The Manager’ s Job • HBR CLASSIC manager learns to share information and the analyst learns to adapt to the manager’ s needs. For the analyst, adaptation means worrying less about the elegance of the method and more about its speed and flexibility.
Analysts can help the top manager schedule time, feed in analytical information, monitor projects, develop models to aid in making choices, design contingency plans for disturbances that can be anticipated, and conduct“ quick and dirty” analyses for those that cannot. But there can be no cooperation if the analysts are out of the mainstream of the manager’ s information flow.
The manager is challenged to gain control of his or her own time by turning obligations into advantages and by turning those things he or she wishes to do into obligations. The chief executives of my study initiated only 32 % of their own contacts( and another 5 % by mutual agreement). And yet to a considerable extent they seemed to control their time. There were two key factors that enabled them to do so.
First, managers have to spend so much time discharging obligations that if they were to view them as just that, they would leave no mark on the organization. Unsuccessful managers blame failure on the obligations. Effective managers turn obligations to advantages. A speech is a chance to lobby for a cause; a meeting is a chance to reorganize a weak department; a visit to an important customer is a chance to extract trade information.
Second, the manager frees some time to do the things that he or she— perhaps no one else— thinks important by turning them into obligations. Free time is made, not found. Hoping to leave some time open for contemplation or general planning is tantamount to hoping that the pressures of the job will go away. Managers who want to innovate initiate projects and obligate others to report back to them. Managers who need certain environmental information establish channels that will automatically keep them informed. Managers who have to tour facilities commit themselves publicly.
The Educator’ s Job
Finally, a word about the training of managers. Our management schools have done an admirable job of training the organization’ s specialists— management scientists, marketing researchers, accountants, and organizational development specialists. But for the most part, they have not trained managers. 17
Management schools will begin the serious training of managers when skill training takes a serious place next to cognitive learning. Cognitive learning is detached and informational, like reading a book or listening to a lecture. No doubt much important cognitive material must be assimilated by the manager-to-be. But cognitive learning no more makes a manager than it does a swimmer. The latter will drown the first time she jumps into the water if her coach never takes her out of the lecture hall, gets her wet, and gives her feedback on her performance.
In other words, we are taught a skill through practice plus feedback, whether in a real or a simulated situation. Our management schools need to identify the skills managers use, select students who show potential in these skills, put the students into situations where these skills can be practiced and developed, and then give them systematic feedback on their performance.
My description of managerial work suggests a number of important managerial skills— developing peer relationships, carrying out negotiations, motivating subordinates, resolving conflicts, establishing information networks and subsequently disseminating information, making decisions in conditions of extreme ambiguity, and allocating resources. Above all, the manager needs to be introspective in order to continue to learn on the job.
No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. The manager determines whether our social institutions will serve us well or whether they will squander our talents and resources. It is time to strip away the folklore about managerial work and study it realistically so that we can begin the difficult task of making significant improvements in its performance.
References
1. All the data from my study can be found in Henry Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work( New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
2. Robert H. Guest,“ Of Time and the Foreman,” Personnel, May 1956, p. 478.
3. Rosemary Stewart, Managers and Their Jobs( London: Macmillan, 1967); see also Sune Carlson, Executive Behavior( Stockholm: Strombergs, 1951).
harvard business review • march – april 1990 page 12