Management 3.0 Happy Workers, Happier Clients
A management strategy to unleash your happiest self at work
Welcome! In this article, you’ll find the fundamental definitions of Management 3.0 as a strategy to foster collaborative environments and facilitate spaces for coworkers to find joy at work. First, we’ll go over the five principles of Management 3.0, and then, we’ll review the 12 practices that can lead to feeling happier while working and, finally, we’ll look at the advantages of Management 3.0. for businesses.
Whether you are a teammate, a manager, a company executive, or just someone interested in learning something about Management 3.0, I invite you to be open and, if possible, implement some of the practices shared below to start giving the first step toward happiness!
Introduction to Management 3.0
In the words of its creator, Jurgen Appelo, Management 3.0 is about “managing the system for happiness and offering products with meaning”. As we have seen over the past century, many management styles have existed since the Industrial Revolution. Below is a quick comparison of the predecessors’ management styles of 3.0.
→ Management 1.0 was about control, mass manufacturing and competition, and the success of the fittest.
→ Management 2.0 focuses on people as the greatest asset (here’s where most of us live and work at the moment).
→ Management 3.0 is about managing the system, not the people, to enable an environment where people can be themselves, make decisions, and take steps toward happiness and fulfillment.
Management 3.0 Principles
Now that we understand the basics. We will dive into the five principles conveying the fundamentals of the Management 3.0 strategy.
Principle #1 — Engaging people and their interactions
This principle motivates management to get people involved in the work and get people interested in interacting with each other. The principle encourages creating real and deeper connections with direct and open communication. Having a respectful environment that appreciates singularities and differences increases perspective instead of fixing patterns. So be observant of your interactions and start evaluating yourself with some of these questions: Are the connections between you and your coworkers genuine? Do you find your work environment stimulating? Do you feel positively challenged? Is your voice heard? Are you learning from others?
Principle #2 — Improving the system
A Management 3.0 practice should improve the system. The system is not just one team. Everyone interacting with the team is part of the system. This management style promotes a win-win. Managers are asked to try to improve the whole system and not just one part of the system. It starts by understanding the organization is a complex system that can not be controlled, but instead, as a system that can and should be nurtured. You must be open to experimentation and failure to generate authentic learning and drive change to improve it. You can learn more about complex thinking by listening to this podcast to better understand the system’s context.
Principle #3 — Helping to make all clients happy
Clients are not just our external customers, and we should try to delight all clients. Management 3.0 considers everyone involved in the system as a client (co-workers, other teams, customers, shareholders, etc.). To delight our customers, building trust is paramount. Listen to their needs effectively, don’t be afraid to communicate when their ideas don’t bring value, ask the hard questions, provide guidance and invite them to experiment and validate their value propositions before overspending and committing to shallow goals.
Principle #4 — Managing the system, not the people (again)
Management 3.0 believes that it is hard to change the behavior of people. However, when you change the environment, people will have to adapt; thus, people will change their behavior to fit into the new environment. Additionally, by changing the environment, people can manage themselves.
Management is about nurturing the garden. Working with highly collaborative and self-organizing teams teaches us to work as a unit and to embrace the team’s commitments and outcomes as a whole. Management 3.0 uses “we” instead of “I”, to foster that sense of belonging: we celebrate our wins and scrutinize our failures together.
One common practice of Management 3.0 is the seven levels of delegation — tell, sell, consult, agree, advise, inquire, and delegate. They work as an empowerment tool to distribute decision-making in the teams and the organization. It is based on trust and assumes workers could make better decisions than the ones that would have been made unilaterally by management. So the principle can be successful, managers determine the appropriate level for making decisions for key areas. Although, the technique should not be used for trivial decisions. You can check this short video to better understand the seven levels, and how to visualize them on delegation boards.
Principle #5 — Co-creating work
Coworkers create things together, and co-creating is also about giving feedback to each other. Co-creation is about facilitating spaces and adopting techniques to collaboratively discuss topics, brainstorm ideas, gather feedback and explore solutions. It mainly relates to the possibility of exchanging opinions, perspectives, and points of view, resulting in a better approach to planning, making decisions, setting expectations, and defining the next steps.
Co-creating brings alignment, clarity, and cohesiveness whether you are trying to create solutions, implement changes or transform organizations. Therefore, next time you have a chance to collaborate on an initiative, be open, be creative, try to understand the value, and listen carefully, so you make valuable contributions that boost the purpose. Also, be bold, and put ideas through experimentation and short feedback loops to make them a reality! If you are interested in learning more about co-creation culture, check out the MIT lab site.
How can you be happier at work?
Management 3.0 states that happiness is a mindset, and it lays out a set of practices that can lead you to unlock happiness. We will review 12 steps to be happier at work — thanking, experimenting, giving back, hiking, helping, meditating, eating well, socializing, working out, aiming for goals, resting, and smiling. Keep in consideration that happiness is not a precise formula or destination. The series of steps that we will be exploring, combined and repeated, might contribute to getting into the happiness mindset at work.
Thank
Be appreciative of your colleagues daily! Showing gratitude for your team’s excellent work plays a big part in their motivation and cultivates a culture of connection and encouragement. Recognizing others for the kind actions we receive or just being thankful for having a great day can help us to cultivate gratitude. If you want to learn more about this practice, here is an awesome video that explains how gratitude leads to a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
Experience
Try new stuff out and run all kinds of experiments. Real innovation comes from employees, not management. It is recommended to start with small, trivial changes when experiencing new things. Something as trivial as changing your working station closer to a window, setting one small goal each day, walking two extra blocks, or reading an article from that blog you like. You can find more suggestions to practice when introducing new things at work in this post.
Give
This practice is related to the ability to give something to another person or to make it possible for others to give gifts. You could show your appreciation by using a Kudo Box and Kudo Cards to drive intrinsic motivation, or you could also find a way to enable anonymity as not everybody will engage in public demonstrations. At Nicasource, we have developed a special tool to give kudos through our slack workspace:
Hike
Get outdoors, enjoy nature, and allow people to escape the city. Organize a group trip to the countryside regularly. It will do you, and your team, a world of good! Check this article about the benefits of going out into nature.
Help
It’s not easy for everyone to hold their hand up and ask for help. The help step encourages you to aid someone who needs assistance. Alternatively, you could enable colleagues to help each other. Pairing coworkers can often help less confident employees find the help they need.
If you are leading teams, consider actions that will make you a more accessible boss. Such as having regular one-on-one sessions — it can be a very powerful practice. If you are unsure how to start the conversation, you can use the improvement dialog cards to facilitate meaningful discussions. There is no need to make it a formal meeting if you can meet in person, go out and take a walk to the park, or grab a coffee together.
Meditate
Meditation has been around for millennials. It is an ancient practice that is believed to have originated in India. One of the main benefits of regular meditation sessions is gaining self-awareness, which is crucial for mindfulness and getting into a sense of calm and self-control while flowing with everything that is going on around you. At mindful.org, you’ll find a complete guide to learning more about the practice and how to start meditating right away.
Eat well
A healthy diet stimulates the mind and body. Among the benefits, you will significantly improve productivity as your body will have sufficient nutrients to keep you going through the day. Everyone’s dietary needs are different. If you can, consult a medical professional to help you find the habits that suit you and that you can sustain on your own. Availability is key, so plan ahead to have sufficient healthy snacks, fruits, and veggies at your disposal. Drink plenty of water and keep track of your eating schedule to preserve that precious time and space. Disconnect while you have your meals. Check these ten tips to eat healthy while working, especially if you are doing it from home.
Socialize
Connect with other people, and make it easy for colleagues and coworkers to interact and develop a deeper connection. Drinks after work hours or virtual meetings are great ways to interact with people. At Nicasource, we have the advantage of creating small units in the same country so we can meet in person for drinks. We can also meet virtually to have one-on-one spaces with other team members we don’t work with on a regular basis. We use the Donut slack bot to randomly schedule 15 minutes meetings to get to know new people within the organization in a casual space.
Exercise
Moving your body has a lot of benefits. For instance, it helps to reduce stress, have more energy, etc. Working out will literally help you release happiness hormones! Here are a few ideas to exercise at work.
Aim for a goal
Set objectives and outcomes; this will help you to realize your purpose, which in turn increases motivation levels. Before you define goals, it could be great to explore your moving motivators, one of the more known game practices of Management 3.0. Understanding what motivates and drives you is a great tool when you are trying to define your next steps and objectives. This post can teach you how to run the exercise with teams.
Rest well
Sleep enough! Find a space to refresh your mind. Working long hours without taking sufficient breaks decreases productivity. Have you heard about the Pomodoro technique? It establishes time boxes to work without distractions on a specific task for about 25–30 minutes. Once you run out of time, you get to rest for at least 5 minutes. Use your break to go for coffee or water, pet your dog, or water a plant. The idea is that you do something completely different to reset your brain. After you have completed a couple of rounds, take a longer break of 15–30 minutes and recharge. Here is a Chrome web extension to help you time your Pomodoro.
Smile
Smile whenever you can. Smiling is an undervalued practice. The more you smile, the better. Appreciate humor, and get colleagues to engage in fun activities because work doesn’t have to be serious to be engaging. Try incorporating icebreakers into your meetings, especially if you are having long sessions, and prepare fun and interactive check-ins, games, and challenges. Here is a great library with all kinds of facilitation techniques.
Too good to be true… is it a scam?
Happily, it is not. Some researchers back up most of the management 3.0 fundamentals, and several scientific studies have proven the direct effects that some of the 12 steps practices have on health and well-being. About the impact on productivity, here is a well-renowned and quoted scientific paper produced by the University of Oxford that concluded that happier workers increased productivity by 13%.
Also, this Gallup research found that engaged workers were more likely to stay longer at the company and showed less absenteeism. However, more studies are required to find direct causality between happiness at work and productivity. According to this paper about workers’ productivity, “the broad message from the literature on the link between happiness and productivity is that both positive and negative emotions have a potentially powerful economic effect.”
And, why is it good for business?
Well, there is also a logical explanation for how profitable it is for businesses to count on highly motivated, engaged, happy, and passionate workers. Employees will be doing that extra mile to make it worth it, which will absolutely impact the business results.
You are more likely to deliver on time with excellent quality because the people who put the work into it, care. They had a purpose, they were committed, they understood the impact that their tasks, assignments, and deliverables had on the end users, they also understood the advantages of the product, and they shared the client’s vision, so they were focused on the product outcomes, and outcomes drive results.
According to this Forbes article, based on Gallup’s reports, “ Why are engaged teams more profitable? Those teams who score in the top 20% in engagement realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism, and 59% less turnover. Engaged employees show up daily with passion, purpose, presence, and energy.”
We spend too much time of our lives working, so our well-being and day-to-day state of mind are profoundly affected by our work experiences. We should seek enjoyment and appropriate work conditions, and businesses should be aware of the impact that engaged and happy or unhappy workers have on the economy and the results of the company, and take action to foster adequate environments where people can thrive, be part and have a meaningful purpose.
Let the Management 3.0 introduction and value statements soak in. And, in case you are wondering, there is a Management 4.0 strategy that focuses on soft skills, specifically on these four: communication, cooperation, creativity, and critical thinking. There is also a Management 5.0 approach with 3 fundamental axes: Digital Transformation, Dynamic and Ubiquitous Leadership, and Digital Culture. I don’t know if 6.0 is available yet, but if you’re curious and enjoyed learning about management strategies, I wish you a successful adventure, as long as you keep helping build better management and positive leadership styles, no matter how many versions there are.
Thank you for making it this far. You are awesome.
