Many traditional managers spend way too much time trying to directly manage the people they are responsible for. This is what they've been taught and what they experienced themselves. This is often an exhausting and frustrating experience.

Great leaders focus on the work instead and they create the framework where thriving work environments can emerge.

These are some of the reasons why focusing on the work, not the people, delivers significantly higher levels of success and satisfaction as a leader.

Reason 1: The Work is the Ultimate Measure of Success

The quality of the work, or service, that companies produce is going to be one of the most important factors determining the success or failure of the business.

Therefore, focusing on the work is a logical thing to do.

In Flipped Leadership, great leaders pay attention to the Impact and the Fitness for Purpose of the work they do as well as the Flow of the work processes.

Reason 2: Great Work Environments Produce Better Business Outcomes

Most modern work involves complex knowledge-based interactions between people working in multi-disciplinary teams.

To be able to reach a high level of performance, the work environment where people operate needs to be top-notch.

This is one of the core responsibilities of any business leader: create work environments that are Fit for People.

Reason 3: Enable Autonomy, Collaboration and Learning

Companies have a workforce of enormously talented people. That's why they were hired in the first place, right? Then,

Give people the autonomy to decide how to do their work best.
Create the environment where people can truly collaborate with other people doing multi-disciplinary work.
Provide the mechanisms for people to able to continue Learning.

Reason 4: Focus on Alignment, Prioritisation and Coordination

What most people need from their managers and organisations is clarity about the work. Providing clear and effective guidance is sorely missed in many organisations. Great leaders create focus by providing guidance such as:

Why they are doing whatever work has been selected.
What outcome needs to be achieved.
When it is needed.

They leave the How and the Who for their people to decide themselves.

They put a focus on ensuring that the people and teams work in alignment, are able to prioritise effectively and have practical coordination mechanisms in place.

To do this well, great leaders develop expertise in Business Management concepts such as Lean, Flow, Business Agility, and Flight Levels.

Reason 5: Emerge Greater Work Efficiency

Most of the challenges businesses face are not about how people work or the skills they have, but about how well they manage the work.

They often have processes that are riddled with inefficiencies and they are drowning with more work than what the organisation can cope with well.

To be able to succeed, it is more important to pay attention to the processes that stop work from moving forward (eg. slow approval stages), and to find how much work their organisation can actual deliver well.

Reason 6: Foster Employee Satisfaction and Retention

When working in a great environment, the engagement of the workers increases, the quality of the end product improves and people enjoy working there. Retaining staff is far easier in those companies.

It has been proven that companies that have a happy workforce achieve better business results.

Reason 7: Pay More Attention to People!

Yes! By paying more attention to work, then great leaders can also pay more attention to people. Not in a traditional managerial way, but in a humanistic way.

Great leaders are obsessed with the wellbeing of the people they work with and they have the time to focus on building relationships, trust, and friendships with their staff.

Nurture brilliant humanistic work environments where people can unleash their full potential.

Conclusions

Great leaders focus on creating great work environments by focusing on these aspects of the work:

Focus on the work as the ultimate measure of business success.
Create great work environments for people to thrive.
Enable the levels of autonomy, collaboration and learning that engaged workers need.
Focus on providing excellent alignment, prioritisation and coordination.
Improve how work works and deliver better flow efficiency.
Foster a place of work where people are happy to be at.
Nurture exceptional relationships with the people you work with.

7 Reasons Why Great Leaders Manage the Work, not the People, to Create Thriving Work Environments

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