Magic Mushroom Management

by Gordon MacMaster

“…In this time of data driven decision making, dashboards, Big Data and analytics, you would think that employees are better informed about their company, and are better to align themselves with the strategy of the organization.  The days of Mushroom Management are coming to an end.

For those, who do not know, Mushroom Management is a leadership style that keeps employees in the dark; feeds them, um, manure, shall we say; and chops the heads off those that grow.

Geckoboard did a survey about Mushroom Management to get a sense of how employees feel about their access to performance (KPI) data:

Over four in five employees said that they want management to share more info with them about business performance.

That is not necessarily bad.  Employees may be getting more performance data than before.  This has whetted their appetite for even more information.

Employees most commonly only see company KPI data once a month, with over one in four seeing it less than every three months.

Not exactly real time data here. But most are seeing some KPI data.

Nearly 50% of companies are using face-to-face meetings as a data sharing tool.

Definitely not dashboards providing the data.  Or some other technology.  Most still get information like we did when we lived in caves and shared lore around a campfire.

With these challenges, it doesn’t appear most employees are enabled for data driven decision making.

But these indicators may be a sign of slow adoption, rather than Mushroom Management being alive and well…”

To read more of Magic Mushroom Management: CLICK HERE