A Manager's Lot Is Not A Happy One

I read something pretty interesting about the business practice of management the other day. It was interesting because so much of it seemed relevant to all interpersonal relationships, not just business management.

I was reading a short interview with Dr. Henry Mintzberg of McGill University. He's written a book about management, after following 29 managers (in many fields of work, from managing a bank to managing a refugee camp) through their daily lives over an extended period.

Dr. Mintzberg shared a fun analogy. He suggested that many people imagined a manager as the conductor of an orchestra, waving a baton to keep all the elements in time, working seamlessly together. Dr. Mintzberg thinks this is a myth. He thinks a manager may be more like a conductor during the first rehearsals of an amateur band, when everything is going wrong, and some of the necessary elements are altogether absent. That's a good analogy, and fairly accurate, in my opinion.

Here's a quote from Dr. Mintzberg's interview with MIT Sloan Management Review, excerpted in the Wall Street Journal on 17-August-2009 -

Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.

One step removed, they manage people. Managers deal with people who take the action, so they motivate them and they build teams and they enhance the culture and train them and do things to get people to take more effective actions.

And two steps removed from that, managers manage information to drive people to take action - through budgets and objectives and delegating tasks and designing organization structure and all those sorts of things.

Today I think we have much too much managing through information—what I call 'deeming.' People sit in their offices and think they’re very clever because they deem that you will increase sales by 10 percent, or out the door you go. Well, I can do that. My granddaughter could do that; she's four. It doesn't take genius to say: Increase sales or out you go. That's the worst of managing through information.

Three ways managers influence action (when they're not getting interrupted - another key element in the life of a manager, according to Dr. Mintzberg):
1. Take direct action;
2. Get those you manage to take action;
3. Share information and hope for action.

That pretty much sounds like how I get anybody to do anything, whether I'm 'managing' them or not.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.DAHplaytime.com