Free
Managers to Manage
By
Tim Rutledge
Is
your company paying management money for non-management
work?
Flatter
organizational structures have led to the emergence
of the "working manager." Managers can no
longer call upon other employees to help with correspondence,
presentations, schedules, reports, statutory returns,
premises, ordering supplies, and so on. These jobs have
been eliminated. Managers must devote more of their
own time to these non-management tasks, and spend less
time managing their departments.
The
end result is an organizational application of Gresham's
Law.
Gresham's
Law states that bad money drives good money out of circulation.
Nations would sometimes decrease the amount of precious
metal contained in the coins that they minted. This
practice became known as "debasing the coinage,"
and as a result of it, coins with the same face values
had different intrinsic values for the purposes of trade
and exchange. Over time, coins with less gold or silver
supplanted those which had more because people hoarded
the "good" coins and circulated the "bad"
ones.
Something
similar happens to management work when there are fewer
and fewer people performing non-management tasks. Doing
the work often assumes a higher priority than managing
it, so it isn't unusual for management responsibilities
to get pushed aside. Accordingly, the management component
of a manager's job becomes, as it were, "debased,"
or driven out by other non-management components.
As
this phenomenon persists it creates its own logic. A
manager of mine once said, "If I have to choose
between working on the HR strategic plan and getting
out the payroll, I guess I'll get out the payroll."
This, however, begs a question: which of these two functions
- the payroll or the strategic plan - is a management
function?
Indeed,
the manager is responsible for both tasks, but only
the manager can author the strategic plan. The non-management
work supplants the management work until the latter
is all but driven out of the picture.
While
executive-level managers understand this phenomenon
as well as anyone, it's nevertheless common to all management
levels. And it's been around long enough to be thoroughly
embedded in an organizational culture of "busy-ness,"
where "busy-ness," or the veil of looking
busy, is valued and tacitly rewarded for its own sake.
Do
you work in a culture like that? Consider this vignette:
Two
managers meet on an elevator. The first one says to
the other, "So, are you busy?"
The second manager replies, "Well, yes, I'm pretty
busy. We're all supposed to be busy. But I'm pretty
organized, and I delegate when I can. I'm also careful
about how I allocate my time. I don't mind saying 'no'
if I have to. I don't want to be so busy that I have
no time for my staff and other priorities."
The
first manager thinks the second manager is (pick one):
a)
Highly skilled.
b)
From another planet.
If
your organization has a culture of busy-ness, the correct
answer is (b), of course. The second manager is "from
another planet" because he's a manager who doesn't
fit in a culture of busy-ness.
Busy-ness
has replaced managing.
To
pursue the Gresham's Law analogy, the management component
of the manager's job is like the gold or silver quotient
of the coin. It's what gives the job its value. It's
why managers are paid more than other employees. But
productivity is reduced when an organization pays a
manager's salary for non-management work. It's like
paying someone to put together a strategic plan but
insisting that they work on payroll. It's like debasing
the coinage and driving out value.
There's
an old tale about a manager who, as an experiment, spent
five consecutive days walking around in the plant where
he worked carrying a clipboard. That's all he did for
five days in a row, and not once did anyone stop to
ask what he was doing.
His
busy-ness costume consisted of nothing but a clipboard,
but it was enough to pass the busy-ness test.
Was
he busy? He looked busy, but in fact he was
100 per cent unproductive for five straight days.
I
don't have a silver bullet solution for this state of
affairs. Organizations need to drive out cost to remain
competitive. But remember Gresham's Law: as we continue
to reduce payroll costs, at what point are we no longer
driving out cost but rather, driving out value?
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