Managers today have various "roles" or organized sets of behaviors that identify with a position. A manager has formal authority and status which gives rise to the interpersonal roles figurehead, leader, and liaison. From interpersonal roles come informational roles and decisional roles. Of the perceived managerial roles, the leader role has always been recognized and is considered highly important.
We recognize the difference in a leader versus a manager, and what makes them effective. Today's managers spend the majority of their time with peers and subordinates rather than superiors. This is common across the board and not likely to change. Great leaders tap into the needs and fears we all share. Great managers, by contrast, perform best by discovering, developing, and celebrating what’s different about each person who works for them. While there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it. They know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack. (2) "Great leaders discover what is universal and capitalize on it. Their job is to rally people toward a better future. Leaders can succeed in this only when they can cut through differences of race, sex, age, nationality, and personality and, using stories and celebrating heroes, tap into those very few needs we all share. The job of a manager, meanwhile, is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance. Managers will succeed only when they can identify and deploy the differences among people, challenging each employee to excel in his or her own way. This doesn’t mean a leader can’t be a manager or vice versa. But to excel at one or both, you must be aware of the very different skills each role requires." (2)
With industrial organization, the practice of management changed radically in the early years of the 20th century but not much in the past few decades. As technology booms, we may see dramatic changes in the way human effort is mobilized and organized once again, changing the role of managers. (1) Given how little the practice of management has changed over the past several decades, it's hardly surprising that most people have a hard time imagining how management might be reinvented in the decades to come. When compared with the momentous changes we've witnessed over the past half-century in technology, lifestyles, and geopolitics, the practice of management seems to have evolved at a snail's pace. While a suddenly resurrected 1960s-era CEO would undoubtedly be amazed by the flexibility of today's real-time supply chains and the ability to provide 24/7 customer service, he or she would find many of today's management rituals little changed from those that governed corporate life a generation or two ago. Hierarchies may have gotten flatter, but they haven't disappeared. Front-line employees may be smarter and better trained, but they're still expected to line up obediently behind executive decisions. Lower-level managers are still appointed by more senior managers. Strategy still gets set at the top. And the big calls are still made by people with big titles and even bigger salaries. There may be fewer middle managers on the payroll, but those that remain are doing what managers have always done - setting budgets, assigning tasks, reviewing performance, and cajoling their subordinates to do better.
When faced with middle management decisions where innovation is key, especially in an established organization, a methodology for breakthrough management thinking is needed. While innovation can never be entirely scripted, it is possible to increase the odds of a eureka moment by assembling the right ingredients - starting with a disciplined process for unearthing and challenging the long-standing management orthodoxies that constrain creative thinking.
Today, millions of people have laptops and handheld computers -- thus spurring rapid development of wireless networks. And more than 20 million U.S. homes have broadband connections. As fast Net access takes off, it will spark altogether new ways of using the Internet that we're just beginning to imagine today. Technology hasn't settled down yet and its days of maturity may be decades away. The IT revolution may share many parallels with previous transformative technologies such as railroads and electricity, but it differs in one key way: The underlying technologies not only aren't slowing down, they're accelerating. Computer-chip performance keeps doubling every 18 months, and disk-drive capacity and Internet-connection speeds are improving even faster. That's spurring new products, from MP3 and DVD players to Web services for corporations, that are disrupting industries from entertainment to health care. Says Intel Corp. Chairman Andrew S. Grove, who has worked in tech for more than 40 years: "The rate of change in technology is as much today as any time in my experience."
This constant renewal is the essence of technology. It was in the last big tech downturn, in 1985-86, that some of today's titans got rolling -- Dell, for one. Today, Dell dominates PCs, with sales having risen 14% last year, to $35.4 billion. Founder Michael S. Dell's view today? "There's no shortage of new ideas and new technology coming. The evolution of technology is showing no signs of maturing whatsoever." The industry may well require more steady leadership in the difficult years to come. But for tech to remain a vital part of the economy, its leaders must make sure they don't slow down as they grow up. (3) In most Walgreens stores, each employee “owns” one aisle, where she is responsible not only for serving customers but also for facing the merchandise, keeping the aisle clean and orderly, tagging items with a Telxon gun, and conducting all resets and revisions. This arrangement is simple and efficient, and it affords each employee a sense of personal responsibility.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted from The Future of Management by Gary Hamel (October 2007, Harvard Business School Press). Copyright © 2007 Gary Hamel.
2. Harvard Business Review What Great Managers Do march 2005 by Marcus Buckingham
Robert D. Hof Contributing: Wendy Zellner and Andrew Park in Dallas, Jay Greene in Seattle, and Jim Kerstetter in San Mateo, Calif. THE FUTURE OF TECH -- THE BIG PICTURE Why Tech Will Bloom Again Sure, parts of the industry have withered. But that's the way tech works, and new fruit is on the way Aug 25, 2003)
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