Letting go of control and finding flow

As we move away from the old, ineffective, and demotivating concept of trying to manage people, and instead lead people and manage things (systems, processes, procedures etc etc), a key is letting go of control.

Are you ready to lose control? a Strategy& article by Eric J. McNulty is a good place to begin.

Inside McNulty’s article is a link to this article by by Patty McCord the former chief talent officer at Netflix.

Here are some gems from Patty’s article

“People find the Netflix approach to talent and culture compelling for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that Netflix has been really successful: During 2013 alone its stock more than tripled, it won three Emmy awards, and its U.S. subscriber base grew to nearly 29 million. All that aside, the approach is compelling because it derives from common sense.”

“Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults

Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results, and at lower cost. If you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing. Most companies spend endless time and money writing and enforcing HR policies to deal with problems the other 3% might cause. Instead, we tried really hard to not hire those people, and we let them go if it turned out we’d made a hiring mistake.”

“Tell the Truth About Performance

Many years ago we eliminated formal reviews. We had held them for a while but came to realize they didn’t make sense—they were too ritualistic and too infrequent. So we asked managers and employees to have conversations about performance as an organic part of their work.”

“Good Talent Managers Think Like Businesspeople and Innovators First, and Like HR People Last”

If you need more evidence about letting go of control here is an excellent article by Margaret Wheatley for you to ponder It’s called Goodbye, Command and Control.

Here’s the thing. Management - in terms of planning, organising, directing and controlling people is dead. People can’t be managed. We must lead people and manage things. The perfect place to start is to say goodbye to command and control and embrace flow.

In the 5 minute video below I share some ideas to help you.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian