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Ideas for Leaders #133
The Value of Front Line Managers
Key Concept
Front-line bosses may be far more valuable for anorganization than has been previously thought.According to research from Stanford Graduate Schoolof Business, good as opposed to poor line-managersand supervisors can increase organizationalproductivity by as much as 11% — or the sameamount as adding an additional worker to a nine-member team!
Idea Summary
CEOs are often put under the spotlight, witheverything from how they spend their time to theirleadership style closely scrutinized. But what aboutmanagers and supervisors lower down in organizationhierarchies? These are the people that mostemployees directly work with, yet their ‘value’ is lessdiscussed, which is surprising considering more oftenthan not, supervisors are the ones that hire, fire,instruct and reward workers. How much of an overallimpact do these bosses have on an organization?More specifically, how much does it matter if a linemanager is a good one or a bad one?
New research based on the study of a large companyhas revealed that a very good front-line boss canincreases the output of his/her supervised team by upto 11% more than a bad one. As for what makes aboss a good one, the researchers single out that theability to teach is necessary to fall under this category;employees that have been taught better workmethods by their bosses are the ones thatdemonstrate improved productivity, which issomething that lasts even when their boss changes.
Focusing on strengths is important, so assigning thebest workers to the best bosses was found to be themost efficient way of structuring an organization,rather than assigning the best bosses to the weakestworkers. Finally, replacing a boss who is in the lower10% of boss quality with one who is in the upper 10%increases a team’s total output by approximately the
ShareAuthors
Lazear, Edward P.Shaw, Kathryn L.Stanton, Christopher
Institutions
Stanford Graduate School of BusinessUniversity of Utah David Eccles School ofBusiness
Source
Stanford Graduate School of BusinessWorking Paper
Idea conceived
2014
Idea posted
April 2013
DOI number
Subject
Senior LeadersInterpersonal SkillsLeadershipOrganizational EffectivenessPerformance Management
9/16/2014 The Value of Front Line Managers | Ideas for Leaders
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same amount as adding one worker to a nine-memberteam.
Methodology: These findings were based on dailyoutput measurements for over 23,000 workersmatched to nearly 2,000 bosses. The study took placeover five years, from 2006–10.
Business Application
According to this research, the difference between agood boss and a not-so-good one lies in their ability toteach their workers — not, as is usually assumed, intheir quality of supervision or ability to motivate,though these are also important. As such, seniorleaders should encourage supervisors in theirorganization to focus on teaching more. This mightinvolve skill transfer or teaching employees good workethics and work habits; ensuring that the skills taughtshould be persistent. Here is where teaching differsfrom motivation; the latter might affect performancetoday, but will lose its impact more quickly.
Sorting is also key; assigning better bosses to betterworkers provides greater leverage, as good bossesincrease the productivity of high quality workers bymore than that of low quality workers.
Finally, line-managers should note that these findingsshow the exit rate of bad bosses is almost twice theexit rate of the average quality boss!
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Further Reading
The Value of Bosses. Edward P. Lazear, KathrynL. Shaw & Christopher Stanton. Stanford GraduateSchool of Business Working Paper (June 2014).
Further Relevant Resources
Edward P. Lazear’s profile at Stanford Graduate School ofBusiness
Kathryn L. Shaw’s profile at Stanford Graduate School ofBusiness
Christopher Stanton’s profile at University of Utah David EcclesSchool of Business
Stanford Graduate School of Business' Executive Educationprofile at IEDP
9/16/2014 The Value of Front Line Managers | Ideas for Leaders
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