what do managers really do.pdf

What do managers do? 1

WHAT DO MANAGERSREALLY DO?

Most books deal with whatmanagers should do

Ways to describe managerial work:• calculated chaos• controlled disorder• celebrating intuition

Eastern mind vs Western mind


Textbooks on managerial work:• planning• organizing• coordinating• controlling

DISCUSSION:

WHAT DO YOU DO AS AMANAGER?


FOLKLORE AND FACTSAbout Managerial Work

1. Folklore:The manager is a reflective,systematic planner

Fact:Mangers work at an unrelentingpace. Their activities arecharacterized by brevity, variety,and discontinuity. They arestrongly oriented towards actionand dislike reflective activities


Evidence: findingsa. CEOs: 50% of activities lasted

longer than 5 minutes; 10%exceeded 1 hourSteady stream of callers andmail

b. Foremen: 583 activities per 8-hour work shift

c. British CEOs: worked a half-hour or more withoutinterruption only about onceevery 2 days


d. Verbal contacts: 93%arranged on ad hoc basisOne of 368 verbal contactsrelated to general planning

Explanation:

a. Manager simply responding tothe pressures of the job

b. Managers wanted toencourage the flow of currentinformation

c. When the manager must plan,it is done so implicitly in thecontext of daily actions, not


some abstract processreserved for 2 weeks at theorg’s retreat

d. Plans of CEOs exist only intheir heads – as flexible, butoften specific, intentions

e. The managerial job does notbreed reflective planners; themanager is a real-timeresponder to stimuli,conditioned by the job toprefer live to delayed action


2. Folklore:The effective manager has noregular duties to perform

FW: Managers told to spendmore time planning anddelegating, less time seeingcustomers and engaging innegotiations. These are not truetasks of the manager.Manager = good conductor,orchestrating everything inadvance; in absolute control


Fact:In addition to handlingexceptions, managerial workinvolves performing a number ofregular duties, including ritualand ceremony, negotiations, andprocessing of soft informationthat links the org with itsenvironment

Evidence: findings

a. Small companies: No staffspecialists -- CEO does it all


b. CEOs – natural part of job tosee important customers

c. Ceremonial duties – presidingover special dinners, etc arean intrinsic part of the job

d. Managers play a key role insecuring “soft” external infoand in passing it along to theirsubordinates


3. Folklore:The senior manager needsaggregated information, which aformal management system bestprovides

Manager sits at apex of pyramidwith giant MIS

Managers have commands 6media: documents, phone calls,scheduled and unscheduledmeetings, observation tours, ande-mails


Fact:Managers strongly favor the oralmedia – namely phone calls andmeetings

Evidence: findings

a. Brits: managers average 66%- 80% of their time in oralcommunicationUSA: 78%

b. Mail is a burden: “get rid of allthis stuff” sessions onweekends


c. Skim over routine reports andperiodicals, ritualistically

Explanation:

a. Mail analysis: only 13% wasof specific and immediateuse; not much of mail providelive and current info

b. Managers cherish “soft” info,esp gossip, hearsay, andspeculation.


WHY? The reason is itstimeliness; today’s gossip istomorrow’s fact

c. Oral info is stored in people’sbrains – the strategic databank of the org is not in thememory of its computers somuch as in the minds of themanagers

d. Managers extensive use ofthe oral media helps toexplain why they are reluctantto delegate tasks.


Time consuming to “dumpmemory” – to tell thatsomeone all they know aboutthe subject

Manager is damned byhis/her own info system to a“dilemma of delegation” – todo too much him/herself or todelegate to subordinates withinadequate briefing


4. Folklore:Management is, or at least isquickly becoming, a science anda profession

Science? Systematic,analytically determinedprocedures

Profession? Cannot even specifywhat managers are to learn


Fact:The manager’s programs – toschedule time,, process info,make decisions, and so on –remain locked deep inside theirbrains

To describe those programs, werely on words like judgement andintuition, which are labelsreflecting our ignorance


Observations:

Managerial actions today do notdiffer from those of a hundredyears ago.

Info – still much oral, with newhelp from electronic media

Managerial work is enormouslycomplicated and difficult:

• burdened with obligations• cannot easily delegate tasks• driven to overwork• forced to do many taskssuperficially


Characteristics of managerialwork:• brevity• fragmentation• oral communication


BASIC OVERVIEW OFMANAGERIAL WORK

Manager: person in charge of anorganization or one of itssubunits

All are vested with formalauthority over an org unit

From formal authority comesstatus which leads to variousinterpersonal relations

From status comes access toinfo


Info enables the manager tomake decisions and strategiesfor his/her unit


INTERPERSONAL ROLES

1. FIGUREHEAD ROLE-- statusCeremonial nature of worka. 12% of timeb. 17% of incoming mailc. routine, little serious

communication, no importantd-m.

d. important for smoothfunctioning of an org; cannotbe ignored


2. LEADER ROLEFormal authority vests themanager with great potentialpower

Leadership determines howmuch of it he/she will in fact use

Responsible for the work of thepeople in that unita. hire and train own staffb. motivate and encouragec. reconcile indiv and org needs


3. LIAISON ROLEMakes contacts outside his/hervertical chain of command

Spends as much time with peersand other people as withsubordinates

CEOs’ contacts:Clients, business associates andsuppliers; managers of similarorgs, govt or trade org officials,fellow directors in outsideboards; etc – between 25 and 50

WHY?


Cultivates contacts largely to findinfo

In fact, building his/her ownexternal info system – informal,private, oral but neverthelesseffective


INFORMATIONAL ROLESCommunications is his/her work

Manager emerges as the nervecenter of his/her org unit – thecenter of the info flow

May not know everything, buttypically knows more than anyone of his/her subordinates

Info from other managers ofequal status who are also nervecenters in their orgs

Dev powerful info data bases


4. MONITOR ROLEPerpetually scans theenvironment for info,interrogates contacts andsubordinates, and receivesunsolicited info via network ofpersonal contacts he/she hasdeveloped

Good part of info comes in oralform – gossips, hearsay,speculation

Natural advantage in collectingsoft info for his/her org


5. DISSEMINATOR ROLEManager shares and distributesmuch of this info withsubordinates who wouldotherwise have no access to it

Manager also passes info fromone subordinate to another


6. SPOKESPERSON ROLEManagers send some of theirinfo to people outside their units– speeches, lobbying efforts

Must inform and satisfy theinfluential people who controlhis/her org unit

Deal with influential outsiders –directors, shareholders, financialanalysts regarding theperformance of the org


DECISIONAL ROLES

Info is not an end in itself; it is thebasic input to decision-making

The manager plays an importantrole in the d-m system, committingthe unit to important new courses ofaction

As the nerve center, the managerhas the full and current info tomake the set of decisions thatdetermines the unit’s strategy


7. ENTREPRENEUR ROLE

Seeks to improve unit byadapting it to changingconditions in the environment

Development projects at CEOa. projects do not involve single

decisions or even unifiedclusters of decisions.Emerge as a series of smalldecisions and actionssequenced over time

b. multitasking – CEO maintainsa kind of inventory of the dev


projects at various stages ofdevJuggler – all in the air; onecomes down and is given aburst of energy and sent backinto orbit; some comeonstream, others discarded


8. DISTURBANCE HANDLERROLE

Managers respond to highpressure dissturbances andchanges (looming strike, energyshortage) beyond their control

Reality:Poor managers ignore situationsuntil they reach crisis proportions

Good managers cannotanticipate all the consequencesof the actions they take


9. RESOURCE ALLOCATORROLE

Decides who will get what when

Allocates his/her own time

Designs the unit’s structure, thatpattern of relationships thatdetermines how work is to bedivided and coordinated

Authorizes the importantdecisions before they areimplemented – to fragment thispower is to encourage


discontinuous d-m and disjointedstrategy

Need to consider the impact ofeach decision on other decisionsand on the org’s strategy. Thedecision would be acceptable tothose who influenced the org aswell as ensure that resourceswould not be overextended

Key is timing


10. NEGOTIATOR ROLEConsiderable time innegotiation. To commit orgresources in “real time”


GESTALT: INTEGRATING THEROLES

Holistic approachE.g. a manager without liaisoncontacts lacks external informationcrucial to the orgResult: can neither disseminate infosubordinates need nor makedecisions that adequately reflectexternal conditions

Herein lies the problem of teammanagementDifficult to divide up the ten rolesand reintegrating them


Most difficulty is with theinformational roles. Without fullsharing of managerial info(primarily oral) team managementbreaks down

Gestalt does not mean equalattention to each role:

Observations:

• sales managers:more attention to interpersonalroles, reflecting the extrovertednature of marketing activities


• production managers:more attention to the decisionalroles, reflecting their concernwith efficient work flow

• staff managers;more time in the informationalroles, since they are experts whomanage depts that advise otherparts of the org

Yet interpersonal, informational,and decisional roles remaininseparable


TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVEMANAGEMENT

The manager’s effectiveness issignificantly influenced by theirinsight into their own work

Major managerial logjamsstemming from the oral nature ofthe manager’s information:

• dliemma of delegation• the data base centralized in one

brain• problems of working with the

management scientist


1. The manager is challenged tofind systematic ways to sharehis/her privileged information

• regular debriefing with keysubordinates• weekly memory dump on thedictating machine/PC• maintain a diary of importantinfo for limited circulation

Trade-off:Efficiency in disseminating infoVs the question of confidentiality


Reality: job pressures drivemanager to be superficial inhis/her actions –- overloaded with work,- encourage interruption, -- respond quickly to every

stimuli,- seek the tangible and avoid the

abstract, and- make decisions in small

increments, and- do everything abruptly


2. Dealing with pressures ofsuperficiality:- give serious attention to the

issues that require it,- step back from tangible bits of

info in order to see the bigpicture, and

- make use of analytical inputs

Danger:Responding to every issueequally – need to prioritize

Solution:Work closely with planning staffor those with experience in


planning – when little timeavailable in addressing complexissues

The “planning dilemma”:Managers have info andauthorityAnalysts have time andtechnology


3. Gain control of his/her own time:Turn obligations into advantageand those which he/she wishesto do into obligations

Lots of demands for obligatorytime:

Turn a speech into a lobbying fora cause or a promotion of theorg

A meeting is a chance to re-organize a weak dept

A visit to an important customeris a chance to extract trade info


Do things that are important –turn them into obligations

Free time is made, not found;forced into schedule

Wants to innovate?Initiate a project and obligateothers to report back

Need certain external info?Establish channel that willautomatically keep him/herinformed

Need to tour facilities?Publicly commit to doing so