Deploying the Management Resource
Work-CG1 got employees going. Authority-CG2 gave them clout. Now the requirement is to deliver Results-CG3. This brings time into the picture. Time is money. Time is change. Grappling with time and deadlines is the source of pressure in management and stress in the workplace.
Deployment of the management resource and the corresponding resourcefulness of employees (whether in management or not) appear to focus on five areas of enduring concern:
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Function |
Function of the organizational phenomenon, and the time-based reason for its use. |
| Examples | Provided as appropriate. |
| Components of Resourcefulness | The three «means-of-achievement» as a graphic, and how each component must be handled. |
| Use of the Management Resource | How authorization is provided, and which employees and management roles are particularly affected. |
| Ethos for Effectiveness | The necessary sophistication of the management culture to ensure that the necessary work will get done properly. |
| Intellectual Technologies |
Where there are tough cultural requirements, the consultancy industry has developed methods to boost the management resource directly and indirectly. Examples will be provided. |
Establish Procedures: CG31
Function: To ensure an appropriate sequence of actions is followed without fail in specific situations.
Procedures must be in place to ensure the reduction of risk and the efficient running of certain processes. But Murphy's Law If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. means that things happen to disrupt procedures all the time. Poor procedures lead to waste, cost and delays and upset suppliers or customers.
Examples: Procedures are required in many places and situations: on an assembly line, in recruiting by advertising, in response to a staff grievance, in handling a customer complaint, in producing a set of accounts, in dealing with a power failure, in getting the ok from HQ.
Procedures are about preventing «issues» from emerging in important areas. So the requirements are:
► to grip the issues (CL3) acceptably (so cooperation will be provided by those involved);
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► to recognize who is formally accountable (CL2) (so that legitimate power can be forcefully exerted);
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► to ensure action is deliberately taken (so that the procedure invariably takes place when indicated).
Use of the Management Resource: Line-managers, typically middle managers, are required to determine and enforce most procedures. If the situation is tricky and urgent, a higher level troubleshooter may be required. In any case, all staff involved or affected, whether directly or indirectly, must be appropriately informed or engaged by a manager to learn or operate the procedure.
Ethos for Effectiveness: Staff in pragmatic cultures are liable to firefight rather than establish suitable procedures. They often bypass existing procedures to make a speedy response, but often at the cost of huge risks or pushing the problem elsewhere. The structuralist ethos(PH1C-φ2) (that contains pragmatic values) leads to an absolute insistence on unequivocal responsibility for establishing procedures wherever necessary or useful.
Intellectual Technology: Management by objectives.
Steer Implementation: CG32
Function: To progressively introduce changes in line with agreed plans and emerging priorities.
Organizations are goal-directed with plans, projects, policies, strategies, outcomes, deliverables &c. requiring execution. But time brings unexpected events, alters pressures on managers and leads to staff changes that affect and may even derail agreed developments. It is never obvious in advance what should be done, that is why steering by management is so necessary.
Examples: Implementation may be about ensuring continuous activity e.g. providing improved delivery schedules; or it may be a discrete event e.g. commissioning a new factory. In all cases, it is obvious that the change must be driven by some new values or goals.
Execution of any plan is never a given, due to human as well as empirical factors, so the requirements here are:
► to set a direction (CL4) that is acceptable (otherwise support will be withheld);
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► to grip issues (CL3) formally (otherwise implementation will stall);
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► to be deliberately accountable (CL4) (because change is always hard and the buck must stop somewhere).
Use of the Management Resource: A project manager is usually named to drive a change of any significance. This will be the line-manager if the work is within their primary remit. However, if a project crosses many departments or divisions &/or is sensitive, a steering committee involving several managers may be required to ensure acceptability of goals. In all cases, the staff working on the project or affected by it require appropriate handling by their line-manager.
Ethos for Effectiveness: A dialectic ethos (PH1C-φ3) is generally required to handle divergent perspectives. It helps staff reach agreements that allow emerging issues to be promptly and positively resolved.
If, however, full project management is desired, then the culture usually needs to be far more sophisticated—probably at the empiricist stage [PH1C-φ5].
Intellectual Technology: Project management technologies are applied here e.g. PRINCE, CCPM, CMMI, Agile Software Development.
(Re-)Design Systems: CG33
Function: To specify how relevant staff and technologies should interact to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of work activities.
Specification of systems in any organization is absolutely essential to keep everything running properly. Why?
An organization is itself a system, but not a natural one. Design of relevant aspects is essential to ensure:
● quality
● efficiency
● cost-control
● crisis-prevention
● regulatory compliance.
To provide benefit, designed systems must be well adapted to their context. This context lies both within and without the organization. Of course, adaptation only applies to a fixed point in time. What can change?
● workload
● management structures
● organizational policies
● staff involved
● staff preferences
● technologies in use
● features of products or services
● legal requirements
and more.
Contextual changes are initially handled by adjustments and work-arounds. Eventually, any designed system will break down. It is far better to redesign systems before they are part of a crisis.
Examples: Constraints that evolve might include regulations, policies, budgets, technologies. Constraints that can vanish or be suddenly replaced include key staff, buildings, equipment.
Mostly departments or particular powerful staff have massaged systems or what passes for a system to suit themselves. They do not welcome system redesign. In carrying out design:
► information used (CL5) to redevelop the system must be acceptable (to convince the relevant parties about the need for a new system or how it will operate);
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► values and goals set (CL4) as relevant to the system must be formally established (so as to sustain the system as an intrinsic cog within the organization);
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► issues posed by system requirements must be gripped (CL3) deliberately (so that redesign and implementation do not founder).
Use of the Management Resource: If systems are cross-departmental or cross-divisional, then an operational manager or staff officer must be specifically designated and authorized to adapt, review or redesign the system. Otherwise, line-managers are accountable for designing (or ensuring the redesign) of systems wholly within their remit. These work-activity systems are usually the province of middle managers—L3-managers in THEE's framework.
Ethos for Effectiveness: A rationalist ethos (PH1C-φ4), that includes dialectic values, is generally required to provide the necessary focus on system goals. There are also values and criteria that must be applied during design.
Pragmatic cultures may somehow manage to steer implementation. But the chaos, rapidly changing priorities and sudden shifts in staff assignments preclude the necessary goal-directedness, accountabilities and procedural arrangements that are a feature of effective systems.
Intellectual Technology: Business Process Re-engineering (BPR); Total Quality Management (TQM).
Stimulate Innovation: CG34
Function: To keep abreast or ahead of likely obsolescence and avoid being overtaken by competitors.
Even if an organization is doing «the right thing», over time this becomes doing «the wrong thing right». Time brings changes in the suitability &/or uniqueness of services, products, methods, needs, competitors &c. Something more is required than a better system or a more demanding goal.
Examples: What is required is the design and development of new and valuable products or methods or services, or even business models.
Firms operate in a competitive arena and even non-profit organizations and government agencies should be considering new and better ways to benefit their clientele and improve efficiency and effectiveness.
It is apparent that creativity is required for this sort of radical change. So in tapping that creativity, it is essential:
► to channel aspirations (CL6) acceptably (so staff feel free and willing to be creative in the organizational setting);
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► to use information (CL5) formally (so emerging ideas can be checked for feasibility and constrained by specified relevant organizational factors);
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► to set values and goals (CL4) deliberately (so the design focus does not drift or vanish through inertia or the «not invented here» syndome).
Use of the Management Resource: The drive for innovation should flow down the main line-management spine of the organization. It must not be consigned to specialist R&D departments, especially if their overview and brief are restricted. Everyone in the organization is a potential contributor to innovation—but only if managed in a way that stimulates that contribution.
Ethos for Effectiveness: An imaginist ethos [PH1C-φ6] provides the most effective environment for innovation. Relatively few large companies are comfortable to sustain this ethos—which is why so much innovation comes from small start-ups.
Large companies often turn to consultants to help manage events that release new thinking. Holding events off-site, however, often silently confirms the absence of the required on-site culture. If so, staff return to work and simply sink back into the pragmatic swamp of their everyday problems rather than initiating anything new.
Intellectual Technology: Creativity methods; Idea-generators; Brainstorming techniques; Innovation tools.
Develop People-&-Roles: CG35
Function: To enable existing and new staff members to release their emerging potential by filling posts and roles as these evolve.
The power of any organization lies in the capabilities of staff assigned to suitable posts and roles. However, over time, staff become more capable as they mature, develop more skills and learn through experience. Time also leads to roles and posts requiring re-focusing, splitting, combining, or abolition.
This evolution is usually slow and often subtle because:
● People do not know themselves and their inner growth fully.
● Managers struggle This is stated as a repeated observation in consultancy work, not as a criticism. to appreciate precisely what work needs to be done, and how it should be structured.
● Appraisal of the performance and the potential of staff may be perfunctory or haphazard.
The slow, subtle evolution increases the importance of the triadic requirements, which are:
► to evolve mindsets (CL7) acceptably (so both superiors and subordinates can come to terms with an employee's strengths and limitations);
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► to channel aspirations (CL6) formally (so that people can be given a chance to prove themselves);
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► to use information (CL5) deliberately (so that the necessary and often tricky handling of people and posts occurs).
Use of the Management Resource: The overall responsibility, often called workforce planning, lies with top management, assisted by the human resources (personnel) division. The task is to become aware of what staff members are suitable for and capable of, and how work demands are developing and changing. The main line-managers are the ones who should know, better than anyone, about their own subordinates and subordinates-once-removed, as well as the changing nature of work within their remit.
Ethos for Effectiveness: The systemicist ethos [PH1C-φ7] probably provides the most effective environment.
Intellectual Technology: Workforce Planning; Talent Pool Management; Succession Planning Tools.
More on Action for Results
For the organization, action should be about shaping or transforming activities and outputs in a constructive way. That cannot be avoided.
For the employee, action should also be about stretching one's own capabilities—beyond mere expertise and the proficient exercise of pre-existing skills.
Producing top quality results is hard. That is why, from a personal perspective, working at it involves resourcefulness. Dyed-in-the-wool pragmatists note wisely that nothing needs to happen systematically or deliberately for change to occur.Their rationale is:
Procedures will develop over time of their own accord as the situation demands.
Implementation produces results of some sort, one way or another, without too much steering.
Systems emerge and can be modified piecemeal or worked around or simply ignored.
Innovation can be stimulated as part of ordinary work or it may be simpler and far less risky just to copy competitors.
People take themselves in hand and move on or seek new responsibilities or promotion. Roles shift and blur all the time as line-managers pragmatically review pressures and move people about accordingly.
► Results need to be assessed: which requires the next larger grouping.
Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011