When workers are smarter than the boss

By ANGELA MCCARTHY and ASHLEY CAMPBELL

Managing a workforce can be difficult enough, but what if that workforce comprises highly educated individuals who may be smarter and quicker thinkers than the managers themselves?

Having invested money, ego and years of their lives in gaining qualifications that mark them as thinkers worthy of respect, they are not going to respond to direction in the same way as workers with less personal investment in their intellect.

Yet their managers - like any managers - still need to align the individuals' actions, and significant intellectual resources, with the organisation's goals. How to do it?

It's a challenge that Dr Lester Levy frequently faced during his time as chief executive of South Auckland Health.

Now head of the University of Auckland's New Zealand Leadership Institute, Levy says a big mistake for managers is to concern themselves with their position rather than their role.

"They think, 'I'm a chief executive, I have power, I have control'. But leadership is more about influence, relationships, getting people's voluntary commitment. Communication is vital."

Having been exposed to overbearing management approaches himself, Levy says he chose at South Auckland Health to get alongside the health professionals he was working with, rather than trying to lead from the front.

When professionals are highly involved in decision-making, they will provide a high level of interaction and input, Levy says.

And when, by being involved, they see the constraints managers have to work under, they also start to see where managers are coming from.

His sentiments are shared by Victoria University's human resources director Geoff Summers, who says there is simply no point in having an ego when managing highly skilled professionals.

"We consult a lot because it is the way to get people on side. It takes longer but it works."

There is a downside, adds Summers: you have less control over the outputs, and you have to work harder.

But the payoff is that "when you consult smart people you often end up making changes to what you were going to do because of what you learn from consultation".

The censure of Auckland orthopaedic surgeon Bruce Twaddle for publicly criticising the level of resources in the city's new hospital was a classic example of how not to manage a knowledge-based workforce.

As Ian Powell, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists points out, health workers' main responsibility is to their patients - even if that causes conflict with the employer. Doctors have a right to speak out, and have done so before, even if management isn't happy with it.

What happened this time, says Powell, was that second-tier management decided to over-ride that contractual right. It was a punitive way to manage, he says, that affected workplace morale because few people want to put their heads on the block if there was a whiff of recriminations.

"In fact our overriding concern was not so much the contractual right - that was clear despite what management say - but the use of intimidation to prevent the legitimate exercise of this right."

Adds association president Jeff Brown: "When senior medical officers don't trust senior managers, it is very difficult to get trust back. It ends up being about control, not people management."

Summers relates an incident that was handled differently. When a professor recently made comments about the university lowering the quality of students, the university got the professor's Pro Vice-Chancellor to speak to the press about the comments.

As academic freedom to speak out is enshrined in the Education Act, the university management cannot do anything about public comment, says Summers.

"However universities are seen as places of debate, therefore it was important the Pro Vice-Chancellor speaks out as well, to highlight the other side of the argument and show management didn't necessarily agree. But heads don't roll."

The professional workforce is often an organisation's biggest resource, says Powell. But rather than tapping into that resource and using it as effectively as possible, many managers try to wrest control off the professionals, who they see as capturing the services.

"They feel that nurses and doctors have vested interest so can't be trusted, which ignores the value of professionalism that drives most people.

"But health professionals, like managers, don't wake up every morning thinking 'How can I stuff the system up today?"'

In a business world beset by skills shortages, harnessing the intellectual rigour of such a workforce - rather than trying to rein it in - can give an organisation significant competitive advantage.

Powell cites, as an example of the benefits such an approach can bring, a taskforce in New South Wales that is reviewing metropolitan acute services. The taskforce is independent of the Department of Health and is run by health professionals who are looking at the best way to configure services to better meet needs.

"They're coming up with practical low-key enhancements, nothing revolutionary, but it is working well because of the engagement of health professionals in their sector."

Professionals are paid to specialise, says Philip Pogson, director of Australian consulting firm The Leading Partnership.

The more they know about a unique area, the greater their status and marketability. And many value that professional status higher than their status in employing organisations.

He spells out some important principles for working with an intelligent workforce.

First of all, says Pogson, give them assignments that allow them to learn and grow professionally - these guys have a thirst for knowledge. Such assignments motivate professionals; close supervision and step-by-step tasks do not.

Secondly, consult about change. Explicit rules and defined job boundaries don't work with people whose first loyalty is probably to their profession rather than their organisation.

And get to know your people better. "Learn to hold deeper, more purposeful conversations with staff about the basics."

Levy agrees that giving staff wide freedom to discuss concerns, and really listening, is vital for keeping them on side.

"We engaged in internal resolutions but if someone felt they should speak out they did," he says of his days at South Auckland Health. "Too many shackles can be put on people.

"Having a view isn't a bad thing if a climate exists to have things resolved constantly in the organisation."

Take the clinical board that Levy set up within the South Auckland Health management structure. It brought people who often had diverging viewpoints into the decision-making loop.

All complex clinical decisions passed through the board, so the experts were involved in making decisions around constraints as well as opportunities.

When the South Auckland new super clinics were being developed, the professionals signed off the design, which meant buy in, says Levy.

A good manager needs to be a good listener, have a sense of strategic direction, know his or her limits and be able to give others space to be creative and learn, says Dr Bill Rosenberg, president of the Association of University Staff (AUS) and IT manager at the University of Canterbury.

Time and flexibility to think, to come up with new concepts, is important for professionals, he says.

"In our IT department there are many people with qualifications up to PhD. We constantly need professional development and training because we continually have to find new ways to do things."

You get nowhere just telling people what to do, he says. "We need to rely on people to use their initiative."

Of course, people with multiple qualifications want high autonomy and recognition of status, says the Auckland Institute of Management's chief executive Kevin Gaunt.

Organisations that recognise expertise and allow independence will make the most of their intellectual assets. This doesn't necessarily mean they promote such workers, but they do recognise and regard them for their expertise.

"They will often be allowed much more freedom and will be expected to work outside the organisation as well as within it."

Recognising experts adds value externally - by showing a different dimension - and gives a true sense of leadership, says Gaunt.

"I remember at Carter Holt Harvey we had a number of timber experts, some with PhDs, and they were allowed significant freedom and were seen internally as 'national living treasures'."