Battling to manage?

2008-11-17 08:51

Chris Moerdyk

Ask anyone in business what business is all about and the answer you will invariably get back will be "people".

Why is it then, that so many companies invest fortunes in things like machinery and technology but a relative pittance on developing people?

Beats me.

Perhaps the answer lies in asking those same people just what is so hell-fire important about people? I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was; "well, we can't run the business without them". In other words, yes business is about people but in the sense of a necessary evil and not a precious and productive asset.

Even companies that do recognise the value of people and do indeed plough a lot of money into developing them, find out that somehow all that training isn't resulting in increased productivity at all.

The reason for this, I believe, is because any form of training needs to be implemented and sustained by managers. And the trouble is that managers often feel they don't need any form of training themselves. Being a highly successful employee does not mean one is automatically going to be a successful manager.

The thing is, if managers don't get training then all the employee training in the world isn't going to be worth a damn. And by manager I mean anyone who is in charge of anyone else, even if it is only one solitary soul.

Being a manager is more than just having the authority to give orders, kick butt and sweat over budgets. It is the key position in any company.

Lower performance

But, don't take my word for it, let's have look at what an expert had to say about basic management fundamentals forty years ago and which apply to South Africa today more than ever before as we try desperately to fend off global competition and the results of deregulation. Not to mention a chronic management skills shortage

At the time, J Sterling Livingston was professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

He kicks off with this analogy; "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she is treated." He was using My Fair Lady as an example and Eliza Doolittle's observation that Professor Higgins would always treat her as a flower girl no matter how cultured she became.

That's the trouble, says Livingston; "most managers, like professor Higgins unintentionally treat their subordinates in a way that leads to lower performance."

And here's something close to my heart. An inexperienced or untrained manager can be identified as someone who never says "well done", who never gives an underling a pat on the back, but rather harps on an on about what is wrong.

And the completely ineffectual manager is the one of not only complains all the time but who goes on and on about how many other people have told him what a bad job his employee is doing. This manager can be identified quite easily because he never admits to who did the complaining.

As Livingston says; "Damaged egos lead to behaviour that invariably increases the probability of failure.

My way

Another dead giveaway in identifying an untrained manager is the boss who insists on everything being done his way, even to the point of fabricating complaints about his employee. Almost the old military technique of lambasting greenhorn recruits with criticism until their self-confidence is reduced to the point where they just do anything they're told. Hardly motivational.

"Clearly the way managers treat subordinates," says Livingston, "and not the way they organise them, is the key to high expectations and high productivity.

"Managerial expectations," he continues, "must pass the test of reality before they can be translated into performance."

Here comes the kicker, the most dangerous trap any manager can fall into. My interpretation of Livingston's fascinating paper, is that the most destructive manager is the guy who keeps convincing himself and anyone who will care to listen to him, that inadequacies are the fault of subordinates and never himself.

How to identify those guys? Easy, they're the one's who very rarely feed back information to their underlings, unless its negative and then they do it through a third party for all sorts of strange reasons, not the least of all is a kind of sadistic form of one-upmanship.

For some warped reason they hold out on employees believing that in this way they can retain some sort of advantage or demonstrate who's the boss.

Scars

Livingston closes his argument with; "If managers are unskilled, they leave scars on the careers of young people, cut deeply into their self-esteem and distort their image of themselves as human beings."

Sage advice from 40 years ago, and as valid today as the most contemporary of management techniques.

How often do we hear people today saying; "Wow ! I get up every morning feeling great and I just can't wait to get to work - it's all just so exciting"?

Not often, and the majority of those we do hear saying that are either kidding us or kidding themselves.

We don't hear too much of this in South Africa because the level of manager skills - as distinct from management skills - is particularly low by world standards and hardly surprising given the massive brain drain from the country.

Giving a talk on managerial motivation the other day someone asked me what advice I could give to a manager if I only had ten seconds in which to do it.

Fortunately I had been tipped off about this question and was able to presented this carefully researched, not to mention rehearsed, ad-lib: Anyone who is serious about being a manager should get up every morning determined to motivate every single member of his staff to get up the next morning saying; "I'm feeling great - I just can't wait to get to work - it's all so exciting..."

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