The default mode for managers needs a reset Too many managers prefer to stay within divisional silos, suspicious of ideas "not invented here" Grayson Perry, the transvestite artist, took aim last month at "default man": the cabal of white, middle-class, heterosexual, middle-aged males who run the British establishment. His acid article touched on the cohort's domination of boardrooms. But I think there is a group that has a more insidious influence on modern business: default managers. Andrew Hill Default managers are still, mostly, men. But it is not their gender, but the agenda they follow that often prevents businesses improving and innovating. They are holding back the "great transformation" of management that academics, executives, entrepreneurs and commentators will discuss at this week's Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna. The premise of the conference, which commemorates the work of the late management thinker, is that such change is essential to restore growth and prosperity. Default managers fit easily into a recognisable and established corporate hierarchy, run on a basis of old-fashioned command and control and governed by title and status. They are usually passive, carrying out instructions that are either explicit in orders from the top or implicit in budgets, accounting timetables, and short-term targets and incentive plans. Default managers prefer to stay within divisional silos, suspicious of ideas that are "not invented here." They may as a result become detached from the purpose, and even values, of their company. Employers, meanwhile, find it easier to treat them as "collections of human resources" rather than "communities of human beings," to cite a powerful pamphlet on "Rebalancing Society" by Henry Mintzberg, the management expert. I do not blame people who squeeze themselves into this template of default management. It is the destiny of many of those who fight for promotion. They work hard, have good intentions, and may have no ambition to change the framework they inhabit. Revolution, even achieved peacefully, takes time and effort and puts at risk predictable, comfortable routines. But as Prof Mintzberg points out, east Europeans were able to bring about the collapse of communist regimes 25 years ago in part because they always "understood full well how enslaved they were by their system of governance." Many default managers, by contrast, have lost sight of the fact that they are cogs in a misfiring machine. More worryingly, they fail to recognise they have the potential to change it. As Herminia Ibarra wrote here last week, the alternative is not to install in their place a new set of flamboyant, revolutionary leaders. Organisations will continue to need people who can run them efficiently and well. Those managers will always include a few who are inert or merely reactive. So the priority is not to tear down the organisations themselves, but to remove the largest obstacles that are preventing good managers from becoming more active, more engaged, more collaborative, more open, and more far-sighted. The barriers include monetary incentives that are overdetailed and geared towards short-term performance. Shareholder-owned companies are in thrall to institutional investors, motivated by similar bonus plans based on even shorter timescales. Old corporate hierarchies assign importance to people with the correct title, rather than those who exercise the right skills or greatest influence. They are geared to owners" demands more than to customers" needs. Too often, recruiters seem to be driven by the old catchphrase that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM," the default personal computer system. Lack of public trust in business generally, and managers specifically, is a final problem. Since 2008, many defenders of shareholder capitalism have analysed the causes of the financial crisis and ended up paraphrasing Winston Churchill's comment on democracy and arguing that it is the worst form of economic system apart from all the others. That is too easy a conclusion. But it is also facile to presume that all managers are part of the problem - a view heard depressingly often, even from people working within business. As Julia Kirby and Richard Straub wrote, launching an online debate ahead of this week's Drucker Forum: "If managers have the power to drive an economy into a ditch, they also have the power to drive it forward." But if businesses continue to put default managers in the driving seat, they will never reach their destination. Twitter: @andrewtghill