Tag Archives: directive management style

Just Culture, Just Management

On the Home Page of our web site at www.timelesstime.co.uk we mention two concepts desirable in a firm: ‘just management’ and a ‘just culture’. What on earth are they? Are they simply esoteric states that it’s fun to talk about but never achieve? Or are they something tangible that every principal of every SME should strive for?

This brief blog discusses these two concepts.

First some definitions. Management’s role is to manage. Successful managers manage with the blessing of their staff. They gain legitimacy thought the culture they create and their appointment to a senior position by the board. That’s not to say that there’s a sort of democracy, just to acknowledge that to give direction and demand that stuff happens needs legitimacy. In an environment where folk chose to work in a firm, legitimacy is essential or folk walk or worse, they simply ignore the instruction. Managers are facilitators. They orchestrate and lead change. But they have to have their staff with them or they are pushing water up hill.

Culture is the climate that needs to be in place for management to gain that right to manage. It’s also the group’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, values and motives. If all the aforementioned are positive, legitimacy comes easy. If not, the manager must adopt a different approach, departing the ideal of facilitator and orchestrator and taking on a directive and authoritarian approach This leads to a breakdown of the culture and a weakening in the manager’s ability to effect change. Whilst it might be OK in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen, such aggressive methods become wearing after a short time.
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