Worker disengagement, a monumental problem facing businesses worldwide, can be remedied by expanding an organization's "sweet spot" and incorporating the principles of "unmanagement," a new model of leadership best suited for the current knowledge era. In The Organizational Sweet Spot: Engaging the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social Networks, Dr. Charles ("Kalev") Ehin, an authority on management and innovation, claims that every organization has a "sweet spot"—a place where formal and informal communication among workers overlap.
Ehin developed his new leadership model which he calls "unmanagement" after analyzing research on human nature which shows that human productivity is at its peak in informal, co-evolving relationships, as opposed to within formal systems where people are stifled by bureaucracy and not allowed to work openly with their counterparts and peers. He has discovered that this sweet spot is the place where the most productive and innovative work of an organization takes place, largely because people tend to want to follow their self-interests and do so through developing informal social networks in the workplace.
Explaining that although every organization has a "sweet spot," Ehin says they need to grow this space to achieve maximum creativity and productivity. "The problem is that this sweet spot is generally very small in most organizations, which tend to follow a traditional "top-down" management model and discourage informal communication, and this reality contributes to chronic worker disengagement and low productivity."
The Organizational Sweet Spot pinpoints where the formal and informal elements of an organization overlap, and explains how that "sweet spot" can be expanded. This cutting edge management book offers guidance to business leaders searching for ways to increase the innovative dynamics, motivation and performance of their knowledge workers.
"Employee disengagement is one of the most pressing problems plaguing managers today and it hampers the innovation capacities of countless organizations," says Ehin. In an environment of stagnating wages, massive layoffs, rising health care costs, and other factors that contribute to alienation, distrust, and apathy, finding a way to deal with this disengagement is necessary if organizations are to succeed.
Dr. Charles Ehin is a Professor Emeritus of Business at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. A recognized management and innovation dynamics authority, Dr. Ehin has authored several groundbreaking management books, which explain why people can be physically controlled but not managed. Dr. Ehin has an MBA from Syracuse University and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Charles Ehin
The Organizational Sweet Spot
Engaging the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social Networks
2009, VII, 97 p., Hardcover EUR 39.95, $49.95, £35.99
ISBN: 978-0-387-98193-2