The Manager’s Job • HBR C LASSIC
The scarcest resource
managers have to
allocate is their own
time.
(perhaps with the stipulation that he must approve the final proposal).
There are two interesting features about
these development projects at the CEO level.
First, these projects do not involve single decisions or even unified clusters of decisions.
Rather, they emerge as a series of small decisions and actions sequenced over time. Apparently, chief executives prolong each project
both to fit it into a busy, disjointed schedule,
and so that they can comprehend complex issues gradually.
Second, the chief executives I studied supervised as many as 50 of these projects at the
same time. Some projects entailed new products or processes; others involved public relations campaigns, improvement of the cash position, reorganization of a weak department,
resolution of a morale problem in a foreign division, integration of computer operations,
various acquisitions at different stages of development, and so on.
Chief executives appear to maintain a kind
of inventory of the development projects in
various stages of development. Like jugglers,
they keep a number of projects in the air; periodically, one comes down, is given a new burst
of energy, and sent back into orbit. At various
intervals, they put new projects on-stream and
discard old ones.
While the entrepreneur role describes the
manager as the voluntary initiator of change,
the disturbance handler role depicts the manager involuntarily responding to pressures.
Here change is beyond the manager’s control.
The pressures of a situation are too severe to
be ignored—a strike looms, a major customer
has gone bankrupt, or a supplier reneges on a
contract—so the manager must act.
Leonard R. Sayles, who has carried out appropriate research on the manager’s job, likens
the manager to a symphony orchestra conductor who must “maintain a melodious performance,”14 while handling musicians’ problems and other external disturbances. Indeed,
every manager must spend a considerable
amount of time responding to high-pressure
disturbances. No organization can be so well
run, so standardized, that it has considered
every contingency in the uncertain environment in advance. Disturbances arise not only
because poor managers ignore situations until
they reach crisis proportions but also because
good managers cannot possibly anticipate all
harvard business review • march–april 1990
the consequences of the actions they take.
The third decisional role is that of resource
allocator. The manager is responsible for deciding who will get what. Perhaps the most important resource the manager allocates is his
or her own time. Access to the manager constitutes exposure to the unit’s nerve center and
decision maker. The manager is also charged
with designing the unit’s structure, that pattern of formal relationships that determines
how work is to be divided and coordinated.
Also, as resource allocator, the manager authorizes the important decisions of the unit before they are implemented. By retaining this
power, the manager can ensure that decisions
are interrelated. To fragment this power encourages discontinuous decision making and a
disjointed strategy.
There are a number of interesting features
about the manager’s authorization of others’
decisions. First, despite the widespread use of
capital budgeting procedures—a means of authorizing various capital expenditures at one
time—executives in my study made a great
many authorization decisions on an ad hoc basis. Apparently, many projects cannot wait or
simply do not have the quantifiable costs and
benefits that capital budgeting requires.
Second, I found that the chief executives
faced incredibly complex choices. They had to
consider the impact of each decision on other
decisions and on the organization’s strategy.
They had to ensure that the decision would be
acceptable to those who influence the organization, as well as ensure that resources would
not be overextended. They had to understand
the various costs and benefits as well as the
feasibility of the proposal. They also had to
consider questions of timing. All this was necessary for the simple approval of someone
else’s proposal. At the same time, however, the
delay could lose time, while quick approval
could be ill-considered and quick rejection
might discourage the subordinate who had
spent months developing a pet project.
One common solution to approving
projects is to pick the person instead of the
proposal. That is, the manager authorizes
those projects presented by people whose
judgment he or she trusts. But the manager
cannot always use this simple dodge.
The final decisional role is that of negotiator. Managers spend considerable time in negotiations: the president of the football team
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