Management: Don't Forget The Real Work

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DON'T FORGET THE "REAL WORK"

A short however critical lesson!

"Real Work" is term coined by Abraham Zaleznik (Professor Harvard Business School) to describe management activities related to producing products and services, offering them to a market and making sure we satisfy our customers. 

He contends that many managers spend too much time focusing on organisational processes and politics (the "rituals of psycho-politics" - roughly defined as "the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals...") or the pursuit of social expectations in the workplace.

As Zaleznik suggests managers need to exert considerable effort doing the "real work of thinking about and acting on ideas relating to products, markets, and customers". 

Functional and technical competence needs to be developed. This important issue and you should do considerable research on competence modelling as part of your early time in management and this issue will be covered more fully later when I upload "COMPETENCE". The real work of the manger according to Zaleznik should always include 'the thinking that informs and directs action'. 

The next article on management is:

FAMOUS GURUS THOUGHTS ON MANAGEMENT

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references are at : career_advice/management-lesson-references.html

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Good Management Versus Successful Management

'GOOD' MANAGEMENT IS OK, SUCCESSFUL IS BETTER?!

Many issues are central to our success as managers. To discuss management success at this point is also desirable. 

Most managers I have asked to define success will give an answer that can be generally defined as doing a 'good' job. 

The interpretation of a 'good' job is different for each individual and is so open to personal interpretation that it would inappropriate and impractical to go into it here. Each person, even if acting on their on version of 'good' will be limited in their perspective on management success by only one view, that of their own truth or that which they have been indoctrinated with over time.

To at least give a singular perspective on how we may view success and what we should do to gain success perhaps the view offered by Fred Luthans in the book "Real Managers" is helpful. Luthans looks at speed of promotion as a measuring stick, has analysed how much time managers spend in four areas of management activity and then provides a comparison between average, successful and effective (good job) managers.

The areas Luthans, describes as activities undertaken by managers give us more insights into the nature of managerial work. The areas are; "traditional management", decision making, planning and controlling; "communication", routine information exchange and processing formal communications; "human resource management", inspiring, disciplining, conflict resolution, allocating/hiring competent staff and staff development; "networking", socialising, politicking, and interacting with outside stakeholders (customers, suppliers, government etc).

An interesting point Luthans brings out is that successful managers spend almost half of their time networking and another third of their time communicating whereas effective (or good) managers spend almost half their time communicating and a quarter of their time in human resource management.

Whether you seek success or effectiveness networking and communicating are both competencies you will need to develop.

The next article on management is the all important... DON'T FORGET THE "REAL WORK"

More management at http://www.orglearn.org/