Managerial Performance
It should be clear from the preceding section that successful managerial performance rests on three basic elements-Leadership, motivation and communication.
Leadership.
The leadership style a manager adopts depends as much on personal goals and needs as on those of the subordinates involved. The general work environment also influences that style. While three basic styles can be isolated (i.e. autocratic, democratic and laissez-fatre), effective managerial performance generally reflects a mix-choosing the right approach for each situation.
Motivation
The modern concept of motivation refers to the process of creating a work environment that will simulate employees to perform at superior levels. On the manager's part, it means presenting a dear picture of what is expected of employees, providing them with necessary guidance, and giving them the feeling that their work is important and contributes to end results. Basically, managers must make employees feel that they valued in the total effort. For employees, performing at superior levels generally reflects the satisfaction of various personal needs - social, psychological, self-fulfilment, etc.
Communication.
In order for leadership and. motivation to be effective, the manager must be able to communicate wall with subordinates, and encourage feedback from them. A lack of effective communication leads to artificial barriers where there is little understanding between managers and subordinates, and where operational results are based on abuses of authority rather than strong leadership and motivation. In the latter case, operational results are generally less fruitful than they might otherwise have been.
“PHILOSOPHY” IN TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT
“Speaking Out” on Productivity
The set determines, who are and how we behave most of the time. When the world doesn't work the way it used to, our philosophy can suffer a wrenching change. That often happens for engineers moving from technical duties into management.
The superb analytical and reasoning processes that previously worked so well are not so useful; the situation has changed. "Disinterested” results that Mother Nature provided when we asked logical questions don't appear consistently when we work with variable and "very interested" emotional results that come when we deal with people. The logical approach resulting in reasonable solution to welldefined problems can fail badly when applied to a variegated, often poorly defined management situation. And if we do manage to learn new techniques and gain some success, we find that yesterday's solutions may no longer apply; the situation has changed again. We now need a more flexible, adaptable, personal management philosophy.
Typical technical manager. Consider this familiar sort of scene: Because you were one of, the best designers in the engineering department, you were promoted to engineering manager in another division. That engineering department functioned well before you arrived and there seemed to be no problems until - something changed. The same month:
• Your boss left the company. It was be who had confidence in you and backed your promotion. He was replaced.
• Your biggest customer decided to try another vendor.
• A sudden demand for your competitor's products forced a sharp drop in your company's sales. You were under the gun to develop new products.
But you're a manager so you know what to do, right?
Every basic management course teaches the same things in various forms: plan, organize direct, and control. It's always so easy in a school situation; the personal philosophy is straightforward. The manager should be a calm, reflective director of other people, delegating and planning. But there's a difference between real life and textbooks Continuing the example:
• The new boss doesn't like the present engineering procedures and politely but firmly insists upon a total redesign of engineering; product standards, and she wants it done in 2 months.
• Your sales manager discovers why your biggest customer switched. One of your junior engineers gave the wrong processing data in answer to a customer inquiry several months ago, It caused a major internal failure in the customer's plant. Your sales manager wants you to fire the engineer to placate the customer. However, you had just gotten approval to send the engineer back to Famous University for an advanced degree, because he had so much promise.
• 'The reason for your competitor's sales increase becomes apparent: The competitor has been able to get around your patents and come up with a product like yours at half the price. Now your company attorneys need your full attention for at least 6 weeks to help prepare a lawsuit.
Life was never this complex when you started, nor is it the way it's described in management books.
Science vs. art. All this may seem just a short-term scheduling problem. After all, can't you set all these jobs in an order of importance and get them done? Yes, if they were part of a science. If management were a science, it would follow these rules:
• There would be a common definition for all terms.
• An overall theory could explain and predict.
• There would be testable hypotheses,
• Results' would be predictable.
• Anyone with equivalent knowledge could repeat the results.
Those rules are just a modification of the tried and tested "Scientific Method." There is ail implied assumption, in this method, as in any science itseIf: The situation will be there regardless of the person interacting with it. But management is not a science; it's an art, and it differs from a science in several ways:
There is no common definition for all terms.
Many theories could explain and predict.
Testable hypotheses could be used, but
Results would not be-predictable. They would depend on the interaction between you as-manager and the situation.
Anyone with equivalent knowledge could repeat only some of the results. Each total situation is different, but they may have similar elements.
Management is an art that deals mostly with people. Simply put, the number of equations (theories about people, organizations, and management) is less than the number of variables to solve for (behaviour of specific people to be managed). The successful manager, then, is less a scientist, more an artist, assigning mental values to unknown variables in accordance with personal "philosophy.
For example, if your philosophy presumes that everyone primarily wants more money, you’ll have trouble when your best designer says he's leaving because he's been offered more responsibility elsewhere at only a small salary boost.
The rules differ for everyone, though they have a general limitation. Successful managers are somewhat like successful artists. They know the general limitations for a given person or situation. They know what "colours" should be used in this painting, and they have developed a personal philosophy on how the colours should be put together well. Managing, as an art form, requires greater creativity and artistry than almost any other work activity, because the constant doesn't remain constant; it changes in the situation. It's not only necessary to know how to "paint well" initially, but also how -to predict and control your situation - the colours and subjects are always moving.
What is tech management?
As an obvious subclassification, technical management differs from most other kinds management art because of three criteria:
1. Training. Many technical managers were inadequately prepared for management during their early academic training. It told them to think logically and find the "best way" to do it. Consider the boss' demands for new standards, the problem with, the young engineer, and the lawyers' needs for your time. They can all be resolved. Just sit down with these people and outline a series of priorities, then a time schedule, and then follow through with that plan. It's a reasonable and logical approach. It implies that there is one best answer and this is it.
But, as you can imagine, the boss, the young engineer, and the lawyers may have plans of their own. Their evaluations of the world and their assumptions that guide their behaviours may not agree with your "obviously" logical approach. Instead of your running the experiment, it looks like it's running you! The situation has changed and a more creative, flexible, situationally dependent approach must be used. Nonlogical key words like negotiation and delegation might be useful here. Scientific training must be supplemented now by training in psychology, sociology, and , other ologies.
2. Subordinates' skills. By definition, every technical manager must manage people who have higher skills than the manager. It is nearly impossible to manage more than a few technically qualified people and know as much about what they are doing as they do.
Your subordinates control both quantity, and quality of work done. It's all “thinking” kind of work - not visible to anyone. Usually, the best way you have to determine the adequacy of that work is to evaluate the end result. It's also possible to partly understand someone's thinking by asking for plans, then testing for logical and internal consistency, but you can't really determine how that subordinate came up
with an answer.
3. Personal liability. Few managers other than major corporate financial officers can be held personally liable for decisions made while they are employed by a company. But you can. Society seems to think that technical people should provide products and services that won't hurt the purchaser and will be useable for the intended purpose. That responsibility passes right through the corporation to you. You are no longer just an "employee of XYZ Corp.; you are a "professional" providing the best services and products to the eventual user. It's similar to the "medical model". A physician provides the best services possible for the patient and can be liable for mal-practice. So too, the engineer, chemist, or physicist provides the safest and best products, and can also be liable for malpractice.
Your management philosophy. If you're going to be a successful management artist, one of the best ways to start is to learn as much as you can from others. For example, consider first the general motivational concepts proposed by Maslow: There is a personal hierarchy of needs, and a satisfied need is no longer a motivator. The problem is that each person's hierarchy may be different, so how do we know when a need is satisfied? You might apply this theory in your unique fashion by goal-setting in a one-on-one setting. Thus, you define what you, as manager, want from that subordinate and what the subordinate wants from you when the task is completed according to specifications.
The starting point must be some kind of testable, hypothesis, such as your present philosophy. Can you agree on some desired goal with that subordinate if the desired result occurs? Can you deliver?
Testable hypotheses can be any area that is important to you. You might even be able to treat the results as if they were part of a quasiscientific experiment If the results support, your hypothesis, you can temporarily accept it, otherwise you must discard it. It's a simple approach cognitively, but difficult behaviourally. You must actively plan and monitor how the other person, and you, will act. Thinking about how you expect things to turn out is easy. Changing someone else's' behaviour to match results is tough.
• Consider the list of tasks outlined for you under "Typical Technical Manager": the engineering systems redesign, the requested firing of the junior engineer, and the new products design. Your first testable hypothesis would be that the requirements of the new boss should be tackled first. But even so, we'll use that hypothesis to build our new artful management philosophy.
• Start with a forecast. For the task, forecast its outcome: Name the end result. How will you know when it is done? Define the process. What has to be done and when? Define the resources needed. How many people, machines, and dollars?
Outline what you expect your authority to be. Include forecasts of the other two tasks, that concerning the junior engineer (retraining?), and that of developing a crash program of new product development. Show how all three tasks interrelate and what resources will be needed to meet a predetermined schedule. Show how trade-offs might be accomplished. These are obvious steps, just like buying the appropriate colours of paints for your painting but, too often, they're neglected. If there is no forecast, any kind of progress is satisfactory. When the forecast or its revision is approved, you can start work. If it is not, you're able to negotiate changes with the relevant, other managers.
• Maintain feedback. Develop a progress feedback, reporting system that is concerned primarily with “Where am I going?“ and only secondarily with "What have I accomplished so far?" You're interested more in the end result; less, in what's been done so far. What you want to know is "Will it end up on time within budget, and will it work?" That means you're always concerned with the Estimate to Complete and the Estimate at Completion.
• Adapt to the situation. We can never predict the future completely. Thus, there will always be change; as the work progresses. That's not a failure. It just means that you are gaining more information and are able to adjust your resources or even the goal to fit the now situation. Even in science, hot all experiments result in the expected results. But even failed experiments teach, us something of value. They teach us what not to do next time.
• Starting out use as many company resources as you can. This means adapting to the forecasting, measuring, and accounting systems, besides observing the behaviours of other successful managers.
The successful technical management "artist" is almost like a professional clinician, always experimenting and adapting to the situation.
Though that manager's personal philosophy is unique because no two people or situations are exactly alike, the philosophy can incorporate the results of the manager's successful interactions with the world. The logic and intelligence of the engineer or scientist is still a foundation, but it is now blended with an empathy to other people and a willingness to accept new, more flexible modes of behaviour. The hardest part is designing your new philosophy. In effect, you'll be redesigning yourself. Fortunately, an on-the-job, self-training program is practical because, if your initial forecasts don't work well, you'll have the flexibility to iterate. Therefore, start with small increments of change, measure your progress, and adapt as you go.
How to manage an ageing workforce
The Economist February 18th 2006
Governments, employers and workers all need to change
to keep baby-boomers on the job
One of the side-effects of the second world war the most momentous social change of the past half-century. As men marched off to fight, women put aside their grooming magazines and gardening gloves and took their husbands’ places in factories and on the farms. They never looked back. Many people worry about the impact on family life of their entry into the labour force, but most now take it for granted that women have as much to offer at work as men do.
Another change as large as that one is now under way. In a further half-century it will seem just as absurd that western societies today are content to press another potentially productive set of workers to stay at home sipping tea and potting begonias- and to play them for it, to boot.
The question of how to deal with the growing number of retired people has recently been seen as chiefly a financial puzzle: how to play for the leisure of those ageing layabouts. When Bismarck first introduced state pensions in the 1880s, they kicked in at the age of 70, about 20 years more than the typical life span. Nowadays state and company pension schemes kick in at or before 65, almost 20 years less. But the issue is more than just a financial one: it raises social as well as economic questions, and its resolution will involve governments, employers and people.
Sans teeth, sans work
The baby-boom generation, which started to turn 60 this year, contains the largest number of people ever voluntarily to give up work in such a short time. Because it is far larger than the generation that follows it-or any that preceded it-it casts a shadow over the companies it is set to leave behind. Japan expects its workforce to shrink by 16% (some 10m people) over the next 25 years. Europe will see the number of workers nearing retirement grow by a quarter. Some companies are already complaining of a shortage of skills, even before they have started to dole out carriage clocks and fountain pens by the barrow-load.
There are several ways of dealing with a falling supply of labour: work might be shifted offshore, to take advantage of abundant cheaper workers in poorer countries; laxer immigration rules might allow in more skilled labour from abroad; new equipment could enhance the productivity of a better-educated workforce. But one of the readiest sources of skilled labour is closer to hand.
If staying on at work were up to older employees alone, many would jump at the chance. That is partly because they will no longer be able to retire in the style that they have been led to expect. Corporate pension schemes and health benefits are becoming ever less generous. Last week General Motors joined the line of revisionists with an announcement that it will cap health-care spending by its retired workers. That will not be the last cut.
Baby-boomers say they want to stay in the workforce for more than money. Many also want to carry on working beyond the standard retirement age for the mental stimulation (try that on the next bored-looking 20-year-old you meet in the lift). Their productivity may decline as they get older-al-though people gain in experience, their capacity for sharp thinking falls off-but the traditional pattern of retirement, in which one day an employee is in a bustling office busy as a bee and the next he is good only for the potting shed and the fireside chair does not make sense for the economy, for companies or for people. You couldn't imagine that fate for the 69-year-old Carl Icahn (besieging Time Warner) or the 88-year-old Kirk Kerkorian (shaking up General Motors). It shouldn't be urged on their less enterprising peers, either.
If baby-boomers want to work longer and companies want more skilled workers, what's the problem? Part of the answer is that labour markets work particularly badly for older workers. Pensions need to be unhooked from final salaries, so that workers are not heavily penalised if they take pay cuts to stay in employment. That is already happening, with the decline of companies' defined-benefit schemes. State and private pensions should encourage workers to postpone retirement. That is already happening in Sweden and Switzerland, which both have relatively high labour-participation rates among older people. Pensions should be designed so that they allow part-time workers to continue to contribute even after their official retirement age.
Since governments benefit if people work longer (because they pay more in tax and cost less in benefits) they should be eagerly enacting such measures. But instead of freeing up labour markets to help older people work, governments are focusing on legislating to ban discrimination on grounds of age. European Union member countries are introducing such laws, even though experience in America, where they are already in force, suggests that making older people hard to fire discourages companies from hiring them.
Companies, as well as governments, need to be flexible. That's beginning to happen, partly because employers are keen to attract more women, and the part-time jobs that often appeal to them are attractive to the old as well. Big, well-managed companies tend to offer that sort of flexibility; others will have to learn.
Make work not war
Lastly, older workers need to adapt. In many cultures, age is related to seniority, and therefore to pay. The older the worker, the more expensive he is. Boomers will find work only if they accept that their wages will be based on what they are worth to the company-rather than their salary at the top of their career. Although a shortage of skills might well push up wages for all workers, older ones may nevertheless have to accept a relative decline in salary and status.
Baby-boomers have been changing the world since the 1960s. They're about to do it again by turning the world of work upside down. This social upheaval may be quieter than the last one they were responsible for, but its consequences will be more profound and longer-lasting.