Slow Management

Financial Times Lexicon:

Definition of slow management

Stemming from the Anglo-Saxon concept “Management by Walking Around” (MBWA), and profoundly rooted in the endeavors of HP founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, slow management’s ambition is to restore men and women to the heart of organizations.

Slow management, a trait of great leaders, holds in three key notions. Firstly, men and women in businesses require, above anything else, meaning and recognition. This can only be conveyed through one-to-one meetings and gatherings – in other words, the time that managers physically give their employees. Secondly, practicing slow management doesn’t mean going slowly, actually it is the opposite. It is about understanding that taking the time to meet your team is about contributing to their well-being and thus, contributing to the performance of the business as a whole. Thirdly, practicing slow management forces managers to get out of their offices to meet their collaborators to become what Jack Welch recommended, a manager professor. This kind of manager is capable of grasping the key advantages offered by formal and informal gatherings to teach, convey a message, answer questions, share values, share a culture, and, at the same time, be capable of learning from those to whom he or she is talking.

What is Slow Management?

Article by Robbrecht van Amerongen

Slow management advocates a new form of management with much attention to quality, job satisfaction, giving trust, creativity and authenticity.

Slow management directs a way of working with attention to craftsmanship, autonomy for the professional, encouragement of diversity and respect of the human individual.

The term Slow Management is derived from Slow Food. Slow food is an alternative to the mass-produced fast food. Like Slow Food, Slow management is all focussed on quality, authenticity, human scale and natural form of being. In Fast Management organizations, the employees are obedient to the system/organization; human resource management is part of the toolkit of the managers. Within Slow Management the organization supports the professionals; the professionals are setting the pace and tone of the organization. That’s the key difference.

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