Michael Kroth, an associate professor at University of Utah, wrote a wonderfully irreverent chapter on management in The ASTD Management Handbook entitled, “Irreverence as a Managerial Tool: What Managers Can Learn From Tina Fey, Martin Luther, and Bob Dylan.” Lisa Haneberg,  the editor of the handbook,  has suggested that managers cultivate productive irreverence. Kroth offers a framwork for us to do just that—even if we don’t really learn directly from Tina Fey, Martin Luther, or Bob Dylan.

Kroth encourages managers to develop their beliefs and frameworks into a richer understanding of managing by also challenging those very beliefs. His first and only rule of irreverence: If something is supposedly off limits, challenge it.

Challenging with irreverence is more than a mental exercise. Kroth writes: “Challenging includes questioning and also trying. We might challenge authority or a dominant way of doing things, but we might also challenge our own way of thinking. We might challenge current practice by proposing or doing something different. Challenging is more active than (but does include) questioning, because irreverent managers often go beyond asking and actually do something.”

We are on the path to wisdom when we follow the iterative process of belief blended with challenge. On a micro level this reminds me of the two-step writing process advocated by Peter Elbow in Writing with Power. According to Elbow, when we create or generate our writing, we need an attitude of belief, and when we evaluate our writing, we need an attitude of doubt. Our approach to management also can be “written” with this fusion of belief and challenge. Kroth advocates this as our pathway to becoming a wise and engaging manager.

Kroth offers eleven guidelines to keep the reverence-irreverence cycle going. Here are three guidelines to get you started infusing irreverence into your management:

1. Practice taking the opposite position of what you believe to be true. Honestly try it out with other people.

2. Generate three alternative approaches to what you are doing right now.

3. Hang out with different kinds of people than you normally do, including artists, theologians, ranchers, car wash attendants, and whomever. Looks for powerful management lessons embedded in the way others outside our normal sphere of connections see work and the world.

Dialogue is at the heart of engaged management. Here are three questions to trigger engaging dialogue with a cadre of other managers or employees who report to you: 

• What would it take for us to satirize ourselves? How would The Onion write about our workplace?

• When was the last time you were irreverent in your actions at work? What did you do and what was the result?

• Do you believe it is wise for mangers to act irreverently?

Lisa Haneberg, in the preface to the piece suggests that irreverence is the mojo fuel all managers need to make a difference. Go out this week and find your management mojo by creating purposeful irreverence.

If you want to move from irreverence management to mobile management, Kroth is your guy. We recorded a dialogue about engagement and the mobile workplace in the summer of 2011. The impetus for the dialogue was his book, Managing the Mobile Workforce: Leading, Building, and Sustaining Virtual Teams. With one billion mobile workers both engagement and management have become much more mobile. To access this free webinar on demand, go to https://vimeo.com/26628785.

In my next post, I will discuss five universal themes in management.