#249 from R&D Innovator Volume 5, Number 12          December 1996

The Changing Manager
by Ronald G. Read

Mr. Read is director of process development, ITT Cannon Connectors and Switches, Santa Ana, California.  He is responsible for developing and deploying systematic processes for all aspects of Cannon’s businesses, and has conducted training sessions for many companies, world wide.

The traditional role of a functional manager is undergoing significant change in many industries today.  This is a result of an emphasis on the use of multifunctional teams and the matrixing of staffs onto these teams for projects. This new role mandates a shift in focus from content to process:

            •  Before, the focus was on what was being done

            •  Now, the focus must also be on how the work can be best done

•  The new role requires an aptitude for coaching/teaching/mentoring

If your company is moving in this direction and you are in a leadership position or find yourself transitioning into a new managerial role, you must now be expert at:

            (a) Understanding systematic processes for solving problems, making             decisions, planning and identifying and prioritizing concerns

            (b) Identifying and deploying those processes necessary to assure “best             practices” are used in the functional area

            (c) Motivating, communicating, and using effective management styles

            (d) Emphasizing value-added processes 

How Much Value Are You Adding?

If your company is like mine, you are being asked to do more today with fewer resources in a shorter time.  There is a mandate to “do it right the first time."  We are all being asked to evaluate our contributions.  Are we adding value?  How much of what we do is value added that the customer pays us to do? 

Surveys of US industries show that as managers, we typically spend only 25% of our time on value-added tasks.  A major portion of our time is spent on non-value-added rework, problem solving, and unnecessary work.

Think about your own and your team’s use of time.  How much is truly value added?

New Challenges

The challenge of increasing our value-added contribution is common for all of us.  Many of the challenges will require new skills, and you should be aware of some common pitfalls. 

Setting Goals/Establishing Priorities.  Being a leader mandates a change in roles for establishing objectives and priorities.  The role of leader versus follower requires the aptitude and skill for (1) establishing realistic and measurable objectives that are clearly defined, and (2) setting priorities that consider the urgency and future impact of the concerns facing you and your team on the job.

Management/Motivational Style.  Technical knowledge is no longer the sole deciding factor to achieving success.  Chances are your sharp functional skills got you recognized as a potential manager.  However, as a manager or team leader, your behavior patterns become more important.  Your management style in dealing with and motivating people will play a more significant role in getting the right results than your technical skills.

New/Fuzzy Data.  The data you will be working with will be less familiar because it will no longer just come from the "comfort zone" of your area of expertise.  Data will now come from the "twilight zone" of the unknown.  The information you must process will come from all directions, some factual, some fictitious and some objective, some subjective.  No matter how good your process for analyzing information, you must deal with factual, accurate data.

New Sense of Urgency.  As a manager, you will be expected to get results "now".   Because time is money, you will have to solve problems quickly.  You must be right the first time and make decisions on the spot with little or often unclear data.

People Problems.  Because one of your key resources are the people on your team, you will need the managerial skills to optimize their performance.  Like production equipment or machinery, a worker's output can vary for many reasons.  You will need new skills to solve people-performance problems.  These are the most difficult of problems to resolve because the data will most often come from opinions and not from observed behavior or facts. 

No Longer Just One Right Answer.  We typically have been trained to find the right answer.  As managers, we need to understand there are many "right" answers or options to consider.  The challenge is to select the best option depending on the circumstances.  The typical approach is to continue to analyze until the job is 100% done.   The effective managerial approach, however, often requires a decision with only 50% or less of the work done.  A common trap is to fall into an "analysis-paralysis" mode, searching for the one right answer and wasting valuable time when a less-than-optimum solution will often suffice.

Delegating/Working Through Others.  Your new role requires working with and accomplishing objectives through others.  The three resources you manage are people, time, and money.  Your accomplishments are only as good as the accomplishments of your people.  A good manager not only asks "What have my people done for me today?" but also "What have I done for my people today to help them perform?"

Juggling Multiple Tasks/Use of your Time.  Management, by definition, requires the ability to handle multiple assignments or tasks.  To do this juggling effectively, you first need an approach for identifying and prioritizing concerns.  You need to be sure your team is working on the right jobs at the right time.  The use of your time will be different.  You will be spending more time in meetings, making presentations, preparing and reporting on your team's progress.  Expect more scrutiny because you are responsible for more resources.

Process versus Content.  The single most significant failure of a new manager is to not understand the difference between process and content issues.  As a result, the new manager will rely on his or her content knowledge.  This leads to a focus on what is being done rather than the process of how the work is being performed.  An example is the engineering manager who still attempts to perform the design without a concern for how the design might better be performed by his or her team.

Sharpen Your Skills

Your ability to handle these challenges will require the use of skills that may need sharpening.

One set of skills deals with the processes you use in handling the information of your job.  The other set deals with core content skills of knowledge you must use to get results by working through others.

The process skills focus on how you and your team go about solving problems, making decisions, planning and identifying and prioritizing on job concerns or issues.  

Information Processing

Studies of effective leadership techniques have shown that leaders who get results do so by being logical.  They follow a systematic process in handling the data.  They recognize there is a sequential procedure in analyzing information whether they are solving problems, making decisions, planning, or assessing situations.  They have thought through the step-by-step rational analysis of information to determine the true cause of a problem, make the right decision, or create a fail-safe plan.

The use of a systematic process for analyzing information is analogous to the sequential, clearly defined process steps used by any successful manufacturing operation.  In order to produce a quality product, it must start with quality raw materials and then follow a series of manufacturing steps in proper order.  Any deviation from this order will produce an inferior product.  This also holds true for how we, as leaders, produce quality results.  The raw material of our jobs is the information we must handle on a day-to-day basis.  The quality of this information is important.  Equally important are the processing steps we use to analyze this information.

There is a simple test to determine how effective you and your team are in processing the data of your job:   Can you list the steps that you use in solving a problem? or making a decision? or planning?  Does everyone on your team follow the same set of steps?  In your next meeting at work, ask the attendees what steps they use.  Do they all follow the same process as a team or do they flounder by taking a "random walk?"

Core Content Skills

To solve people-performance problems requires a special understanding of core content skills.  These skills center on our abilities to motivate our teams, use effective management styles and communicate with subordinates, peers and supervisors.  These skills often require knowledge in which we are seldom trained.  The only training ground may have been the trial and error of on-job experiences, many of which often lead to ineffective results.

Your first step toward gaining these core content skills is to assess:

(1) your beliefs about motivating others (understanding the Motivation Needs Hierarchy based on the work by A. Maslow and F. Herzberg*)

(2) what management styles you typically employ (understanding the Management Grid and Theory X and Y styles of management by D. McGregor*)

(3) how well you solicit feedback and communicate information to others (using the concept of the Johari Window by J. Luft*)

This self assessment then leads to your ability to define a set of tactics to use on your job to make you and your team more effective.

Today’s pressures and complexities are just too great to rely on management styles and practices that have worked in the past.  If you want to be a successful manager, you will need to adapt your styles and practices to be optimally effective for this rapidly changing environment.

*Maslow, A., “Personality and Motivation,”  Harper, New York, 1954.

Herzberg, F., “Work and the Nature of Man,” Wiley, New York, 1966.

McGregor, D., “The Human Side of Enterprise,” McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967.

Luft, J., “Of Human Interaction,” National Press, Palo Alto, 1962.