Much management development involves managers being exposed to new ideas, methods, information, management tools and the experience of others. After which they return to their teams with good intentions only to fall back on the same old habits.

It wasn’t that the training was irrelevant, didn’t engage, failed to inspire or it wasn’t  supported by their line manager. The reason nothing much changed was their team! The team knows their manager, they know how they like things done, they know what’s expected. They know their manager will return from yet another course and either say it was a complete waste of time or will be very enthusiastic, will probably make some symbolic change like moving the office furniture around,” to improve communication” or rotate the chairing of team meetings as part of ,”empowering “ team members, although that experiment is short lived.

The problem for the manager is that although the team moan that they are, “under valued “and “not consulted” they are comfortable with their working practices, arrangements and  routines, they know where they stand and whilst they think the manager is far from perfect and could be a bit more flexible they prefer things the way they are. So why is their  manager behaving so differently, so unpredictably, so confusingly, why all of a sudden are we expected to do things differently. The manager finds this exhausting and after a few weeks their evangelical zeal has evaporated and everyone is happy that they can get back to normal.

This doesn’t happen if a new manager arrives with a reputation and a remit to do things differently. In this case the team is keen to establish what the new manager expects and whilst they may have their doubts and misgivings which they may or may not voice they want to make a good impression.

So for organisations the secret of radically changing the way managers manage is to appoint new managers. But you can’t sack everyone and start again, so what do you do? This is what I did. I had a group of some 20 managers many of whom had been in the same post for years. Intelligent people who realised the organisation was changing and adapting and that this would have implications for them. Nervous that their experience and skills would not be seen as transferable and many would lose heir jobs or be overlooked in a restructuring.

A new job description was drawn up with  a minor enhancement to the grade and pay to reflect devolved responsibility and a new job tile emphasising the difference from their old job. Everyone was guaranteed one of these new posts. But to get round the problem of team expectations, of going home on Friday as one type of manager and coming to work on Monday as a different type of manager they were required to change teams.

The process to be facilitated by HR. Each manager to identify top 3 preferences for move to a new team and HR to slot people in according to preferences. If more than one person opted for the same post then formal internal interviews would be held. It was clear managers did not want to go through the riggers of an interview process so they got together and sorted it out amongst themselves submitting the final agreed list of who goes where to HR. The following month the change took place.

I have skipped over a lot of the detailed sensitive negotiations and the persuasive explanations as to why the change was the best way forward in order to highlight a significant obstacle  to managers changing and how to over come it. Some managers embraced the new ways more enthusiastically than others but all were able to develop and grow freed from their former teams expectations. A small change had a big impact.