As it happened, my grandpa only played one match for them before injury put paid to his rugby career. That was in 1921, but he wore this affiliation like a badge of honor right up until his death at the age of 99.  

The All Blacks were revered a hundred years ago, and they still are. This makes them a perfect case study for Professor Alex Hill, co-founder and director of the Centre for High Performance, a collaboration between Kingston University London, Duke University, London Business School, and the University of Oxford. 

Building Centennial Organizations

For more than a decade, he’s researched organizations that have outperformed their peers for over 100 years. In addition to the New Zealand All Blacks, he’s studied NASA, Eton College and the Royal Shakespeare Company, among other household names. 

Hill has identified 12 habits they share, looking at how they analyze success and failure, recruit great talent, and create new products and ideas. He lays these out in his new book, “Centennials,” and offers advice for others who aspire to such longevity today. 

In this clip from our Expert Interview, Hill reflects on how corporate behavior can embed itself from generation to generation. (You can stream the audio clip below or read a transcript here.)

The How and Why of Centennial Organizations

Hill acknowledges that not all organizations are in it for the long haul. Some don’t want to last 100 years, so for them, a focus on short-term returns is appropriate. 

“A lot of management thinking comes from business, and actually those principles and ideas are great if you want to burn bright, but then disappear,” he says. “But if you don’t want to do that and you want to build something that’s going to last, then you have to think in a very different way.” 

And this is a worthy goal, he believes, as “centennial” organizations deliver benefits for communities and society as a whole, as well as for themselves. 

“They help us solve bigger, more complex questions, things like climate change or poverty or health or education, where actually you’re building a collective knowledge in an institution that is growing over time. And you’re solving a problem which can’t just be solved quickly, where actually it might take many decades or many generations to actually work out how to fix it,” he explains. 

The 12 habits in Hill’s book provide a framework for organizations with such ambitions. The first six help to build a stable core, identifying a strong purpose for the work, developing stewardship, and fostering an open attitude toward the world. The last six focus on what he calls the “disruptive edge.” These habits encourage new ideas that propel organizations forward. 

The Power of Performing in Public

I was particularly struck by habit five, “perform in public,” about harnessing the power of strangers. Within an organization, it’s hard to see what you’re doing well – or not so well. Whereas, if you perform to a trusted stranger, you can learn a lot from their feedback, which may include fresh ideas from the outside, too. And of course, when we’re being watched, we almost always raise our game. 

“They’ve done lots of different studies around this, [and] they found that if you have a stranger present in a group, the group feels that they need to perform better,” says Hill. “So they will often be more rigorous in their discussion or their debates, they will explain things more clearly, they make [fewer] mistakes, and they often perform at a higher level because of that.”  

As a freelance producer, I’ve seen this firsthand. Often, I’m the stranger, going into organizations to record a podcast or interview employees. In these situations, I’ve noticed that people do tend to make an effort to act as professionally as they can. 

A few years ago, I produced a series of educational podcasts for a U.K.-based university. Each episode consisted of a roundtable discussion between academics teaching on a particular degree course. As soon as the microphones were set up, all the participants switched into “performance” mode. 

They listened attentively to one another, articulated their views with clarity and verve, and sometimes asked to redo something if they felt it could have been expressed better. If I hadn’t been there, the discussion may have been a bit more relaxed. But it might not have been as useful for the audience of students. 

Outside Observation Brings Centennial Results

Hill says he’s seen performance work in all sorts of situations. 

“You start to realize that every high-performing organization has a performance, and sometimes it happens very naturally, like an Olympic Games or a World Cup or a moon landing – this moment where they have to really perform,” he says.  

“But other organizations where it doesn’t happen naturally will artificially create it. So, like the Royal College of Art has open studios, where strangers can walk through, or they’ll get students to do shows where people can come.” 

It’s an effective way for organizations to practice the mindset they need to last for 100 years. 

The post The Centennial Mindset: My Expert Interview With Alex Hill appeared first on Mind Tools.

I was recently out for a social occasion with some former teammates from my days in publishing. We were colleagues for nearly a decade. We've been through a lot together, and we're pretty close. Inevitably, we reminisced.

After a few laughs, someone said, "Oh, and what about Michael?" The mood changed instantly. Eyes were rolled. Heads were shaken. Words were used which had no place in a friendly gathering. The contempt and loathing were unanimous.

When Middle Managers Go Bad

Michael – not his real name, for obvious reasons – had been our manager. What you'd call a "middle manager." Neither C-suiter nor grunt, he was responsible for presenting the numbers to the next managerial layer up. And responsible for us.

Seen from above, I've no doubt that Michael was a model of competence. He hit targets and trimmed costs. He smoothed any potential turbulence, shielding his own superiors from the serious organizational problems being faced by team members.

From below, he was a nightmare. Untrustworthy, evasive and weak, he would go weeks without speaking to any of us outside formal meetings. As a close-knit group working on outlier projects, we probably weren't the easiest bunch to manage. But Michael didn't try.

The Stretched Middle

Michael's brand of "managing up" is just one reason why middle managers get a bad rap. And yet it's easy to see why it happens. Middle managers are often forced to flip between directing their teams and deferring to their superiors. They end up working on behalf of their reports and appeasing bosses who aren't interested in their problems, as long as the numbers look good.

It's no wonder some of them take the easy option. Others try to face both ways at the same time, fall short, and suffer stress or even burnout.

This is the situation the book "Power to the Middle" addresses. Written by three McKinsey consultants with substantial experience of middle management, the book acknowledges that middle managers are in the midst of a crisis. But it doesn't have to be that way.

A Better Way for Middle Managers?

Back to the social gathering. Also present was the manager who had set up the team in the first place. Let's call her Kate. Before being made redundant – a frequent fate for middle managers – Kate had recruited us, built our skills and invested time in us.

She had also shielded us from the politics and maneuvering of the layer above her. And she was with us that evening as a friend, not a former manager.

The authors of "Power to the Middle" would approve of Kate. She's their kind of middle manager. But she could only truly have flourished in an enlightened organization. Enlightened enough to see her potential as a developer of people. To free her from micro-reporting and infighting. Our employer wasn't that organization. Kate went, and we got Michael.

Freedom From Above

Typically, Kate is diplomatic about Michael. She understands the pressures that make him what he is. But she's also certain that her way of doing things is the right way. Her reports would agree. Her own bosses might have seen the point too, if they could've looked away from a culture based on the short-term fix. It's a big ask. But doesn't a culture in which people are free to develop their own skills and their teams' sound like a healthier option?

The authors of "Power to the Middle" think so. They place revitalized middle managers at the very heart of healthy organization, empowered by an enlightened C-suite. And isn't that where they ought to be?

Listen to Our "Power to the Middle" Book Insight

We review the best new business books and the tested classics in our monthly Book Insights, available as text or as 15-minute audio downloads.

So, if you're a Mind Tools Club member or corporate user, download or stream the "Power to the Middle" Book Insight now!

If you haven't already signed up, join the Mind Tools Club and gain access to our 2,400+ resources, including 390+ Book Insights. For corporate licensing, ask for a demo with one of our team.

About the Author

Simon has been researching, writing and editing non-fiction for over 30 years. In that time he’s worked on educational courses, scientific journals, and mass-market trade books about everything from popular psychology to buying houses in Bulgaria. In the last 20 years he’s specialized in simplifying complex subjects, and helping readers to learn new skills. Away from work he listens to good music, watches bad football, and is fascinated by medieval history.

The post Why Middle Managers Need Better Managing appeared first on Mind Tools.

As author and academic Martina Nieswandt put it in our recent Expert Interview podcast, “A middle manager is the one in an organization that receives information from another manager and forwards information to another manager, so that he or she is in between.”

Defined like that, it doesn’t sound very inspiring, does it? And what child says they want to be a middle manager when they grow up? Yet, many do grow up to be one.

It occurred to Nieswandt that these managers who shun the limelight are, in fact, crucial to the smooth running of organizations. And for companies going through change, she thought, middle management might have a very special and very significant role to play.

Working both as a consultant and a researcher, Nieswandt decided to investigate what that role – or roles – might be, particularly in a cultural-change scenario. Details of this work and her conclusions are published in a new book, “Fast Cultural Change – The Role and Influence of Middle Management.”

Nieswandt began with the premise that organizational change was more likely to stick if it went hand-in-hand with cultural change. She found that middle managers are important during both kinds of change process, making their mark by juggling a variety of different roles.

For organizational change, she concluded that they need to be implementers, synthesizers, champions, and facilitators.

“As an implementer you receive information from the top management, like guidelines and objectives…This is a very typical role for the middle manager,” she says, explaining the first of these four roles in simple terms.

What about the second role, the synthesizer?

“The special aspect of the middle manager is that he or she is right between levels of [other] management and staff. He receives first-hand information from team leaders and staff members, and his job is to forward the information he receives to the higher ranks, because very often the staff members don’t tell top management what they think…so this is the second role, the synthesizer,” she says.

“Third is the role of the champion, which is a bit different. Whereas with a synthesizer the middle manager forwards information, with a champion he supports staff members who have fantastic ideas for a very good project. He champions these ideas to the upper ranks, to help them to realize these new projects,” she continues, rounding off the definition of the third middle management role.

That just leaves the facilitator, who “works with his people to develop and engage in idea generation…so that people are really engaged and can act and develop ideas and experimental thoughts.”

According to Nieswandt’s research, when an organization is going through cultural change as well as strategic change, the middle manager takes on an additional three roles: role model, feedback provider, and trainer.

Performing well in all of these roles is a challenging task for even the most conscientious and ambitious manager. In this clip from our Expert Interview podcast, Nieswandt offers some tips on how to do it.

 Listen to the full Expert Interview in the Mind Tools Club ¦ Install Flash Player.

If you’re a middle manager, how many roles do you perform on a daily basis, and which do you think are the most important for your team and organization? Join in the discussion below!

The post Let's Hear It for Middle Managers appeared first on Mind Tools.

There were many memorable moments during our half-hour conversation, but one statement stood out in particular. She said she “would dare to suggest that social capital may be more productive than financial capital.”

Heffernan’s definition of social capital is “the trust, knowledge, reciprocity, and shared norms that create quality of life and make a group resilient.”

So, in other words, she believes that healthy relationships among colleagues can benefit a company more than money in the bank. It’s a radical view, but one she can back up.

“Social capital is something we have routinely undervalued. We’ve definitely underinvested in it,” she contends. “Many of the ways we run businesses specifically deplete social capital, and I think we need to sit up and pay attention to what it really can deliver. Fortunately, there are some fantastic studies that map this in very granular detail and that indicate that higher degrees of social capital lead to greater profits and higher degrees of employee engagement.”

In this audio clip from our Expert Interview podcast, she shares her observations on how social capital can be built.

  Listen to the full Expert Interview in the Mind Tools Club ¦ Install Flash Player.

For Heffernan, there’s an additional factor that can compound the benefits of social capital: time.

“We’re really careful about how we spend money, but we’re really sloppy about how we spend time, which is interesting because you can make more money, but you can’t make more time,” she reflects.

She talks about an experiment that divided workplace tasks into two types of activity: “real work, which is head down, hard thinking, hard writing… work, which is mostly quiet.” And then “everything else, which is meetings, phone calls, email, texting, and all that jazz” – the kinds of activities that build social capital.

The experiment, led by a Harvard academic named Leslie Perlow, ring-fenced periods of the day for either “real work” or for interactive work. When you were doing one type of work, you weren’t allowed to do the other.

“Several fantastically interesting things came out of this,” Heffernan reports. “In one version of the experiment, productivity increased by 65 percent. Now I can’t think of anything you could do in most businesses that would improve productivity by 65 percent that didn’t cost a penny.

“People also became very much more helpful to each other. I think this is really profound: that once they knew the time they needed to do the quiet-time work was protected, they were much more generous the rest of the time. They felt less frantic and less harried and more able to think. And so they were willing to invest in, and get a return from, social capital in a way that, when all of this stuff is jumbled together, they felt they couldn’t afford.”

Heffernan admits that very few businesses would conduct an experiment as extreme as this. But she has seen companies benefit from adopting this idea on a smaller scale.

“I’ve run into a lot of companies that have rules; for example, no meetings before 10am. So if you have a big chunk of work you want to do, you might get in early and feel confident you weren’t going to get interrupted until 10.

“I know of other companies that have said, ‘No meetings on Friday afternoon,’ or, ‘No meetings past 4pm.’ So there are lots of different ways you can manage time. But I think the identification of two different kinds of work and synchronizing them for people is astonishingly powerful.”

So Heffernan is recommending a two-pronged approach: we should introduce rules that help build social capital, like eating together in a lunchroom, and we should also protect chunks of time for private work, when no such interaction is required or even allowed.

Would that work in your organization? Join the discussion below!

The post The Value of a Quick Chat appeared first on Mind Tools.