Last month I bought myself a new bicycle. You should see what you get for your money these days. The shaky old pushbike has developed, thanks to the constant evolution of ideas over more than 100 years, into a sleek, finely tuned machine that practically rides itself. If only we could say the same thing about management.

Apart from easier and more reliable cycling, the evolution of ideas has given us longer lives, safer cars, labour saving devices, reduced poverty, reality television (whoops!), unlimited access to information and instant communication. The evolution of ideas has also given us fairer workplaces, fantastic access to training and education, increased real wages and a shorter working week. The average working week dropped from 50 hours to between 35 and 40 hours during the 20th century.

Clearly Charles Duell of the U.S. Office of Patents had it wrong when he claimed, in 1899, that “everything that can be invented has been invented”. The modern Western lifestyle (for those of us lucky enough to enjoy it) is practically unrecognisable from what it was 20 – let alone 100 - years ago.

But there is a problem here. Hands up if you, or any manager you know, works only 35 hours a week. Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures put the average for male managers at 51 hours per week, females at 44 hours per week. Certainly most of the managers I come across – male and female, and in small businesses and large – are more likely working a 19th century 50-hour week as a minimum. 

Running from meeting to meeting or job to job, clearing the email, dealing with the latest crisis, navigating the latest bureaucratic initiative and finally folding up the laptop and heading home with the mobile phone to the ear after a 10+ hour day. This is the lot of the typical modern manager. 

It is hardly surprising that increasing numbers of managers are deciding that the only way to achieve ‘work-life balance’ is to ‘downshift’ out altogether. Various studies in the U.S.A., Europe and Australia show a growing number of managers are deciding to leave demanding roles and voluntarily reduce their hours – and income – with less onerous work. A Newspoll/Australia Institute study in Australia in 2002 identified that 23% of Australian workers aged 30 to 59 had taken this option in the previous 10 years. A similar survey in Britain identified 25% of the workforce as downshifters; 27% of middle to senior managers were amongst their ranks. Other surveys have shown that the trend to downshifting shows steady growth. The reasons for this trend are varied but boil down, in the majority of cases, to the failure of the workplace to provide the flexibility and fulfilment people are looking for.

And so we start to see the problem with management. Somewhere between the long hours and the trend to downshifting lies a large number of managers – and other workers – who are dissatisfied with their lot and, as a result, not working as effectively as they could.

The underlying reason for this problem is certainly not that management has missed out when it comes to the evolution of ideas. Go into any business bookshop and you’ll see innumerable ideas inches deep on the shelves. Amazon.com lists over 250,000 books on the topic of management. So the cause of our problem must lie more with they way in which all these ideas are being put into practice. 

The modern manager should be racing along on the organisational equivalent of a modern bicycle, getting where he or she wants to go quickly and more easily than ever before. Instead, a rusty old rattler that only goes in circles seems to be a better analogy. Which raises the question: is the problem the bike itself, or the way it is being ridden?

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