According to various surveys conducted by IES, Gallup, The Conference Board, The Society for Human Resource Management, Towers Perrin, and The Discovery Group, the percentage of "engaged employees" in organizations is less than 30% in the U.S., less than 20% in Europe and less than 10% in Japan. Organizational leaders and managers worldwide should be appalled by these statistics. Wake up corporate America, people are not satisfied, happy or engaged at work, and the situation is worsening. The way we manage and lead our organizations must change — organizations that don't change or change too slowly are going to lose more and more of their best people and their customers.

As reported in Business & Legal Reports, the Gartner Group, Inc., claims, "70 percent of enterprises that do not recognize and minimize employee dissatisfaction will have to fend off legal actions and public relations disasters caused by poor service, poor quality and poor business practices. Enterprise executives, especially those in high-pressure technology and knowledge-based companies, should understand the correlation between employee mistreatment and business disruption." Yes, they should, but many do not. According to Diane Tunick Morello, vice president and research director at Gartner, "Executives and managers who see their companies engaging in mistreatment of employees should raise a warning flag and begin to quantify and qualify the risks to attracting staff, maintaining service, building a customer base and broadening business. Executives who ignore or downplay the connection between employee mistreatment and business turmoil put their employees, customers, partners and shareholders at risk." Malpracticing management represents a HUGE RISK that most executives and organizations today don't fully recognize. Wake up! Your people are not going to put up with such executive neglect, ignorance and denial for much longer.

A recent article by Management Issues News identifies employee disengagement as a global epidemic. "At a time when companies are focused on growth and relying on their workforces to achieve it, a major new survey has found that only one in seven employees worldwide are fully engaged with their jobs and willing to go the extra mile for their companies. But the study, by consultants Towers Perrin, found that while many people are keen to contribute more at work, the behavior of their managers and culture of their organizations is actively discouraging them from doing so….they say their leaders and supervisors put obstacles in their paths. The study, the largest of its kind, was carried out among more than 85,000 people working for large and midsize companies in 16 countries on four continents. It shows that there is a vast reserve of untapped 'employee performance potential' that could drive better financial results if only companies could tap into this reserve."

Management malpractice is once again the culprit. People in organizations want to contribution their talents and passion and commitment to their organizations, but they are thwarted by managers and leaders who want to limit, control, judge, coerce, evaluate, criticize, direct, scrutinize, and otherwise exercise dominion over them. Workers are dissatisfied at work because they can't raise concerns without jeopardizing their jobs, their talents and capabilities are not matched with their jobs, they are not respected or trusted, their contributions are not appropriately recognized and valued, they are not allowed to dream or imagine or innovate, their ideas and suggestions are not sought after, they are not listened to, their work-life balance sucks, they find less and less meaning and fulfillment in their work, their opportunities for growth and development are limited and controlled, they're punished for making mistakes, they don't have clarity about what's really expected of them, their conformity to endless policies and norms feels suffocating, and, at the end of the day, they don't feel good about themselves or how they have spent their time. Work is a place they have to be, not want to be.

Management gurus such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and Warren Bennis have written passionately about the growing number of absurdities in postmodern organizational life, but the absurdities continue to mount. In fact the gap between espoused management principles and daily management practice is widening in many organizations, making it ever more difficult to move from good to great and stay there. CEO Quinn Spitzer of Kepner Tregoe, the well-known management consulting firm in Princeton, New Jersey, regularly tells clients that the cartoon strip "Dilbert," depicts the growing disillusionment with organizations and management in the United States. "Dilbert's unflattering portrayal says a lot about how management has evolved in our culture. Cynicism is rampant," Spitzer says. The result? People in organizations in the U.S. and throughout the world are becoming more aware of and disgusted with the increasing absurdities in organizational life. It's time to do something about these insane absurdities.

Craig Hickman is the author or coauthor of a dozen books on business and management, among them such bestsellers as Creating Excellence; The Strategy Game; Mind of a Manager, Soul of a Leader; and The Oz Principle. After receiving his M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, he worked in the areas of strategic planning, organizational design, and mergers and acquisitions for Dart Industries and Ernst & Young. In 1985, he founded Management Perspectives Group, a consulting and training firm that helped companies implement the business strategy, corporate culture, and organizational change principles set forth in Creating Excellence and Mind of a Manager, Soul of a Leader. His clients have included: Proctor & Gamble, American Express, Unilever, AT&T, PepsiCo, Honeywell, Amoco, Nokia, and the U.S. government. He has lectured throughout the world for the U.S. State Department as part of its American Participant Program and is currently CEO of Headwaters Technology Innovation Group, a subsidiary of Headwaters Incorporated (NYSE: HW).

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