Since the pandemic, talk of “new management” has been everywhere. Autonomy, trust, meaning, well-being: the vocabulary is familiar. Yet in many organizations, managerial practices seem unchanged. So what happened? And where does the real lever of transformation lie: in individuals, or in the system?
A managerial revolution announced, yet unfinished
The pandemic acted as a catalyst. It exposed the limits of traditional management, built on control, physical proximity and verticality. Many hoped for a turning point: toward more agility, empowerment and cooperation. Managers were called upon to reinvent themselves, to train, to change their mindset.
But this announced revolution often ran into a wall: the organizations themselves. Because you cannot ask a manager to be autonomous and empowering while subjecting them to rigid processes, contradictory indicators and locked decision loops.
Management as a product of the system
The heart of the problem lies here: management does not transform through individual willpower alone. It is a reflection of an organizational framework. Managerial behaviours are largely conditioned by the rules of the game: reporting, governance, latitude, recognition, tools.
Training managers without revisiting this framework is asking them to play an impossible role. It is like trying to run horizontal management inside a verticalized organization. The risk? Exhaustion, loss of meaning, and a form of dissonance between what is said and what is done.
Change the rules of the game, not just the managers
If we genuinely want management to evolve, we have to work on the foundations. That means revisiting:
- Decision-making processes: who decides, how, and with what level of autonomy?
In many organizations, important decisions remain centralized, which limits team autonomy. Rethinking these processes means letting managers decide at their own level, in line with their scope of action. This requires clarifying responsibilities, streamlining validation loops, and trusting local expertise.
- Performance indicators: do they measure cooperation, quality of relationships, meaning?
If KPIs remain focused on individual productivity or on meeting deadlines, they risk discouraging cooperation, innovation and relational quality. It is time to introduce more systemic indicators: team climate, collective problem-solving capability, employee satisfaction, real impact on customers and end users.
- Management tools: do they support initiative, or do they reinforce control?
Digital tools, dashboards and reporting systems must also be designed as enablers. Too often, they become instruments of excessive control that rigidify practice. A good monitoring tool must offer clarity and flexibility, and let managers guide with judgement, not simply account.
- Governance: does it foster decentralized decision-making, or centralization?
Governance defines the implicit rules of power and legitimacy. Governance that is too vertical prevents managers from fully playing their role. Conversely, governance based on empowerment at lower levels, meaning the ability to delegate to the operational level as much as possible, fosters engagement, responsiveness and accountability. It also requires rethinking the role of support functions, which are often too prescriptive.
This is where leadership plays a key role. Not by imposing a “new management”, but by creating the conditions for it to emerge.
Management, in the end, is not a matter of an individual mindset. It is a matter of systemic transformation. The point is not to change the managers, but to enable them to fully exercise their role. That necessarily implies evolving the rules of the game, the structures, the tools, the cultures. In a word: freeing managers, so that they can truly manage.
Our expert on this topic
Geoffrey CARPENTIER
Partner
