The world of work is constantly evolving, and information systems play a vital role in the way we work and the way businesses manage their operations, teams and performance. While HRIS have historically been designed to centralize and automate the administrative processes associated with the HR function, they have struggled to address the strategic needs of managers and teams (Managers need more than an HRIS
).
It’s a subject that has sometimes occupied much of my discussions with industry experts, some even going so far as to advocate the emancipation of a “Management Tech” distinct from HRTech and a genuine Managerial Information System (MIS).
But what would a managerial information system look like?
A work organization and management tool
The primary role of a management information system is to provide a clear, dynamic overview of work organization. This is a key expectation of employees in terms of employee experience (2023 Employee Experience Barometer: the employee experience confronted with its contradictions).
First and foremost, it would include collaborative planning tools to facilitate the coordination of tasks and projects, taking into account priorities, skills and availability.
It would also include goal management, with the aim of aligning short- and long-term priorities with business strategies.
Finally, it would establish and make visible the division of responsibilities, clarifying roles and expectations for each team member.
A good SIM would also be adapted to the needs of hybrid and distributed teams, offering solutions for maintaining cohesion, avoiding silos and ensuring agile execution with flexible collaborative tools which would make everyone’s work more visible and encourage “working out loud”.
It would also enable us to understand how work is really done, beyond the illusion of the organizational chart, but by identifying the real networks (An organization that is inconsistent with the way we work. Irritant #6 of the employee experience and The implicit social network according to Sinequa).
Of course, all this exists today, but in a totally fragmented way, which doesn’t encourage adoption, is time-consuming and doesn’t give managers a unified working environment enabling them to both act and measure their impact on their teams.
A vector for engagement and team dynamics
Beyond work organization, a MIS should be a catalyst for team engagement and cohesion.
First and foremost, it would include continuous feedback tools to enable employees to give and receive constructive feedback on a regular basis, thus contributing to continuous improvement and, to a certain extent, trust.
I would add recognition tools, features that highlight individual and collective contributions through rewards, badges and gamification.
Finally, it should include indicators of well-being and engagement. This would enable the state of mind of teams to be measured and monitored on a regular basis, so that action can be taken quickly in the event of warning signs.
Here again, there’s nothing really new, but today all this is dispersed, and application silos create data silos that make it impossible to establish correlations between the manager’s action and its impact on engagement. Which ones help? Which are counterproductive? We guess it, we suppose it, but we don’t prove it (In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data).
The managerial information system is a tool that gives life to a management philosophy centered on the human and the collective, and this is why it must be organized around the actions of the manager and the teams who are its users and customers, unlike the HRIS.
AI-enhanced measurement of managerial impact
One aspect that is often overlooked, or even ignored, is a manager’s ability to assess his or her own impact. The purpose of a managerial information system is also to make the link between management, the manager’s actions, what he puts in place, how he does it and the performance of his teams.
Today, less than 10% of businesses are able to correlate HR data with business metrics (Is People Analytics the Next Job to Be Outsourced by Technology?). From my point of view, this is totally unacceptable.
But to get there, we need to ask ourselves what managerial performance really is, beyond basic indicators that ignore the manager’s impact on the performance of others (What is managerial performance and its hidden face?).
AI would first and foremost enable us to analyze the correlations between managerial actions and team performance. AI should be used to identify, in real time, the practices that promote engagement, satisfaction, productivity and also performance.
On this last point, I often cite the simplest use case: sales performance. It’s measured objectively with CRM, but today it’s measured in isolation, without any attempt to correlate it with the work organization in place, the manager’s leadership and employee feedback.
A fad? I’m not so sure. On the contrary, on this subject there are those who will be the first to take the plunge and quickly understand their managerial performance levers, and the others, because it’s already on our doorstep (Workday Salesforce Partnership: Teaming Up For Enterprise AI).
Once this has been done, the logical thing to do is to start forecasting future impacts. To do this, we can use predictive models to anticipate the repercussions of managerial decisions on teams and their performance.
To complete the circle, AI will be able to propose personalized recommendations to offer managers tailored advice, learning and other runways for improvement.
The idea is to enable managers to get to know themselves better, adjust their approach and have a greater impact. It’s also a way for HR to truly evaluate managers.
A management philosophy embodied in technology
A MIS is not just a technical tool; it reflects a modern management philosophy (How To Transition To The ‘Next Management’ by Stephen Denning, Heidi Musser and Hugo Lourenco and Analyzing Two Different Views of ‘Next Management’ by Steve Denning, Heidi Musser, Hugo Lourenco).
Inspired by the approaches of people like Deming, Drucker (you know my references…) and others, this system would promote new managerial approaches that many people are calling for but don’t fit in today’s approaches and tools.
And yes, the principles laid down by the father of quality in the ’50s don’t need a lick of paint to apply to today’s management (Let’s talk about the quality of work)
First and foremost, then, we find empowerment and accountability by giving teams and managers the means to make informed decisions.
Next comes transparency, by providing clear, usable data at all levels, not just to measure business and operations, but also to understand people.
Finally, the third pillar is continuous collaboration, by creating an environment where collective intelligence can be fully expressed.
You can’t operate one way with tools made to operate another, nor is a tool, however well designed, of any use if it isn’t adapted to the philosophy the business wants to put in place (We should not expect an application to work in environments for which its assumptions are not valid).
Perhaps in the 30s, a SIM would have served a “command and control” model, but today we’re more likely to talk about agile boards, OKRs, feedbacks, and so on.
Bottom line
A managerial information system is not simply an evolution of HRIS, nor its replacement. Rather, it is a cousin with which it will share data, but which will have an entirely different vocation.
It must be a strategic tool that transcends the administrative dimension to become a genuine tool for understanding, for highly operational action and, ultimately, a lever for transformation at the service of managers and their teams.
By making it possible to organize work, energize teams,embody a management philosophy and measure managerial impact, this system redefines and enhances the role of the manager in modern organizations, and even makes it possible to objectively and factually distinguish good managers from the rest.
The integration of AI adds an essential dimension: the ability to understand and predict human dynamics , for more relevant and effective management that serves both teams and performance, people and business.
All that’s left is to develop a truly integrated vision, recognizing that the management information system is a reality in its own right, and not just a collection of unrelated tools.
Image: management information system by Deemerwha studio via Shutterstock.