The Manager’ s Job • HBR CLASSIC complicated business, and you’ d come back after a couple of days of hard labor and present the juicy morsel you’ d uncovered under a stone somewhere, and then you’ d find out he knew all about it, along with something else you didn’ t know. Where he got this information from he wouldn’ t mention, usually, but after he had done this to you once or twice you got damn careful about your information.’” 13
We can see where Roosevelt“ got this information” when we consider the relationship between the interpersonal and informational roles. As leader, the manager has formal and easy access to every staff member. In addition, liaison contacts expose the manager to external information to which subordinates often lack access. Many of these contacts are with other managers of equal status, who are themselves nerve centers in their own organization. In this way, the manager develops a powerful database of information.
Processing information is a key part of the manager’ s job. In my study, the CEOs spent 40 % of their contact time on activities devoted exclusively to the transmission of information; 70 % of their incoming mail was purely informational( as opposed to requests for action). Managers don’ t leave meetings or hang up the telephone to get back to work. In large part, communication is their work. Three roles describe these informational aspects of managerial work.
The Chief Executive’ s Contacts
Directors 7 % 1 % 16 % 25 %
Clients, Suppliers, Independents and Others
Associates 20 % 13 % 8 % 20 %
Chief Executive
Subordinates 48 % 39 %
Peers
Note: The first figure indicates the proportion of total contact time spent with each group and the second figure, the proportion of mail from each group.
As monitor, the manager is perpetually scanning the environment for information, interrogating liaison contacts and subordinates, and receiving unsolicited information, much of it as a result of the network of personal contacts. Remember that a good part of the information the manager collects in the monitor role arrives in verbal form, often as gossip, hearsay, and speculation.
In the disseminator role, the manager passes some privileged information directly to subordinates, who would otherwise have no access to it. When subordinates lack easy contact with one another, the manager may pass information from one to another.
In the spokesperson role, the manager sends some information to people outside the unit— a president makes a speech to lobby for an organization cause, or a foreman suggests a product modification to a supplier. In addition, as a spokesperson, every manager must inform and satisfy the influential people who control the organizational unit. For the foreman, this may simply involve keeping the plant manager informed about the flow of work through the shop.
The president of a large corporation, however, may spend a great amount of time dealing with a host of influences. Directors and shareholders must be advised about finances; consumer groups must be assured that the organization is fulfilling its social responsibilities; and government officials must be satisfied that the organization is abiding by the law.
Decisional Roles
Information is not, of course, an end in itself; it is the basic input to decision making. One thing is clear in the study of managerial work: the manager plays the major role in the unit’ s decision-making system. As its formal authority, only the manager can commit the unit to important new courses of action; and as its nerve center, only the manager has full and current information to make the set of decisions that determines the unit’ s strategy. Four roles describe the manager as decision maker.
As entrepreneur, the manager seeks to improve the unit, to adapt it to changing conditions in the environment. In the monitor role, a president is constantly on the lookout for new ideas. When a good one appears, he initiates a development project that he may supervise himself or delegate to an employee
harvard business review • march – april 1990 page 7