# General Business Category > Entrepreneurship and Business Management Forum > [Article] 3 Managernastics in bad shape

## Pierre Pro Act Solutions

I find the well equipped Managers' Gym standing mostly empty. Here and there in a corner some "overweight" (meaning highly qualified and heavily experienced) managers do some meagre push-ups or half-hearted stretches but their minds are where their eyes are ---- out there and not engaged with the gap between "what is" and "what should be". There are 3 machines which which is strategically placed in this gym. These are fit for purpose to build managernastic skills and underutilized: 
First is the YENZA MANAGERNASTICS MACHINE - the "Do it" fitness enhancer. It requires a hard look at the real, significant issues which can have impact if managers work out on them (normally these are the issues, they think, they would rather NOT look at because it will entail more creativity and energy than what they feel they are getting paid for). The effect of walking a circle around this one is a non-action attitude on significant issues.

Secondly one finds the EXECUTION MACHINE: Here managers tend to run in the opposite direction. All agree to the plan at the "bosberaad" but no real workout happens. The machine enhances four muscle groups; the focus on the ONE thing in the plan (within own power domain) which MUST become a force, action on the things which CAN be changed and influenced, a scoreboard to KNOW what execution is impacting on and taking the accountability to execute into the own team (se the new book "4 Disciplines of Execution with Sean Covey as co-author).

The third one is the PLAY MACHINE: Here the lack of fitness also shows critical levels of failure. Managers do not "play" their businesses. They do not play out meaningful new scenarios to get their companies' people, processes, principles and policies going.

Not strange how many managers I encounter in my coaching where burnout and career dissonance devour joy, hope and energy where they work (their own and that of their followers. They do not take their managernastics serious!

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## Dave A

I think you'll find your missing managers in The Comfort Zone  :Wink: 

Ag, let me pick on one...




> All agree to the plan at the "bosberaad" but no real workout happens.


What the big boss forgot to do at the bosberaad is find the *managers'* motivations and then link it to the plan. 

No, not the stinking salary and all the manure they have to put up with to earn it - what they actually enjoy and want! The stuff that rewards the soul.

The focus at the bosberaad was all about what the *company* wants and needs, and how to get it.

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## adrianh

Pierre, why do you speak as if managers are children in a gym?

I would never work with a coach who doesn't cut to the chase and speaks plain english....maybe it's just me but when I hire a coach I want no nonsense advice, not beat around the bush waffle...

...or...

maybe I'm just in a bad mood....I ask myself and debate the question....

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## Blurock

Sounds like one of those corporate rah rah motivational  :Censored: 

Sorry Pierre, please don't take it personally. Its clever wordplay.

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## adrianh

@Blurock - clever wordplay is great on a Friday afternoon when everybody just come back from a pub lunch, but on a Tuesday morning when you are are trying to figure out how to make a business run more efficiently its just childish.

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## Blurock

I've attended many of those corporate sessions where half the day is spent "motivating" the staff by jumping on chairs and clapping hands. Then you have to cut out pictures from old magazines and make a collage of the business or whatever.

I am not totally humourless, but my perception was that you are feeding kindergarten stuff to grown ups. That is one of the reasons I fired my boss. (to live happily ever after)  :Wink:

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## wynn

> maybe I'm just in a bad mood....I ask myself and _all six of us_ debate the question....


there is a correction adrian

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