true of larger companies and in most public companies as well. If you don't have badges at your organization, you definitely know many people who do have to wear badges at work. And therefore, theoretically, we all understand the concept of badging. Now, no doubt that there is somebody, the chief security officer or the chief operating officer or the personnel officer that in those organizations, in those instances, has determined that the need for security and access control justified badging.

B (6:15)

Yep. Now let's just start debunking this. Imagine that your company uses badges for these good reasons. And you hire a new employee and they say to you during onboarding, you've already offered them, they've already accepted. You never really talked about badges because you don't even think about badges. It's just one of the many particles of air that you breathe is one of those unspoken about but understood systems processes within organizations. Okay? And during their onboarding, your new hire says, look, listen, I'm not a fan of badges. I don't like the way they look. They can mess up my clothes, they mess with my personal chakra or aura. Believe it or not, folks, I've actually heard that one. Somebody said once, oh, they have RFID chips in them. They have something else. They're tracking me. I'm uncomfortable with this. It's big brother and so on. And so this person says, badges aren't really my style and so I'd like to not have to wear one. And he says to you, you're his new manager. Can you please arrange for me to have the access I need without having to wear a badge?

A (7:26)

So once you pick your jaw up off the floor, I would suggest you'd probably say something like, I'm sorry, but badges are required for everyone here. It helps with security and with access control. And unfortunately, the wearing of a badge is a non negotiable in our organization. Like, folks, in other words, you would insist on this new hire conforming to the system that your firm reasonably uses to maintain its safety and security.

B (8:03)

Reasonable.

A (8:04)

Yeah, reasonable. I can't imagine anyone, any, any person listening to this, anyone ever really saying, oh, no problem, I'll find a workaround for you.

B (8:12)

Yeah, it doesn't happen.

A (8:14)

It doesn't happen.

B (8:14)

Yeah. And by the way, this, this was the first instance that got me started thinking about, I mean, I think about managerial systems all the time. Of course I'm really narrow and really deep on one thing, which is managing both, you know, organizational systems and processes and so on. And this is what got me started this. I had an aha moment of like, wow, this actually happened to a manager that I knew. This is, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when badges were relatively new and Certainly they were true in a lot of governmental organizations which have security concerns and so on, and probably today heightened security in many cases. But I was just astounded that someone would think that an organizational system that everybody took for granted was something that they could not be involved in. But it went on. And by the way, all of these examples we're sharing with you, I have firsthand knowledge. I think the guy who was the manager in the badging case is now retired. I'm not in touch with them, but I've encountered these in, in my experience. So we'll take another system in your company. Your firm probably has standards for communicating around financials, right? It's likely, in fact, based on market share, that your firm uses Microsoft Excel to do so. It's very common. Most people think of email as the Internet's. It actually was the Internet's first app, and it is the killer app for the Internet. But the killer app inside organizations was Excel. And even though your firm uses Microsoft Excel, it really doesn't matter what software your firm uses. Your firm has a system for talking about financials. And we're just going to use Excel as the example, as it was in this one particular case. It's a system for capturing and sharing financial information. Everyone understands it. I mean, how many people have you known? This is hopefully no one who's listening to us still does it. But people put on their resumes, you know, competency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on. Right. It's just a given. You have to know how to use it.

A (10:27)

Exactly. So now suppose you have a different new hire. It's gotta be a different new hire because the badge guy, if he's not going to give in, you're going to have to replace the badge guy. So this new hire that you've hired to replace that guy says to you during onboarding, look, I see that there's Excel loaded on my laptop and I don't use Excel. I use Apple numbers or Google sheets or whatever.

B (10:54)

Lotus 1, 2, 3.

A (10:55)

Lotus 123. Exactly. Yeah. The thing is, Excel's just not my style. I'm pretty good with it. And I really don't want to learn all the other Excel stuff my way. Kind of works for me. So if you could make that happen, that would be great.

B (11:09)

Yeah. And much like the badging example, you'd say something like, well, I'm sorry, but we use Excel. I don't even think the IT people will let you load Apple's numbers on a company laptop. We license Excel for Everyone, we pay for it. So it's a sunk cost. We've paid for it, so you have to use it. We can't everybody have everybody using whatever the heck they want. And if you're new hire insisted and said, well, I'm not going to use Excel, I want to use numbers or whatever else, you'll probably say, hey, look, I appreciate it, I respect it, it's your call. But that's not going to work for us and you can't come to work for us unless you're going to use Excel. And so they probably, if they felt strongly about it now, that would be a stupid decision. But in the case that I know this person chose not to because they didn't want to use Excel, this is many years ago. And so they wouldn't come to work for you.

A (12:05)

Exactly. And those are only two examples. I mean, here's another. Your company probably uses an online expense reporting system of some sort or another. It's way faster and cheaper and safer and all around better than the old fashioned way of collecting receipts and submitting them in an envelope with a paper accounting form attached to it. Trust me, those of us that had to do that, it was a lot.

B (12:32)

There are people who are listening who have never seen that.

A (12:35)

Yeah, absolutely.

B (12:35)

Just like there are people who, you know, I'm 65 now. There are people that don't know we ran large organizations, multi billion dollar organizations. Without email.

A (12:45)

Yeah.

B (12:45)

Without cell phones. And we just take those things for granted now.

A (12:49)

Absolutely. And I mean, folks, I assure you, as the person who was responsible for collecting all the pieces of paper with all of the receipts.

B (12:56)

Yeah.

A (12:56)

Stapled to it, it wasn't a fun job. So suppose that on your third attempt, now let's say to hire somebody because I mean, the badging guy didn't work. The Excel person, they washed out too.

B (13:09)

We tried to make this funny by, by making it a series of the same people coming up with different people coming up with different systems they're objecting to. Hopefully you understand that this would never happen to you. But it did happen. It has happened.

A (13:22)

Exactly. So let's, let's say the new person, they say to you, so the thing is, I don't trust banks and I don't like online expense accounting. It's just not my style. What I want to do, what I've always done is I'm going to bring to you a pile of receipts and you can just pay me out in cash each week that I travel. Oh, and another thing, I don't do banking online. At all, really. So I'm also going to need my salary to be paid in cash as well, if you don't mind.

B (13:54)

I hope you're laughing with this, folks, because it's farcical, it's hysterical, and yet at the same time, all of these things happened. And of course, that's not the point that they happen. The point is these are people interacting with systems that the organizations can read that organizations reasonably insist on for the effective and efficient running of the organization. Now look, in this case, again, you'd likely retrieve your draw from the floor, although by now you've probably learned to keep a straight face with all this craziness. And you'd say something like, look, I get it, right? I used to do expense accounting that way. But that is our new system and we don't collect paper receipts or paper forms and we don't pay in cash. And again, again, we're getting into the farcical here, but we're trying to make a point with a little bit of humor. If they insisted, you'd wish them well and tell them they have to find a different employer and hope that they go to work for one of your competitors and the competitor lets them do all these things.

A (14:52)

Mm, yeah, that'd be a lovely way to slow them down. Okay, so now you might be listening, folks. These are all really simplistic examples. So we're gonna do one more. We're gonna do a bigger one.

B (15:04)

A bigger one. And this one has happened too. And it's slightly different in that this is not a new hire.

A (15:09)

Exactly. So suppose one of your colleagues, they got promoted to a really senior level position, one that meant they would need to be involved in corporate strategy. Now, when she went to her first strategy meeting, Ann took aside one of her colleagues there and said to them, look, I get that you guys use okrs underpinning a blue ocean strategy framework, but that's not my strategic style. It's not what I've done. I don't agree with this approach and I won't be able to contribute to it because I don't know it and I don't like it. If that was the case, folks, how long do you think that individual would be able to keep their job? One that required them to contribute to corporate strategy if they insisted on doing it their own way? How long?

B (16:04)

Not long.

A (16:05)

Not long.

B (16:06)

I mean, again, you'd have an executive go, I'm sorry, I've never heard anyone say that before in my life. And again, all of these are real scenarios. I don't think in the scenario this is before Blue Ocean strategy, the book came out. I don't remember what strategy the company used, but it was not the one this person was used to. And they ended up leaving because they didn't agree with the strategy process that the company had used for many years. And by the way, folks, this is not to say that the strategy process that your company uses won't change when your chief executive changes. That definitely happens. Okay? But when you're the chief executive, you can drive systemic change in the organization. Organization, yeah. And look, when you think about all these situations, it's obvious that the company, every company has various systems it uses to run its business. These decisions are often made at more senior levels than most of us operate. Although we now have plenty of chief executives that started as managers when they started listening to us 20 years ago. And they're now chief executives, chief operating officers, chief security officers, chief admin officers, chief personnel officers. And we accept them as part of what we all understand is the necessary subordination we are all obligated to bend toward to allow the overall organization to maximize its effectiveness. This is a function of how organizations are meant to be run. And it is derived from something called the law of suboptimization. And the law of suboptimization teaches us that if subgroups, ultimately individuals, although you could talk about departments and divisions and groups and so on, if subgroups themselves are optimized within a larger framework, okay, then the overall organization itself will be sub optimized. And the opposite is also true. I guess it's the contrapositive. It is only by suboptimizing the subgroups. And this is the great reason why authenticity at work is a bad idea. By suboptimizing the subgroups, meaning sub, optimizing each individual in the organization slightly. That's the only way that the overall organization can be itself optimized, be its best, achieve its objectives, make the best products and services, and continue to survive.

A (18:31)

In the corporate world, folks, Another way that you can think about all of these systems is they are part of the way your organization manages itself. Now, if this is how our organization manages itself, this is how it runs itself. We have to ask ourselves, how can any organization claim that management, the managing of people, the heart of the organization, how can that not be a system unto itself? How can managing people not be the single most important system of all of the systems our organization uses to manage itself?

B (19:19)

Yep.

A (19:20)

And the answer, of course, is one cannot. Management is a system. It's the system of all of the systems. It is the one system that binds all of the other systems together.

B (19:39)

Yeah. And folks, if that's true, and I think we've proven it fairly conclusively, prima facie, it follows that. By the way, that's Latin for on its face. It follows that managers cannot claim their own personal management style any more than they can claim such stylistic differences with the rest of the lower systems in any organization. For instance, I want to use Lotus. I don't want a badge, I want to be paid in cash. I don't want to use that strategy system, all of those things which are subordinate to the management system. If you can't resist those and choose your own way, your optimization of yourself and as against the organization, then there's no way you can claim a stylistic difference with the management system of your organization. You can't.

A (20:34)

Let's get everybody on the same page this year. Bring manager tools to your organization for any of our trainings. Heck, we can even customize trainings specifically built for your organization. Just let us know what you need and how we can help. Send us an email to customerserviceanager-tools.com and we'll talk about what we can do to help your team get on the same page in 2026. So now that we've debunked our myth, if you will, about managerial style, we're going to talk about how management is the most important system in every organization. And folks, the fact is, management or managing others is the ultimate system in every organization. Managing other people becomes a necessary part of how organizations work. Without management, again, managing others, the organization becomes a club with a bunch of individual members, each of them free to do as they choose and nothing that ties them all together in one cohesive way.

B (21:43)

Yeah, and if you think about that for a second, that's like saying, I want to start a company, but it's going to be more like a club. Or even worse, it's going to be more like a family. And everybody's going to do what they want to do.

A (21:52)

Yep, whatever they like. Spend their time wherever they want.

B (21:55)

I'm aware of only one company that is truly managerless. It's an agricultural company called Morningstar Farms. And it's privately held. And they have different problems. Every organizational, structural, systemic, operational, procedural decision that organizations make are essentially, they come with their own benefits and their own detriments. And over the last hundred years or so, large organizations which didn't exist 2, 300 years ago outside of the military and government, by the way. If you're wondering why your organization is vertically structured the way it is and sort of like a big triangle or pyramid or whatever, it's because of the military. Because the only when companies got big, they figured out that the only organizations that they could model themselves after were the military. You may not like that, but that's the human condition as it exists right now. And maybe in a hundred years there'll be a new one, a different one. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. Because when you think of what organizations are able to do by asking people to suboptimize themselves slightly, to allow the magnification of humans working together, aligned and communicating and so on, not the communicating is easy. When you think about that for a minute, you realize, I really doubt there's much of a better way. I, I hope there becomes one. But I doubt the managing of people will ever not be the single most important system. Look, if you started a club and you called it a company, allowing everybody to do what they want, it's simply incompatible with the purpose of your organization. In fact, you could argue, and I would, that without management, the organization as an entity ceases to exist. The purpose of your organization is not to make a profit, not to grow ebitda. Those are measures and they're important measures because you have to pay for the future. But the purpose of organizations is to serve society. We have been saying that for 20 years and I still get people talking to me all the time about I'm concerned about profit or I'm concerned about this, I'm concerned about that. I said, dude, let's talk about what you guys do to serve society. And by the way, if you don't serve society well enough, if the products and services you provide are not seen to be a good use of the customer's cash, the customer's income, the customer's revenue to pay you to make their job easier. If there's not more value in your product or service than people think they're paying for, even if that value is how they feel about it, your organization will soon go out of business. Because we serve society. It serves society more effectively to have managerial systems, operational systems, financial systems, technical systems, production systems, everything. It serves society more effectively than each individual being able to choose the way he or she does it on their own. It is management, the management of people and the communication thereof that aligns people, it focuses them, and again, it allows organizations to massively magnify the performance of those individuals working alone.

A (25:08)

Absolutely. Again, just to hammer on what you just said, Mark, folks, it's not products or services that make organizations effective. That's what they offer to society, but the products and services that they've got, that's not what creates the value. People create the value by creating the products and the services. Thus the managing of people is why organizations are effective.

B (25:36)

Yeah. Now that's the first part, that management is the ultimate system. And so again, prima facie just follows on its face that managers are therefore obligated to manage as part of the organization and its existing systems. You live within the organization, you manage within the organization. So we come to what do these fundamental truths mean for us? What does it mean behaviorally for a manager, tools, manager? Well, once we accept that managing is a system and not a style, an organizational system, as opposed to an individual style, what does that also cause to be true for the managers and the organization itself?

A (26:17)

Well, first, what it means is that managers are obligated to manage the way the organization wants their managers to behave. And folks, you've seen this in many instances. I mean, performance reviews, engagement surveys, those are two really simple examples. But those are managerial systems at play within your organization that you as the individual manager can simply opt out of because you don't want.

B (26:48)

That's not my style.

A (26:49)

It's not my style to do performance reviews. It's not my style to do this, this engagement survey that you all paid a bunch of money for us to all have to do.

B (26:57)

Yeah, and look, I just had a conversation with someone. One of my coaching clients, Kruslov in Poland, said he just got an engagement survey and his people had to take it. And he's been telling his people not to give, you know, don't tell your people to give you feedback if you're a manager. But they scored low on giving their manager feedback. So I talked him through how to change that score by encouraging their managers to his managers to ask his people for input and suggestions and recommendations. But definitely don't call it feedback. You can't opt out of that. Obviously. Now look, some of you are saying, hey, Mark, Sarah, Mike, manager trolls. My company doesn't actually mandate a lot of what you're thinking of managing people, managerial guidance. And yet actually they do, as in the two examples that Sarah just gave. And there are many other similar areas. There are systems of management. This is of management for salary reviews, for hiring, for termination. You have to follow the company's processes on those. Now, to be fair, very few companies mandate things like one on ones or feedback, which are core managerial behaviors. But they haven't Gone as far yet they will sometime in the future to mandate those kind of foundational behaviors.

A (28:20)

Yeah. I mean almost no managers that I know can single handedly fire or hire or create a new position or they have to consult with other people.

B (28:30)

Right. And here's the thing, they say that's a personnel system. It's not all personnel systems are management systems. That's what the company is doing, is managing its people.

A (28:41)

Exactly. And folks, there's a really important factor affecting all of this. Even though organizations don't mandate every single managerial behavior, like in the case of one on ones and feedback for example, they do mandate some like the ones that we mentioned. But more importantly, the lack of formal managerial guidance in all areas does not preclude subordinate managers from insisting on specific managerial behaviors from their subordinate managers. So folks, just because the organization itself hasn't mandated something like one on ones or feedback, that doesn't mean you as a director or even manager manage. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you cannot mandate or insist in this case on specific managerial behaviors like the fulfillment of one on ones and feedback from your subordinate managers.

B (29:43)

Yeah. Now some people, some of you are thinking, wait, Mark, Sarah, all of those things you talked about, engagement surveys and badging and expense accounting and Excel and so on. All those things, financial communications and so on, all those things come from the top.

A (30:00)

The person above me.

B (30:01)

Yeah. It doesn't come from me. Yes, that's true. But remember folks, your role power, your role as manager is an explicit delegation from the company to speak for the company. When you speak to your team, you are speaking with the power of the CEO about your team. You can't speak to everybody with the power of the CEO, but you can speak to your team. The CEO doesn't need to know what you do. He or she can't. But that is what your role power is. The ability to speak to your people with the power of the CEO. Now some people would say, well you know, I don't really feel that way. It doesn't matter whether you feel, I respect that you don't feel that way. But the fact is, it's true, it's in the very nature of your role. And while organizational wide systems affect everyone, each subordinate level manager is given the authority to insist on managerial systems. Could be one on ones, could be feedback. There are hundreds more in their part of the organization.

A (31:08)

And folks, again in, in the cases that we mentioned earlier, badges, financial systems, expense reporting, even strategy, frankly, far too many managers make the assumption that those are organization wide systems and thus they can be mandated by the chief executive, often through the chief executive's executive staff. But that does not mean that the systems you put in place in your area do not carry the weight of the chief executive. Of course they do. That's what role power is. And yeah, of course you can be overruled. Folks. No one is above being overruled. The CEO can be overruled by the board. The board decisions can be overruled by the customers. Yes, being able to be overruled is not a reason not to establish managerial systems in your part of the organization. It's just not. Of course you could be overruled, unless.

B (32:09)

You just want your part of the organization to be a club.

A (32:11)

Yeah, exactly.

B (32:12)

Right.

A (32:12)

Yep.

B (32:13)

What all this means again. And Sarah alluded to this earlier. If you're a director or an executive, you can insist on the managerial behaviors you expect your subordinate managers to engage in. Whether that is five, because you're only a senior manager with five managers reporting to you or 500 managers. You have a whole division or group. This is what role power is. The power to speak for the chief executive in your area. Responsibility about systems. And you ought to start with management. That's the system that binds them all together. That's what you do. You put in place systems that will help you run your part of the organization the same way. The CEO, coo, cao, cpo, cdo. I think there's one for every letter of the Alphabet. I certainly know there's a cxo. I don't think I've ever heard of czo, but there probably is one.

A (32:57)

I'm sure someone's got one. Write us a note. And, and folks, what all of that means is you no longer have to accept manager saying that whatever you do, from the manager tools, trinity to meetings to interviewing to hiring and onboarding and all of the other guidance that we've published, you no longer have to sit back and have your directs, who are also managers, insist that this isn't their style. Because if you're the one insisting on it, then that trumps what they feel their individual style around management.

B (33:36)

Law of suboptimization.

A (33:38)

Exactly. So in that case, we would encourage our licensees to share this guidance with their subordinate managers. Anyone listening to this cast, I mean, by all means, if you are doing one on ones and feedback and coaching and delegation and you manage, people insist that they put these things in place, these things that have worked for you in place as well, and then hold them accountable to it. Measure them on the managerial behaviors, the systems that you yourself have found to be effective when it comes to leadership.

B (34:15)

Let's go back to strategy for just a second.

A (34:17)

Yeah.

B (34:17)

The new CEO comes in, says, well, I have a different way of doing strategy. He or she has found that way to be effective and believes it will be more effective than the way the company's doing it now. So he changes that system for the people who are involved in strategy, which ends up being everybody, even though the vast majority of times most of us are feel fairly disconnected from the strategy at lower levels. So he comes in and he does something a certain way because he learned it before and it worked for him or her before. And so, so now the entire organization is going to do it. You become promoted to be a VP or a senior director or something with two or three or five hundred or a thousand people and you say, no, this is the way we do things in my organization, the same the CEO did. So let me summarize this, folks. Management style is a myth, and I need to go no further than what other areas in your company does the company tacitly say. Your style in anything is okay. Your style.

A (35:14)

It's not.

B (35:16)

It's not. Management style is a myth. It has always been a myth. Management is the most important system in the company and it is not to be left to personal style considerations. You don't have to allow subordinate managed managers to manage according to their own style just because how you manage isn't mandated by the company, even though many parts of what you do are mandated. You can establish your own managerial systems and you can do so with the same power that the CEO insists on managerial behaviors, organization wide. What this means, folks, is you are the CEO of your part of the organization. You're speaking for the CEO. You.

A (36:02)

Yeah. So start acting like it.

B (36:04)

Yeah.

A (36:05)

Well, that was a good one. Thank you, Mark.

B (36:07)

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks everybody.

A (36:10)

Thank you so much for joining us and we hope you join us again next week for a brand new topic. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course follow rate and review our podcast and remember, five stars only. Please.