Management's most important job is communications. If a manager can clearly communicate what is expected and explain the facts that make the expectations valid, no reasonable man will fail to accept the expectations and seek to achieve them.
It is true that management must communicate with its employees, its customers, its vendors and its owners. Management and its employees have a unique relationship upon which depends the success of the organization as a whole. To be effective, management must indeed communicate its goals and objectives, how it intends to accomplish those items, and on what those items are based. It must communicate accurately and in a timely manner how the organization is doing, what the responsibility of each member of the organization is, and provide feedback as to whether or not individuals and groups are meeting their responsibilities.
However, management cannot assume that just because it has communicated its agenda, that everyone will automatically fall into step behind it. There are a number of reasons why this is not so, but the underlying cause is that employees are individuals, with their own interests and objectives, and there are times when the goals of the organization and the goals of the individual are not going to mesh.
For example, management might communicate that it needs additional overtime from its employees in order to meet its objectives. In the short-run, employees might be glad for the additional income, and be willing to make the personal sacrifices that overtime requires in order to help the organization out. However, if the organization continues to demand the overtime for a long period of time, employees are likely to grow resentful and wonder why additional personnel are not hired. The personal sacrifices become larger and more important to the employee than the additional income, and even though there may be strong rationale behind management's choice to use overtime i...