The Nature of Management
 Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog |
|
|
 |
|
|
Contact Wally about coaching, consulting, or speaking to your group. |
Linda Hill and Kent Lineback just posted "Better Time Management Is Not the Answer" over on the Harvard Business Review blogs. It's a great post and it includes this important insight.
"The reality is, management is fragmented and reactive by nature."
That's why, as the authors point out, time management or greater personal efficiency are not the answers to many of the reasons that you can't get everything done. John Kotter identified the flip side of this years ago when he discovered that the best general managers weren't great at "time management." Instead, they were adept at seizing the opportunities of the moment to convey key messages and learn important things.
There are other aspects of the nature of the job that you need to understand, too. They're obvious once you hear them, but often skipped by the management books.
Management is a high velocity job. Email and voicemails and impromptu conferences and emergencies large and small arrive and clamor for attention at a dizzying pace.
Management is a people job. People bring their whole life to work with them. That's one reason why management is necessarily messy. People also have limited reserves of discipline and willpower. And they're perceptive as can be, but not so good at boring, straight-line work.
Management is about getting the jobs done. That's not a typo. If you're the boss you have to accomplish your goals, you have to get the routine "laundry" done, and you have to help your people grow and develop. You have to take care of today and prepare for tomorrow. One or two of the jobs will not do. They're all yours.
Boss's Bottom Line
It's fast and it can be frustrating, but it's fun if it's the work you love.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Thank you, Wally... I used to tell newly appointed supervisors and managers that they should become accustomed to leaving at the end of the day with work left undone. A manager's job will expand to fill however much time one wants to devote. The key is not time management or even working more efficiently as you have stated, but instead it is about filtering and prioritizing inputs so that the organization and the people within it will achieve the goals before them.
Cheers,
Gordon
Reply to this
That's a great piece of advice, Gordon. In many individual contributor jobs you can finish everything up before you go home. In management that's hardly ever possible. Thanks.
Reply to this
I like that last point. Most managers have to get the job of their team done, whether a team member is doing it or not. Often what followers label "micromanagement' is simply a manager freaking out because it doesn't look like the work will get done. Reassurance, not push back, is likely the optimal response.
Reply to this
Thanks, David. I agree that "micromanagement" is often mis-diagnosed. It's a favorite buzzword that's applied without regard to the fact that how work is assigned should vary with the task, situation, and team member.
Reply to this
Hey Wally,
I was struck by the same article.
In software engineering we have recently discovered (meaning, the last 20 years or so) a technique called Agile Development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development).
Agile basically means focus on the values, not the process, get stuff done and break the problem down into tiny chunks so that you can adjust the plan at any point. When you inevitably run out of time / budget, the highest value stuff is always done and when something changes, you're able to react and adapt (break it down, put it on the list and do it makes customers happy).
I've often thought that the same rules should apply to management: focus on the values and break the problem into small chunks that can be completed and prioritised in the span of a single day. Work on the most important and doable stuff first and don't sweat running out of time: there's always a backlog of useful stuff to do.
Thanks for a great post.
Reply to this
Thanks for sharing that James. I like the basic concepts and, especially, the idea of doing the important stuff. We'd have to apply things slightly differently in workplaces where the work is never ending, rather than project based, but the concepts would still be valid.
Reply to this
This is very true! An effective manager must be able to manage time and manage people so that the work is done on time.
Scheduling jobs so people can finish it without feeling overwhelmed, getting level of effort and estimating a good reasonable time line are all very important management skills.
Reply to this
Thanks for stopping by and adding to the conversation.
Reply to this
Wally you are one of the few who continually sees the WHOLE picture. Of course people bring their whole life to work with them and yet, this is so often ignored. The premise of "Don't Bring It to Work" is exactly that. Once we see how things are connected and that past, present, and future intertwine we can definitely seize the day rather than merely look at narrow slots of time and people. Thanks for putting this front and center.
Reply to this
Thanks for the kind words, Sylvia. It's impossible to leave significant life events at home, which means that they affect the boss, the team, and productivity. You don't get a choice about that, the only choice you get is how you deal with it.
Reply to this
Most people aim to climb the corporate ladder, hoping to get into a management role so as to justify a move up the ladder. One thing they are not prepared for is the amount of responsibilities that a manager holds, and that it is not a walk in a park to manage a team of workers. A manager's job can be very fulfilling and fun, but it also comes with its own set of challenges, stress and problems.
Reply to this
I think we do a poor job of giving those who may want to move into supervisory positions a realistic description of what's in store for them. Thanks for adding to the conversation.
Reply to this