Managing professionals? Don't!

The powerhouses of our companies today are made up of increasingnumbers of professionals.The number of companies that would describe themselves asknowledge-intensive is also increasing - think of R&D labs, hi-tech,IT, media, business support, health and educational organizations.Managers tend to think that these new organizations and their staffmust be managed like before. But to do so can create more problemsthan it might solve.Professionals are for the most part already motivated and do notneed to be managed. They have studied many years to be able to dotheir job. Frustrating their enthusiasm by steering and controllingthem can restrict their ability to perform to the best of their capability.In any such organization, the avoidance of forms, meaninglessreport writing, and restrictive rules and procedures, will leadto much greater productivity and improved quality. Professionalsshould be trusted in advance and given room to exercise their disciplineat a state of the art level.Mathieu Weggeman has written many books and articles on managingprofessionals, on how to conserve creativity, on innovationand on knowledge management. This book is an accolade. It isabout the new "servant leadership": the kind of leadership requiredfor these companies. It explains the characteristics and peculiaritiesof professionals in the workplace. It emphasizes that their mostimportant production factor is their knowledge, and their mostdifficult task is innovation.The role of the manager is to create the environment in which boththese traits can flourish, and thus to help professional organizationsachieve their collective ambitions.Mathieu Weggeman is a professor of organization science at the EindhovenUniversity of Technology, the Netherlands. He is also a boardroom consultantfor knowledge-intensive organizations.Cees Hoedemakers is a consultant in the energy industry.