Opinion: Why Managers Are Failing With Hybrid Work

• The shift to hybrid work highlights persistent management failures rooted in distrust and micromanagement, reflecting McGregor’s Theory X vs. Theory Y dichotomy.
• Effective leadership should focus on clear communication, hiring great talent, and then trusting employees to perform without excessive oversight.
• The pandemic may have been the inflection point that finally promotes a more human-centric management approach, emphasizing flexibility and employee autonomy.

The widespread adoption of hybrid work over the past three years has been characterized by fits and starts, leading many organizations and employees to frustration. Clumsy management from people who have simply not been equipped to supervise in this environment has often been the bottleneck preventing the smooth adoption of new ways of working. 

As frustrating as it is, unfortunately it is nothing new.

Same as it Ever Was

In his 1960 management classic The Human Side of Enterprise, then MIT Sloan School of Management professor Douglas McGregor provided what is still today one of the most cogent critiques of modern management. 

If one takes the general perspective outlined by McGregor and applies it today to the Great Management-Employee Standoff regarding in-office vs. remote working, maybe, just maybe, we can take a step forward.

Many of the recent conversations center around very tactical issues of commute time, productivity, utilizing paid-for real estate, communication and culture, learning and mentoring– all of which are indeed important. However, beneath these rather straightforward considerations lies a much deeper and more persistent management failure.

Blaming employees is easy. Management has been doing this for several generations. 

Recall that it was not until 1940, when certain provisions of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act were implemented, that U.S. firms institutionalized weekends and the 40 work week. Prior to that, workers had little to no input or power in framing the terms of their work.

McGregor’s Timeless Wisdom

In The Human Side of Enterprise, McGregor suggested that two fundamentally different approaches to managing people compete in the world. The two approaches stem from radically different perspectives on people, and human nature. 

Sadly, that same difference is still very much with us today, and is clearly manifested in the myopic and shortsighted position of many managers regarding the return to office (RTO) “dilemma.”

According to McGregor, managers tend to fall into one of two camps — Theory X and Theory Y. Of course in reality there is a continuum between these two extremes, but his basic points, I suggest, still largely hold.

Theory X

Theory X managers, McGregor suggests, start with the assumption that employees are essentially like children who do not like to work. In order to get value out of them, they need to be managed with carrots and sticks. They cannot handle decision making, discretion and self-organization, but rather need to be closely monitored in order to get things done. 

In short, Theory X managers lack basic trust in other people to make decisions and perform tasks-tasks that they perform routinely in their private lives. 

Theory X managers lack basic trust in other people to make decisions and perform tasks-tasks that they perform routinely in their private lives. 

As a long-time former professor of management, I’ve concluded that this is one of the fundamental reasons why employee engagement in American companies has hovered around 30% for at least 60 years. 

Theory Y

By contrast, Theory Y managers view employees as adults and view work as a natural form of human activity. That is, under certain circumstances, work is what makes people whole and for which they are designed to engage.

Within a Theory Y perspective, extending trust to employees — to make decisions and complete work on their own terms — is the more natural way to maximize both employee engagement and firm productivity. 

McGregor viewed Theory Y as a virtuous spiral, as a no brainer. I don’t think it is too extreme to suggest that, with perhaps a few exceptions here and there, most knowledge workers today want to work for Theory Y managers, not Theory X managers.

Just as McGregor lamented in 1960 when he complained that the vast majority of managers then were of the Theory X ilk, I’m afraid that today, while there has definitely been some general movement towards Theory Y management, a vast preponderance of managers remain Theory X.

At the core of this is a fundamental lack of trust…in people. Lack of trust is often coupled with two other toxic factors:

1. A puzzling overconfidence in managers’ own “awesomeness” bordering on narcissism
2. An attachment to raw power to placate an inner-insecurity that can only be assuaged by holding direct reports tightly by the reins

The Pandemic and a New Social Contract

The recent prognostication by Nick Bloom and his team of researchers that by 2026 remote work will pick up steam and slowly become an increasingly dominant mode of corporate work in the long-term, points to an underlying reality that McGregor’s long-ignored plea for a more human form of enterprise might finally be on the horizon. 

One can only hope.

That is, the system-shock of pandemic might just have been the inflection point, historically, beyond which Theory X management just no longer makes sense. 

The supposed productivity gains from in-office working are now being contradicted by research suggesting otherwise, and we all know what employees want at the end of the day — choice, flexibility, and time with their families. 

So, at the end of the day, we just have Theory X managers who do not trust their employees to be…adults. This is more a failure of management than anything else. 

Psychologist Paul Zak at the Claremont Graduate University reports in Harvard Business Review that some 40% of employees are unaware of their companies’ basic business strategy and goals. 

In too many cases, employees narrowly grind away on tasks, in an environment of micromanagement, without a big-picture sense of what is going on. This is a monumental failure of leadership. 

Referring to the work of former Herman Miller CEO Max Dupree, Zak suggests that the primary tasks of leadership are:

1. Define and clearly and consistently communicate the company’s strategy
2. Hire great talent
3. Then get out of the way

Zak’s basic point is the same as McGregor’s. In the context of today’s insufferable conversation about hybrid/remote work and RTO, etc., this basic point has been lost. 

Hybrid work has become yet another distraction, and excuse, for managers not doing what the science clearly says is needed.

Hybrid work has become yet another distraction, and excuse, for managers not doing what the science clearly says is needed.

Until MCGregor’s, Zak’s, and Dupree’s basic observations are embraced, hybrid/remote work will be just the latest distraction/excuse for justifying the persistent failure of management imagination and practice.