Chapter 1- How To Be A Better Manager Better managers recognize that the art of management is something they need to learn. No one becomes a fully competent manager overnight. There are, of course, many ways of learning how to be a competent manager. There is no doubt that experience is the best teacher – the time you have spent as a manager or team leader and your analysis of how good managers you come across operate effectively. You can learn from your own boss and from other bosses. This means accepting what you recognize as effective behaviour and rejecting inappropriate behaviour – that is, behaviour that fails to provide the leadership and motivation required from good managers and which does not deliver results. There is an old saying – ‘People learn to manage by managing under the guidance of a good manager’. This is just as true today, but to make the best use of experience it is helpful to place it in a framework which defines your understanding of what management is about, and helps you to reflect on and analyse your own experience and the behaviour of others. There is also a wealth of knowledge about the skills that managers need to use and the aspects of managing people, activities and themselves that they need to understand. None of these skills provide a quick fix which is universally applicable. It is useful to know about them but it is also necessary to develop an understanding of how they are best applied and modified to meet the particular demands of the situation in which you find yourself. This is not a prescriptive book – ‘Do this and all will be well’ – rather, its aim is to present approaches which have been proved to be generally effective. But they have to be adapted to suit your own style of managing and the circumstances where their application is required. To become a better manager it is necessary to develop each of the 50 areas of skills and knowledge covered by this handbook. But you will be better prepared to do this if you have a general understanding of the process of management. This will provide a framework into which you can fit the various approaches and techniques described in each chapter. The aim of this introduction is to provide such a framework under the following headings: What management is about. The aims of management. The processes of management. Managerial roles. The fragmentary nature of managerial work. What managers actually do. What managers can do about it. Managerial qualities. Managerial effectiveness. Developing managerial effectiveness. WHAT MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT Essentially, management is about deciding what to do and then getting it done through people. This definition emphasizes that people are the most important resource available to managers. It is through this resource that all other resources – knowledge, finance, materials, plant, equipment, etc – will be managed. However, managers are there to achieve results. To do this they have to deal with events and eventualities. They may do this primarily through people, but an over-emphasis on the people content of management diverts attention from the fact that in managing events managers have to be personally involved. They manage themselves as well as other people. They cannot delegate everything. They frequently have to rely on their own resources to get things done. These resources consist of experience, know-how, skill, competences and time, all of which have to be deployed, not only in directing and motivating people, but also in understanding situations and issues, problem analysis and definition, decision making and taking direct action themselves as well as through other people. They will get support, advice and assistance from their staff, but in the last analysis they are on their own. They have to make the decisions and they have to initiate and sometimes take the action. A chairman fighting a take-over bid will get lots of advice, but he or she will personally manage the crisis, talking directly to the financial institutions, merchant banks, financial analysts, City editors and the mass of shareholders. The basic definition of management should therefore be extended to read ‘deciding what to do and then getting it done through the effective use of resources’. The most important part of management will indeed be getting things done through people, but managers will be concerned directly or indirectly with all other resources, including their own. THE AIMS OF MANAGEMENT Management is a process which exists to get results by making the best use of the human, financial and material resources available to the organization and to individual managers. It is very much concerned with adding value to these resources, and this added value depends on the expertise and commitment of the people who are responsible for managing the business. PURPOSE OF MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP The Management Standards Centre states that the key purpose of management and leadership is to ‘provide direction, facilitate change and achieve results through the efficient, creative and responsible use of resources’. These purposes are analysed as follows: Providing direction Develop a vision for the future. Gain commitment and provide leadership. Provide governance – comply with values, ethical and legal frameworks and manage risks in line with shared goals. Facilitating change Lead innovations. Manage change. Achieving results Lead the business to achieve goals and objectives. Lead operations to achieve specific results. Lead projects to achieve specified results. Meeting customer needs Promote products and/or services to customers. Obtain contracts to supply products and/or services. Deliver products and/or services to customers. Solve problems for customers. Assure the quality of products and/or services. Working with people Build relationships. Develop networks and partnerships. Manage people. Using resources Manage financial resources. Procure products and/or services. Manage physical resources and technology. Manage information and knowledge. Managing self and personal skills Manage own contribution. Develop own knowledge, skills and competence. THE PROCESSES OF MANAGEMENT The overall process of management is subdivided into a number of individual processes which are methods of operation specially designed to assist in the achievement of objectives. Their purpose is to bring as much system, order, predictability, logic and consistency to the task of management as possible in the ever-changing, varied and turbulent environment in which managers work. The main processes of management were defined by the classical theorists of management as: 1. Planning – deciding on a course of action to achieve a desired result. 2. Organizing – setting up and staffing the most appropriate organization to achieve the aim. 3. Motivating – exercising leadership to motivate people to work together smoothly and to the best of their ability as part of a team. 4. Controlling – measuring and monitoring the progress of work in relation to the plan and taking corrective action when required. But this classical view has been challenged by the empiricists, such as Rosemary Stewart (1967) and Henry Mintzberg (1973), who studied how managers actually spend their time. They observed that the work of managers is fragmented, varied and subjected to continual adjustment. It is governed to a large degree by events over which managers have little control and by a dynamic network of interrelationships with other people. Managers attempt to control their environment but sometimes it controls them. They may consciously or unconsciously seek to plan, organize, direct and control, but their days almost inevitably become a jumbled sequence of events. To the empiricists, management is a process involving a mix of rational, logical, problem-solving, decision-making activities, and intuitive, judgemental activities. It is therefore both science and art. Managers carry out their work on a day-to-day basis in conditions of variety, turbulence and unpredictability. A single word to describe all these features would be chaos. Tom Peters (1988), however, has suggested that it is possible for managers to thrive on chaos. Managers also have to be specialists in ambiguity, with the ability to cope with conflicting and unclear requirements, as Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1984) has demonstrated. MANAGERIAL ROLES During the course of a typical day a chief executive may well meet the marketing director to discuss the programme for launching a new product, the HR director to decide how best to reorganize the distribution department, the production director to ask him why costs per unit of output are going up and what he is going to do about it, and the finance director to review the latest set of management accounts before the next board meeting. He may have had to meet a journalist to be interviewed about how the company is going to deliver better results next year. Lunch may have been taken with a major customer, and the evening spent at a business dinner. Some of these activities could be categorized under the headings of planning, organizing, directing and controlling, but the chief executive would not have attached these labels when deciding how to spend his time (in so far as there was any choice). The fact that these processes took place was imposed by the situation and the need to take on one or more of the roles inherent in the manager’s job. These roles are fundamentally concerned with: getting things done – planning ahead, maintaining momentum and making things happen; finding out what is going on; reacting to new situations and problems; responding to demands and requests. They involve a great deal of interpersonal relations, communicating, information processing and decision-making. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP Managers have to be leaders and leaders are often, but not always, managers. But a distinction can be made between the processes of management and leadership. Management is concerned with achieving results by effectively obtaining, deploying, utilizing and controlling all the resources required, namely people, money, information, facilities, plant and equipment. Leadership focuses on the most important resource, people. It is the process of developing and communicating a vision for the future, motivating people and gaining their commitment and engagement. The distinction is important. Management is mainly about the provision, deployment, utilization and control of resources. But where people are involved – and they almost always are - it is impossible to deliver results without providing effective leadership. It is not enough to be a good manager of resources, you also have to be a good leader of people. THE FRAGMENTARY NATURE OF MANAGERIAL WORK Because of the open-ended nature of their work, managers feel compelled to perform a great variety of tasks at an unrelenting pace. Research into how managers spend their time confirms that their activities are characterized by fragmentation, brevity and variety. This arises for the following six reasons: 1. Managers are largely concerned with dealing with people – their staff and their internal and external customers. But people’s behaviour is often unpredictable; their demands and responses are conditioned by the constantly changing circumstances in which they exist, the pressures to which they have to respond and their individual wants and needs. Conflicts arise and have to be dealt with on the spot. 2. Managers are not always in a position to control the events that affect their work. Sudden demands are imposed upon them from other people within the organization or from outside. Crises can occur which they are unable to predict. 3. Managers are expected to be decisive and deal with situations as they arise. Their best-laid plans are therefore often disrupted; their established priorities have to be abandoned. 4. Managers are subject to the beck and call of their superiors, who also have to respond instantly to new demands and crises. 5. Managers often work in conditions of turbulence and ambiguity. They are not clear about what is expected of them when new situations arise. They therefore tend to be reactive rather than proactive, dealing with immediate problems rather than trying to anticipate them. 6. For all the reasons given above, managers are subject to constant interruptions. They have little chance to settle down and think about their plans and priorities or to spend enough time in studying control information to assist in maintaining a ‘steady state’ as far as their own activities go. WHAT MANAGERS ACTUALLY DO What managers do will be dependent on their function, level, organization (type, structure, culture, size) and their working environment generally (the extent to which it is turbulent, predictable, settled, pressurized, steady). Individual managers will adapt to these circumstances in different ways and will operate more or less successfully in accordance with their own perceptions of the behaviour expected of them, their experience of what has or has not worked in the past, and their own personal characteristics. There are, however, the following typical characteristics of managerial work: Reaction and non-reflection Much of what managers do is, of necessity, an unreflecting response to circumstances. Managers are usually not so much slow and methodical decision-makers as doers who have to react rapidly to problems as they arise and think on their feet. Much time is spent in day-to-day trouble-shooting. Choice Managers can often exercise choice about their work. They informally negotiate widely different interpretations of the boundaries and dimensions of ostensibly identical jobs, with particular emphasis upon the development of ‘personal domain’ (ie establishing their own territory and the rules that apply within it). Communication Much managerial activity consists of asking or persuading others to do things, which involves managers in face-to-face verbal communication of limited duration. Communication is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time doing but the medium through which managerial work is constituted. Identification of tasks The typical work of a junior manager is the ‘organizational work’ of drawing upon an evolving stock of knowledge about ‘normal’ procedures and routines in order to identify and negotiate the accomplishment of problems and tasks. Character of the work The character of work varies by duration, time span, recurrence, unexpectedness and source. Little time is spent on any one activity and in particular on the conscious, systematic formulation of plans. Planning and decision-making tend to take place in the course of other activities. Managerial activities are riven by contradictions, cross-pressures, and the need to cope with and reconcile conflict. A lot of time is spent by managers accounting for and explaining what they do, in informal relationships and in ‘participating’. WHAT MANAGERS CAN DO ABOUT IT To a degree, managers have simply to put up with the circumstances in which they work as described above – they have to manage in conditions of turbulence, uncertainty and ambiguity. That is why one of the characteristics of effective managers is their resilience – they have to be able to cope with these inevitable pressures. But there are competencies as described below and skills as discussed in the rest of this book which can help them to manage in these circumstances. To a considerable extent it is up to managers to be aware of these requirements, the behaviours expected of them and the skills they can use to help in carrying out their often demanding responsibilities. They must treat these as guidelines for personal development plans. Managers can learn from the example of their bosses, by guidance from those bosses and from mentors, and through formal training courses, but self-managed learning is all-important. The starting point is an understanding of the key managerial qualities and the criteria for measuring managerial effectiveness as described in the next two sections. MANAGERIAL QUALITIES Pedler et al (1986) suggest, on the basis of their extensive research, that there are 11 qualities or attributes that are possessed by successful managers: Command of basic facts. Relevant professional knowledge. Continuing sensitivity to events. Analytical, problem-solving and decision/judgement-making skills. Social skills and abilities. Emotional resilience. Proactivity. Creativity. Mental agility. Balanced learning habits and skills. Self-knowledge. Studies carried out on the qualities displayed by successful top managers as quoted by Rosemary Stewart (1967) show a number of common characteristics, such as: Willingness to work hard. Perseverance and determination. Willingness to take risks. Ability to inspire enthusiasm. Toughness. MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS As a manager and a leader you will be judged on not only the results you have achieved but the level of competence you have attained and applied in getting those results. Competence is about knowledge and skills – what people need to know and be able to do to carry out their work well. You will also be judged on how you do your work – how you behave in using your knowledge and skills. These are often defined as ‘behavioural competencies’ and can be defined as those aspects of management behaviour that lead to effective performance. They refer to the personal characteristics that people bring to their work roles in such areas as leadership, team working, flexibility and communication. Many organizations have developed competency frameworks which define what they believe to be the key competencies required for success. Such frameworks are used to inform decisions on selection, management development and promotion. Importantly, they can provide the headings under which the performance of managers and other staff is assessed. Managers who want to get on need to know what the framework is, and the types of behaviour expected of them in each of the areas it covers. The following is an example of a competency framework. Achievement/results orientation. The desire to get things done well and the ability to set and meet challenging goals, create own measures of excellence and constantly seek ways of improving performance. Business awareness. The capacity continually to identify and explore business opportunities, understand the business opportunities and priorities of the organization and constantly seek methods of ensuring that the organization becomes more business-like. Communication. The ability to communicate clearly and persuasively, orally or in writing. Customer focus. The exercise of unceasing care in looking after the interests of external and internal customers to ensure that their wants, needs and expectations are met or exceeded. Developing others. The desire and capacity to foster the development of members of his or her team, providing feedback, support, encouragement and coaching. Flexibility. The ability to adapt to and work effectively in different situations and to carry out a variety of tasks. Leadership. The capacity to inspire individuals to give of their best to achieve a desired result and to maintain effective relationships with individuals and the team as a whole. Planning. The ability to decide on courses of action, ensuring that the resources required to implement the action will be available and scheduling the programme of work required to achieve a defined end result. Problem solving. The capacity to analyse situations, diagnose problems, identify the key issues, establish and evaluate alternative courses of action and produce a logical, practical and acceptable solution. Teamwork. The ability to work co-operatively and flexibly with other members of the team, with a full understanding of the role to be played as a team member. Some organizations illustrate their competency frameworks with examples of positive or negative indicators of behaviour under each heading. These provide a useful checklist for managers willing to measure their own performance in order to develop their careers. An example is given in Appendix A. DEVELOPING MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS The development of managerial effectiveness should be focused on the qualities and competencies listed above. The fundamental question which is addressed by this book is: ‘How can I learn to be a manager?’ A familiar answer to this question is to say that ‘managers learn from experience’. But can experience alone be the best teacher? Several writers have expressed their doubts on this score. Tennyson called it a ‘dirty nurse’. Oscar Wilde noted that ‘experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’. And the historian Froude wrote that ‘experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes’. Experience is an essential way of learning to improve but it is an imperfect instrument. We also need guidance from a good manager and from other sources such as this book which will help us to interpret our experience, learn from our mistakes and make better use of our experience in the future. What you can do Perhaps Francis Bacon provided the best answer to this question when he wrote: ‘Studies perfect nature and are perfected by experience.’ The art of management, and it is an art, is important enough to be studied. The aim of such studies should be to help us to make better use of our natural attributes – our personality and intelligence – and to ensure that past experience is better interpreted and more fully used, and that future experience is more quickly and purposefully absorbed. And the rest of this book provides practical guidance on what you need to know and be able to do to become a better manager.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:24:49 +0000
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