The New Rules
What do we expect of managers today? Managers must be able to manage a diverse workforce in a decentralized, global, and boundaryless organization. Managers must be able to manage virtual teams in which team members rarely or never meet face to face. To achieve and maintain competitive advantage, managers must be able to decrease product cycle time without compromising quality or costs. Because of downsizing, they must be able to accomplish more with fewer employees. And, they must understand and leverage new information technologies, lest they fall behind on the information highway.
Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live.
—Peter Cochrane, Cited in www.greenleafenterprises.com/quotes.s.htm
Managers must be able to establish credibility with their employees, many of whom are empowered knowledge workers who, because of their specialized training and experience, are likely to know more than their managers about the organization's products, technologies, and customers. Empowered knowledge workers may not be easily impressed by hierarchy, so managers must be able to influence them without depending solely on the power of their position in the hierarchy. In addition, managers must be able to motivate and inspire commitment from employees without being able to offer a commitment of promotability or long-term employment in return. They must do all of this in an organization in which many employees, and perhaps themselves, are balancing two or more careers in their household, taking care of children, and helping aging parents. Managers increasingly find it impossible to ignore pressing societal concerns such as poverty, violence, environmental issues, and the quality and expense of child and elder care.
So, what skills does the ideal manager need? Fortune Magazine, in an article called “Reengineering the MBA,” described the managerial ideal as follows:
Every B-school dean knows what to confidently promise: The ideal executive of the future...Global in outlook, facile with information systems and technology. Able to capitalize on diversity. A visionary. A master of teamwork and a coach. Walks on water, too.[23]
Although walking on water is beyond the scope of this book, I believe that being able to understand and leverage fundamental organizational and societal changes is the most pressing challenge managers and management educators face today. Managers and management educators must learn to treat these organizational and social trends not as the sideshow, but as the main event. [24] The sheer number and scale of major trends is striking. These trends offer much excitement and opportunity for those who engage them. Amazon.com, the path-breaking and very successful on-line book and everything-else store, leverages the Internet to bring books, videos, music, toys, beauty products, kitchen products, and other goods to anyone who has access to the Internet. Amazon.com served over 2.5 million people in more than 160 countries at the end of the twentieth century and continues to be a leading on-line shopping site today.
It's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin
The trends influencing management today are summarized in Table 1-1. These trends do not imply that managers must completely shift their thinking from one model to another. Rather, they imply that managers must simultaneously manage stability and change; create routines and inspire improvisation; operate in hierarchies and fluid networks; control the workplace and liberate employees' potential; create a collective identity and encourage diversity; engage in slow, deliberate long-term planning and act quickly. In other words, managers must develop a broad repertoire of seemingly contradictory skills and shift quickly from one skill set to another as appropriate.
How do we prepare managers to operate in such a complex environment? The skills that are the hallmarks of effective managers today fall into four categories. Each enables managers to become faster, more flexible, and—most importantly—more thoughtful. Managers must have the willingness and ability to:
| Old | New | Consequences for Managers |
|---|---|---|
| Stable, predictable environment | Changing, unpredictable environment | From routinization to improvisation, adaptability, and flexibility |
| Stable and homogeneous workforce (or at least the workforce was treated as such) | Mobile and diverse workforce | From one-size-fits-all styles to multiple styles |
| Capital and labor-intensive firms | Knowledge-intensive firms | From machine and industrial relations models of organizations to learning models of organizations |
| Brick-and-mortar organizations | Brick-and-click (or just click) organizations and e-commerce | From managing relationships face-to-face to managing relationships through communication technologies (e.g. telecommuting) |
| Knowledge and product stability | Knowledge and product obsolescence; mass customization | From routinization to improvisation, adaptability, and flexibility |
| Knowledge in the hands of a few | Knowledge in the hands of many (in large part due to advances in information and communication technologies) | From manager as expert and information broker to manager as a creator of a context that enhances collective learning |
| Stability of managerial knowledge and practices | Escalation of new managerial knowledge and practices | From a focus on learning to a focus on learning and unlearning; from uncritical acceptance of managerial knowledge to becoming wise consumers of managerial knowledge |
| Technology as a tool for routine tasks (data processing era) | Escalating information and communication technologies (knowledge and relationship era) | From using technology for routine tasks to using technology as a key leadership resource for wide-scale organizational and societal changes |
| Economies of scale | Mass customization, cycle time, speed | From routinization to improvisation, adaptability, and flexibility |
| Local focus | Local and global focus | From one-size-fits-all styles and standards to multiple styles and standards |
| Bureaucracy | Networks | From command and control to relationship building; from autonomy to interdependence; from clear to permeable boundaries inside and outside the organization |
| Managers as fixed cost | Managers as variable cost | From security to pay for performance |
| Predictable, trajectory careers | Multiple careers | From employment to employability |
| One-breadwinner families | Dual and triple career families | From an emphasis on tradi tional family roles to an emphasis on fluid family roles, flexible work schedules, and work/life balance |
Invest in lifelong learning and critical thinking
Develop self-awareness
Create a broad and diverse network of high-quality relationships
Craft a meaningful personal and professional life
Investing in Lifelong Learning and Critical Thinking
Lifelong Learning
If there is one thing upon which management educators, researchers, and executives agree, it is that the willingness and ability to engage in lifelong learning is one of the most important managerial skills. Nancy Dixon explains: “We have entered the Knowledge Age, and the new currency is learning. It is learning, not knowledge itself, which is critical. Knowledge is the result of learning and is ephemeral, constantly needing to be revised and updated.” Quoting Thurber, she continues: “In times of change learners shall inherit the earth, the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.”[25]
Stand on my grave and tell me the news of the world.
—Inscription on eighteenth century tombstone found by anthropologist Jennifer James
Lifelong learning goes far beyond the willingness and ability to adopt new techniques. Harvard professor Linda Hill, in her book Becoming a Manager, argues that managers need “the sort of learning after which an individual conceives of something in a qualitatively different way, and which has lasting influence.”[26] Lifelong learning refers to an ongoing process of discovery and innovation through which we achieve a wisdom that enables us to make decisions for which there are no precedents; draw on our own life experience and take seriously the life experience of others; see the relationships between seemingly independent ideas, contradictions, and skills; and make sense out of the ambiguity and multiple agendas inherent in managerial work.
Critical Thinking
The proliferation of management gurus and consultants, the seduction of “instant answer” fads,[27] and the escalating forms of mass communication (popular press books and magazines, research journals, management training, the Internet) make it essential for managers to be able to sort through and thoughtfully assess the value of new information and advice. In short, managers need to become critical thinkers and wise consumers of managerial knowledge.[28]
Yet for many people, learning means “to thoroughly grasp what an expert knows...finding and comprehending someone else's answer.”[29] Most of us were taught to believe from a young age that what teachers tell us is true and useful. But claims to one-right-way and one-size-fits-all answers, although comforting, are naive and misleading in unstable times, when problems can be defined in multiple ways, when new problems arise that have never been faced before, and when problems are too complex for any one person or perspective to resolve.
Two assumptions are at the heart of critical thinking. First, much of our knowledge is socially constructed, and there are many perspectives on the truth. Second, power relations in a society affect what kind of knowledge is pursued and promoted. Critical thinking involves four basic steps: critiquing the assumptions upon which managerial knowledge is built; considering the cultural relativity of all managerial knowledge; considering whether some organizational and societal groups gain from a particular form of knowledge while others lose; and thinking creatively about alternative ways of seeing, thinking, and acting. It means not only asking “what is?,” but also “who said so?” “why?” and “what if?”[30]
Developing Self-Awareness
Studies of managerial development have consistently concluded that self-awareness is a core managerial competency. In their studies of the characteristics of successful executives, the Center for Creative Leadership found that successful executives tend to seek out honest feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. They give serious thought to how their strengths and weaknesses affect their task performance and relationships with others. And they change their ways of thinking and behaving based on what they learn about themselves.
I developed the idea very early that if there were rules that didn't make sense, you had to think carefully about how you broke them. Well, if you got caught, well, OK, you got caught, but that was not a reason to stop thinking.
—Anthropologist Gregory Bateson Quoting “Alice d'Entremont”
Self-awareness can significantly enhance managerial performance, career success, and personal satisfaction.[31] The more you know about yourself, the better able you are to choose fulfilling jobs, make informed task and career decisions, understand your perspective and how it influences your decisions, make the most of your strengths, target and compensate for your weaknesses, learn from past mistakes and failures, and develop productive and enjoyable relationships with others.
Organizational researchers Ed Hall and Phil Mirvis caution that self-awareness goes beyond focusing on yourself.[32] They cite the work of Robert Kegan, who argues that “the new work environment requires...that the individual have a clear sense of self-identity, autonomy, and personal direction while at the same time maintain awareness of the whole system in which she or he is functioning.”[33] For example, we cannot understand our “self” unless we understand the “other,” as well. Understanding the “other” is important to understanding ourselves because we develop our identity by consciously and unconsciously contrasting our “self” against a “generalized other.”[34] For example, I can characterize myself as an extrovert and a woman only in contrast to the categories of “introvert” and “man.” Organizational researcher Kenwyn Smith refers to this as the “social comparison process.”[35]
A critical lesson for managers is that what is considered the ideal self—or ideal manager—in one culture may be inappropriate and ineffective in another. Some cultures promote individualism, others collectivism. Some cultures promote formality, others informality. Some cultures promote hierarchy, others egalitarianism. Many organizational theorists, educators, and executives have learned the hard way that practices that are developed by and for one culture—empowerment, participative management, empowerment, quality circles—are built on assumptions that may not be relevant to other cultures and are, thus, likely to fail.
Understanding how our “self” is shaped by our relationships and the cultural context enables us to develop what cultural anthropologist Jennifer James calls “perspective skills.”[36] She explains that “an awareness of potential distortions of our perspective is essentially an awareness of the filters we all carry that distort reality and thus influence our reactions to change. Knowing your own limits is an important first step in keeping perspective.”[37] Yet perspective, James warns, “is often the first casualty in periods of rapid change.”[38]
Creating a Broad and Diverse Network of High-Quality Relationships
Relationship skills are particularly important today. Organizational structures are moving from the rigid bureaucratic pyramids that characterized the industrial age to the fluid networks that characterize the postindustrial, information age. Researchers Nitin Nohria and Robert Eccles describe the network organization as “consisting of a fluid, flexible, and dense pattern of working relationships that cut across various intra- and interorganizational boundaries.”[39] To be effective, managers must proactively manage their relationships with their bosses, subordinates, peers, customers, suppliers, distributors, and so on. They must be effective team members and leaders. Indeed, a Fortune survey of CEOs concluded that CEOs believe that “working effectively on teams is one of the most important new skills MBAs should have.”[40] Increasingly, managers are participating in “communities of practice,” networks of people who are informally and loosely connected by personal and professional goals, common interests, and an investment in mutual development.
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
—Theodore Roosevelt, Former U.S. president
Globalization and an increasingly diverse workforce make it essential for managers to acquire a broader, more flexible, and more sophisticated repertoire of relationship skills. Jay Conger argues that managers “need to become diversity experts...The more a leader represents the interests and goals of a single group or faction, the greater the resistance from the other groups...[Lack of awareness and insensitivity] will no longer be acceptable and may raise serious questions about a manager's credibility.”[41] And, managing relationships in a global environment “rarely means mastering 22 ways to shake hands in Romania. More often, it's a true appreciation of how differently—and equally well—things get done in other parts of the world, and how you had better take steps to understand this deeply.”[42]
Advances in information and communication technologies make relationship skills more important and complex than ever before. Today, managers' relationships are often coordinated, expanded, adapted, and sustained through a variety of information and communications technologies, including electronic mail, voice mail, fascimile machines, electronic bulletin boards, and videoconferences, to name just a few. New technologies create new forms of relationships to be managed, such as telecommuters, virtual teams, and virtual organizations. Therefore, managers must be able to use communication and information technology to create and develop organizational relationships.
Your ability to effectively develop, nurture, and leverage an extensive network of high-quality relationships depends on having a number of skills, including the ability to develop trust and respect with a diverse group of people; the ability to communicate effectively across many cultures; the ability to manage relationships up, down, and sideways; the ability to lead and be a member of many different kinds of teams; and the ability to use new technologies to expand and enhance organizational relationships.
Crafting a Meaningful Life
Writers, poets, and psychologists have come to the same conclusion: The ability to engage in both love and work, mastery and intimacy, are at the heart of psychological well-being.[43] Regardless of our culture, we all share the drive to fulfill and align dual needs: to have a sense of contribution and accomplishment that comes from what we do (our work) and to enjoy the intimacy that comes from being appreciated for who we are. Not surprisingly, satisfaction with our work enhances our satisfaction with our personal lives, and vice versa.
Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
—General Colin Powell
For managers, satisfying these two needs can be difficult. Henry Mintzberg's classic observation that “managers work at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity, and that they are strongly oriented to action...” is no less true today. What has changed, however, is that the increase in competition, risk of downsizing, flattening of hierarchies, decentralization of decision-making, broader spans of control, and pay for performance mean that many managers are feeling squeezed with too many expectations, too few employees, and too little time. Although the proliferation of managerial “how to do it better and faster” books and new communication and information technologies promise to show managers how to get more done with less, many managers seem to be getting less done with more.
For many of us, our tendency is to respond to increasing demands by trying harder, working faster, working longer, and cutting more out of our private lives so that we can focus more on our work. But this strategy often backfires because, as philosopher Rollo May cautioned, “It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.”[44]
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
—Agnes DeMille
As you will read in the last chapter, I'm not a believer that we can balance our lives, nor do I believe that striving for balance is a useful strategy. Rather, I believe that life is full of opportunities, trade-offs, and consequences. Crafting a meaningful life involves thinking carefully about the choices that we make, understanding the trade-offs, living with the consequences, and being willing to adapt our choices as our lives change over time.