[MUSIC] I want to link that thought experiment back to something we said right at the beginning of this course in week, module number one. Now you may remember this slide. I'll actually reproduce the slide. You've seen it before where we've talked about these sort of three eras periods of time in kind of business history, from the industrial era to the knowledge era, to what I was calling the, the post knowledge era. And I've made the point there that the, the style of managing that we need is going to shift from being more of a monitor or control in the industrial era to being an information conduit, or an expert, a knowledgeable expert, in the knowledge era. Through to somebody who implements and empathizes, really tries to tap in to the emotional well-being of employees in the post knowledge era. And I made the point, of course, that gradually, as we move into the, to the future these implementer and empathiser elements are becoming more important. This slide here is just trying to put a bit of nuance on that. I'm not trying to say that the old approaches to managing a disappearing of the nuance is taking their place. What I'm trying to say is that there's going to be a gradual shift of emphasis over time. If the traditional companies had managers who are mostly focusing on monitoring and controlling, and actually spent much less of their time doing the empathy and the information conduits type of their role. What we're seeing as companies change through the forces that we talked about, technological change and so forth, we're seeing greater transparency. We're seeing greater automation of work. We're seeing expectations of employees is changing. What will happen, what is happening, is that the relative sort of importance of these three different parts of the manager's role are changing. So what we're saying really, is that these, these softer elements of managers empathizing and helping people to get things done are becoming more important than perhaps they were before. So we've seen what good management looks like. And in fact, in some ways, there's no mystery here. You might even recall I had a slide way earlier in the course, in week one again, talking about Google's research project, Oxygen, they called it, of all the different elements of what good managers do. And it's a very similar list to what you see on the left side here, which is that good managers give employees what they need in terms of a sense of direction, giving them space, providing support, and so forth. The point I want to make here is the following. On the right-hand side of this chart, you see that even though employees need all these good stuff, what they often get is the exact opposite. They often get very confusing or unclear objectives rather than a clear sense of direction. They get micro-managing and meddling from their boss. They often get a lack of information. A lack of, shall we say, concern, rather than support. And they often don't get the feedback and praise that they probably merit after doing a good job. Why is that? Why is it even we know full well what good management looks like, and particularly, what good management looks like in today's era, why is it that we actually don't see that consistently? I think managing has an awful lot in common with a few other activities that we do. For example, a lot of you might play golf. Some of you might be dieters. I think that the world of kind of self-help books in managing actually has an awful lot in common with the self-help books around playing golf and learning to diet. Why? Imagine, or rather, imagine, just think back to last time you looked at a, a book on either golf or dieting. These are books with long, long lists of things that you should do. Here are the ten things you have to keep in mind before you hit the ball off the tee in the game of a golf. Here are the list of things that you have to prepare in mind when you're dieting. Well, it's a pretty long and obvious list in both cases. We all know exactly what we should be doing. The issue is not what we should be doing. The issue is why don't we actually do what we know we should be doing? In the world of golf, it turns out you can't become a better golfer just by reading a book. You actually gotta get a professional to advise you, to give you feedback on how you're actually addressing the ball. And to correct small variations in your, in your, in your swing. In the world of dieting, we all know what we should do, we should probably be eating, eating less and exercising more, if you see what I mean. We don't do it, because we are creatures of habit, we've got ingrained patterns of behavior that are very, very difficult to get out of. So there's a couple of hints from the world of golf and dieting that, I think, allow us to tackle this important question. This is a question that we're going to have a discussion on, if we know what good management looks like, why do we struggle to do it consistently? That is going to be on the course room to discuss. Obviously, I'm going to give you my answer to that question, but I'm not going to do it before you've had a chance to discuss it.
