Trusting employees you can learn from a mackerel

As a manager, together with your employees, you want to achieve the best possible results. And preferably within foreseeable time and at the least possible cost. And of course, in doing so, you want to give employees confidence. Quite a job. Or is it?

If your employees are facing the same direction, if they take responsibility, if they are motivated, if they would work well together for once…..yes, it’s a cinch…. But how do you get that to happen as a manager?

Lengthy training, complicated tools, controlling procedures; that might help a little, but couldn’t it be simpler?

Yes!
Take a look at the following video:

Wonderful right! With those mackerels, there is no doubt at all: the noses are literally in the same direction….

Peek into the kitchen of the animal world

Nature is a wonderful source of smart and efficient practices. Consider the bow of a ship. Who would have ever thought that the shape of a dolphin’s head gives less drag than a sharp bow? Or have you ever asked yourself why the tip of an airplane’s wing is up? Borrowed directly from nature from birds of prey who can maneuver tremendously well with the tip of their wings. There are countless examples of things we have learned or copied from nature.

What could an executive learn from nature when it comes to giving confidence to?

There is no ‘chief’ mackerel

You know the drill: a huge school of fish,in this case mackerel, that manage to stay together. The purpose is clear: moving so closely together makes it harder for a potential enemy to isolate an individual. How do they manage to do that? There is no “chief” mackerel telling everyone when to turn left or right. Rather, they move in a kind of symphony of fluid motions. Without direction, how do they stay together?

3 SIMPLE DECISIONS of a Mackerel

Mackerels don’t need a leader. Each individual follows only 3 simple rules:

1. Always move toward the center
2. Follow your neighbor
3. Avoid collisions

These 3 simple rules allow each mackerel to act individually, and it ensures that the group (the school of fish) is united and determined in pursuit of the common goal: escape from a hungry dolphin.

Why decision rules are important

As a team or organization, you also seek some kind of balance between a shared direction and individual independence. This balance is becoming increasingly important In an increasingly complex society where organizations are under pressure, a working professional who can make decisions independently while keeping an eye on the big picture is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. It is up to the manager to encourage the professional in this.

Giving confidence to employees

In the police and military, there is already such a thing as “fundamental principles.” These principles, for example, help the policeman on the street to make good and independent decisions. Decisions appropriate to achieving the agreed upon goal. This is called a doctrine. The mackerel’s fundamental principles are well known: move to the center, follow your neighbor, avoid collisions. How this mackerel does that further it decides for itself.

In many companies, teams and organizations, such a doctrine/fundamental principle is conspicuously absent. Of course there are missions, visions, goals, policies and procedures that make clear where we are going and what people should do.

However, few companies have a clear doctrine that supports decision making throughout the organization. And that makes it difficult for managers to trust their employees to make independent decisions, and they stay busy overseeing, controlling and correcting.

The trick is to transform your controlling behavior as a manager into principles that reinforce the decision-making behavior of your employees. In other words, process-oriented management gives way to principle-oriented management.

How does that work? An organization as an example:

THE PRINCIPLES OF WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia has five interesting principles. This makes Wikipedia a forerunner in terms of a different way of giving trust:

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
2. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view
3. Wikipedia contains free content
4. Wikipedia has a code of conduct
5. Wikipedia has no hard rules

As an individual writer, these principles are perfectly manageable to test and filter your contribution to the website. Thanks in part to these principles, Wikipedia is a widely visited and popular knowledge platform.

MORE THAN A TRICK

Using fundamental principles, is more than a trick. It is a different style of leadership that provides maximum space for people to take responsibility and make decisions independently. A beautiful journey that, of course, requires explicit attention to the new interpretation of your role as manager. It is a different way of giving confidence to employees.

Becoming a mackerel?

– Take existing values of your company and build them into decision-making principles.
– Keep the principles simple, unambiguous and limited in number
– Test against decisions already made to see if the principles work.
– Try them out with your employees over a set period of time
– From time to time, evaluate the returns.

We would love to hear your experiences as a mackerel!