Thursday, July 18, 2024
You might have seen by now that we have recently launched The Step Manager Program with corresponding Solid Manager Certification. However, you might not know that the long term plan is to build a whole suite of corporate development and people-centered transformation offerings. This is because the overarching purpose of The Step Manager (and the reason I look like a dork in videos online) is to fix corporate culture from the toxic, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do cesspool it currently is in some companies (many companies). It's to make it so you don't have to give it all up to chance by your manager's skillset on if you'll have a good career or not. It's to give explicit expectations of roles, and how to go from the most junior to the most senior without so much ambiguity. Contrary to other transformation frameworks, providers, gurus or whatever - this offer from the Step Manager is Manager and Employee focused, NOT focused on delivering more things in a faster/gooder way (intentional grammatical error).
Critical to making this happen is to make an offer to New Managers everywhere. Getting them the necessary hands on support they need in order to not only survive their role, but thrive - because when managers thrive, their employees have a habit of thriving too. That's why the Step Manager Program and the Solid Manager Certification is designed to be that hands on, tactical, practical and pragmatic program to help new managers beat meets expectations. Lots will question with heavy skepticism (as they should) if we need another corporate 'coaching program' in the world. Do we need to have some jerk helping a low-amount of middle managers? Will it actually make the world a better place?
Definitely not, BUT it will begin to start the revolution. Over the course of a few years of working with hundreds of new managers, eventually those folks that went through my program will reach new direct reports at new places of employment and those direct reports will have such a different experience than they are used to. It will be like a breath of fresh air. A manager that actually advocates for me? Someone who can tell me exactly how I can develop and wants me to do so? In another words, there will have started the snowball effect of demand. Demand from employees to get better support from their managers. Demand for professional transparency. Demand for better ways of working on projects. Demand for better support for managers instead of the 'into the deep-end' approach that has been the standard for the last two centuries.
To be clear, I think the demand does already exist, but there's no rallying point. There's not a unification of that and a clear solution for it. Until now.
Without giving it all away, I can say that the roadmap for the Step Manager will be to tap into technologies of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) like Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks that will be able to monitor working hours, communication patterns and workload distribution to predict when employees are at risk of burn out. Analyzing textual feedback to gauge sentiment and areas where cultural improvement can be made. Customizing learning progress and tailoring content to individual needs, not terrible standardized learning. We are a tech company at heart and all of our free-cashflow will be poured into these efforts to build technology to support managers and employees alike. The beautiful blend of the 'human touch' aided by the power of our technology to give employees and managers more.
Can you imagine if we were then to take this level of tech and apply it to areas that need it the most? Like education? What if each student had a learning plan that was more tailored to their needs. What if where you were born, your economic status, the color of your skin played no part in how you learn. All without being overwhelmed or burning out, and not forgetting to experience other aspects of life. Technology to support balance.
To reign it back in here, if you are on LinkedIn or any other social network - you've already seen the statistics. You already know the woes. I won't bore you with repeating that 70% of preventable attrition is contributed to how people are managed, not just how they are paid. Definitely don't need to mention that back in 2017 it cost 33% just to replace the person that left let alone the ramp up time for the new hire to become acquainted with your organization and their role. (We know prices and cost of living has gone way down since 2017 though, right?)
In short, the master plan that keeps me going every day is:
Since this is a secret, don't tell anyone.
The Step Manager
I love helping people grow, but more importantly I love helping them get balance back into their lives. Corporate life is hard, but it doesn't have to be. I've written books, been a professor at Syracuse University and published online courses that over 47,000 students have taken and awarded me with a 4.5 star rating - all around the topics of helping share my knowledge as a manager and a professional.
Thanks for reading my blog, and if you are interested in working together - let's connect.