HOW LEADER

KILL MEANING
AT WORK ?
Source : How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven
Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment
by damaging the inner work lives of their employees

These Include

1. Dismissing the importance of subordinates’ work

or ideas

2. Destroying a sense of ownership by switching

people off project teams before work is finalized

3. Shifting goals so frequently that people despair

that their work will ever see the light of day

4. Neglecting to keep subordinates up to date on

changing priorities for customers

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 For leader :

4 TRAPS SHOULD BE AVOID

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 Trap 1:
Mediocrity Most likely, your company aspires to greatness, articulating a high
purpose for the organization in its corporate mission statement
signals

but,
Are you inadvertently signal-ing the opposite through
your words and actions ?

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 Karpenter Coorporation
Espoused a vision of entrepreneurial
cross-functional business teams

In Theory Each team would operate

autonomously

Managing its share of the company’s

The Effect resources to back its own new-product
innovations

1. This employee’s work had begun to lose its

meaning, and he wasn’t alone
Top managers were so focused on cost
Felt that they were doing mediocre work for a savings that they repeatedly negated the
2. mediocre company one for which they had In Practice teams’ autonomy
previously felt fierce pride.
Dictated cost reduction goals and drove
3. Many of these employees were completely
disengaged. Some of the very best had left.
new-product innovation into the ground

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
Trap 2: Strategic Brimming Ideas? All Of that is good, in theory

‘attention deficit What are

competitors

disorder’ Where are new

planning? Where
are new ones
popping up?
ones popping
up?

Top
In Practice Manager’s
Top Manager Start and abandon initiatives so frequently that think
they appear to display a kind of attention deficit disorder
(ADD) when it comes to strategy and tactics
What’s happening in the
global economy, and what
Not allow sufficient time to discover whether initiatives are might the implications be
working, and communicate insufficient rationales to the for financing or future
employees when manager make strategic shifts market priorities?

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 If high-level leaders don’t appear to have their act together on exactly where
the organization should be heading, it’s awfully difficult for the troops to
maintain a strong sense of purpose

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
Trap 3: Corporate
Keystone Kops
In the early decades of cinema, a popular series of silent-film comedies featured the Keystone Kops, fictional
policemen so incompetent that they ran around in circles, mistakenly bashed each other on the head, and
fumbled one case after another

Identic with :

Miss-coordination!

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
Trap 3: Corporate
Keystone Kops

Many executives who think everything is going smoothly in the

everyday workings of their organizations are blithely unaware
that they preside over their own corporate version of the
Keystone Kops
BE
AWARE!
How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 When coordination and support are absent within an organization, people stop
believing that they can produce something of high quality. This makes it extremely
difficult to maintain a sense of purpose

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 Trap 4: Misbegotten
‘big, hairy, BHAG’s Fact :
audiacious goals’ Containing little relevance or
meaning for people in the trenches

What the meaning of “big, hairy, audacious goal” (BHAG) ? Seem unattainable and so vague as
to seem empty

Cynicism rises and drive plummets

A bold strategic vision statement that has powerful emotional appeal
The result is a meaning vacuum
and grandiose

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 This goal did not infuse the work with meaning, WHY ?
A Chemical Firm, Set a BHAG that all projects had to
be innovative blockbusters that would yield a
minimum of $100 million in revenue annually, within It had little to do with the day-to-day activities of people in the
five years of a project’s initiation organization

It did not articulate milestones toward the goal

It did not provide for a range of experiments and outcomes to

meet it

It did not connect with anything the employees valued

Most of them wanted to provide something of value to their

customers; an aggressive revenue target told them only about
the value to the organization, not to the customer.

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 Avoiding the Trap
When you communicate with employees, do you provide strategic clarity
that’s consistent with your organization’s capabilities and an
understanding of where it can add the most value?

Can you keep sight of the individual employee’s

perspective?

Do you have any early-warning systems that indicate

when your view from the top doesn’t match the reality on
the ground?

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012
 Make that purpose real

Support its achievement through consistent everyday actions

Create the meaning that motivates people toward greatness

Find greater meaning in your own work as a leader

How Leader Kill meaning at Work By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, McKinsey Quarterly Article, January 2012