For over twenty years I’ve been facilitating a program that creates company culture, called Management by Responsibility (MBR). When I first implemented it in the 1980’s, it was regarded by the management at my company as ‘touchy-feely’ and irrelevant to producing income. To me it was spot on relevant to producing income. I quickly became aware of the philosophical divide in business thinking that creates company culture and thus behavior of companies internally among employees and also externally with customers and vendors.
MBR is a program for setting up process. It’s not dogmatic or exacting in implementation. It represents a philosophy that says, “Each person takes 100% responsibility for his/her life, in every respect whether at home or at work. The act of taking 100% responsibility and becoming self-aware of how this plays out creates psychological maturity. The more developed one’s psychological maturity, the higher is one’s ability to enjoy interrelationships with others and to achieve personal potential.”
Using Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, you’ll see the correlation of MBR’s aim to the self-actualized stage. Most companies in the 80’s and even today are contrived to emphasize the lower stages of survival, security and social acceptance.
Business management during the 20th century focused on preparing the workplace to meet the criteria of an industrial age mentality and structure. It has been very top-down and mechanistic. That doesn’t work today as evidenced daily in the statistics reported for business performance. It certainly doesn’t provide the innovation required for progress in a fractured and disrupted global economy.
I’m going to present a few interviews with folks I know who have employed the MBR philosophy in their workplaces so you can get a feel for what it is and how it works. I’ll also add articles and metalogues (thank you Gregory Bateson) on the topic of company culture, innovation and productivity.
Comments