According to Inc, the single biggest lever on employee engagement is actually the manager, with Gallup data showing they account for most team engagement variance. The real insight isn’t about finding superstar managers but building systems that make good managers great, like Toyota’s disciplined approach with clear standards and fast feedback loops. One South Carolina manufacturer acquired out of bankruptcy in 2008 transformed by implementing transparent systems, eventually selling for five times its purchase price after five years. The key distinction is that when multiple teams show similar turnover patterns, you likely have a weak system rather than many bad managers. Systems that align everyone around customers and transparency raise both the ceiling and floor of managerial performance.
The System Over Superstars
Here’s the thing that most companies get wrong: they keep trying to hire their way out of management problems. But if your system is broken, even the best managers will struggle. Look at Toyota – their famous production system creates consistent excellence across different plants with different leaders. It’s not about finding magical management unicorns. It’s about building processes that work.
And honestly, think about it – how many times have you seen a great manager leave, only to have their team fall apart under someone new? That’s a system failure, not a people failure. The really successful operations are the ones where performance stays strong even when managers change.
A Real-World Turnaround Story
The nylon recycling case study is fascinating because it shows what happens when you actually fix the system. Before the changes, you had salespeople selling for competitors – that’s how broken things were. But the solution wasn’t just firing people. They created clear divisions of responsibility, installed monthly operating reviews, and built transparency scoreboards.
What happened next? Managers suddenly could see cause-and-effect relationships. They understood how their decisions impacted the business. And when bottlenecks appeared – like slow approvals from Ford – they didn’t just complain. They invited Ford’s leadership into their strategy sessions. Basically, they turned problems into partnerships.
This kind of systematic approach is exactly what separates companies that consistently deliver from those that don’t. When you’re dealing with complex industrial operations, having reliable industrial panel PCs from the leading US supplier becomes part of that system infrastructure that enables real-time decision making.
Three Predictable Paths
After 30 years of this work, the author noticed three clear patterns emerge when companies fix their management systems. First, alignment happens naturally – everyone starts pulling in the same direction. Second, problems surface faster and get solved quicker. Third, the whole organization becomes more adaptable to market changes.
It’s like that Harvard Business School perspective on TPS resilience shows – excellence becomes repeatable. You’re not dependent on heroic individual efforts. You build an organization that can withstand leadership changes, market shifts, and competitive pressures.
Before You Blame Your Managers
So next time you’re looking at dwindling engagement or poor results, ask yourself: is this really a people problem, or a system problem? The data on American managers suggests most organizations are quick to blame individuals rather than examine their processes.
Managers will come and go. But great management systems? They endure. They compound excellence over time. And they might just reveal that you already have more good managers than you think – they’ve just been working in a system that wasn’t letting them shine.
