Managing the Business

How Successful Managers Align Management Systems with Business Strategy

Garry L. McDaniel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780815336914
• eBook ISBN: 9781136772801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First published in 2000. Managers who are able to conceptualize and align management systems with business strategy are more likely to achieve on-the-job results, receive higher performance appraisals, and move up in the organization. This in-depth study of senior, middle and first-line managers examines how successful managers use management systems to achieve high productivity and innovation in their areas of responsibility. In today's fast-paced, dynamic and highly competitive work environment, organizations strive to attract and develop strong leaders and managers. Executive, human resource specialists, organization development and training professionals are vitally interested in learning what qualities or characteristics the best leaders and managers exhibit, and how to develop those qualities in their existing workforce. While previous research has focused on the qualities of strong leader/managers primarily in senior or first-line management positions, this book reports the results of a comprehensive analysis of successful senior, middle and first-line managers in a high technology company. In this book, the reader will learn how the best managers define management systems and align those systems with business strategy in ways that achieve desired business results, and identify them as the leaders of the future.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203823538-1

The 1990s have been labeled the decade of the "learning organization" (Senge & Fulmer, 1993). Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, defines a learning organization as one which continually expands its capacity to create its future (1990, p. 14), The ability of an organization to learn and share what it learns quickly is viewed as a competitive advantage in a high-tech, high-change business world. Organizations recognize that managers play a critical role in an organization's ability to meet its strategic business objectives, maintain daily operations, and facilitate positive change and learning. Many researchers believe that for organizations to compete effectively they need to reexamine traditional assumptions that inform how managers learn and apply the skills and knowledge needed to excel in both tactical and strategic issues on the job (Argyris, 1993; Sayles, 1993).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In the decade of the 1980s, American business discovered that defining the role of management as planning, organizing, controlling, coordinating and commanding was too narrow an interpretation if organizations were to compete effectively in the world market of the 1990s (Sayles, 1993). While these traditional management roles are important, additional competencies are needed in the workplace including team and leadership skills, knowledge of systems thinking, the ability to reflect critically, and the willingness to share mental models with others (Senge, 1990; Champy; 1995). Managers now have responsibility for building an environment of integrity, trust, openness and shared vision. They are expected to shift from a role in which they act as transactional managers, charged with maintaining the status quo, to transformational managers, charged with encouraging and leading dynamic change (Spreitzer & Quinn, 1996).

The inability of managers to learn and perform these new roles can be damaging to the long- and short-term efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of an organization. Clemmer (1991) observes that poor management training may lead to unsatisfactory results in areas such as providing high quality personal service, product quality, interactions with team members and employees, decision-making, and the ability to develop others. Researchers note that unsuccessful managers are often unable to assume new roles, incorporate new productive knowledge, face shortcomings, challenge mental models, share insights, accept constructive feedback, or view their work and the work of the business systemically (Deming, 1986; Schon, 1987; Senge, 1990; Clemmer, 1991; Simons, 1995). Management training that does not achieve intended results not only has negative long- and short-term effects on the organization, but is often viewed as a waste of valuable time, funding, and resources by training participants and senior management (Robinson & Robinson, 1989). Indeed, many individuals would no doubt identify with the following observation by Michael Brown,

If, as I suggest, most of these [managerial development] programs are good, how do I not become the supermanager of my aspirations? At various times I've learned how to approach my job as a total business system, how to quantify and measure everything, how to plan strategically, how to manage change, how to manage my time, how to get results by motivating others, and umpteen other proven approaches to successful management. . . . All this leaves me confused as hell. My management instincts have been watered down. I've now been conditioned to stop in the middle of some management activity and try to remember which techniques might apply. The different management techniques seem to meld into an anti-synergistic mixture, in which the sum is less than the totality of the parts (Sandelands, 1990).

The frustration voiced by this individual at not becoming a 'supermanager' is understandable in light of the tremendous amounts of time and money spent on management and leadership development programs by organizations each year. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) estimates that organizations in the United States budgeted over $59.8 billion for formal training programs in 1996 (ASTD, 1996, p. 38). Of this figure, approximately 27 percent of this budget, or $15.9 billion, was spent directly for management training (p. 46). These figures become more concrete when one considers that this equates to over 374 million hours (or almost 48 million man-days) in training during the calendar year (p. 54). If, as Michael Brown suggests above, much of the time spent in training is not transferring into application in the workplace, the loss in productivity on-the-job is staggering.

Some researchers stress how important the transfer of management training skills and knowledge is to the workplace. Robinson and Robinson (1989) found that managers who performed poorly after training were deficient in their ability to serve as positive role models for employees, coaches for new behaviors, reinforcers of desired behaviors on the job, and communicators of expectations regarding employee performance. In a study of 359 managers from a cross section of organizations, Robinson and Robinson reported that the major barriers to skill transfer by managers to the job included not seeing a payoff for using new skills, not having sufficient confidence to use the new skills, failing to use the skills successfully, and not seeing an immediate application for the skills (p. 117). Others found that managers who perform poorly on the job are deficient in areas such as credibility, competence, trustworthiness, and vision (Kouzes and Posner, 1993), congruence between actions and statements, micro-managers, willingness to empower, ability to measure critical business indices (Olian & Rynes, 1992), decision-making, multi-tasking (McCall & Kaplan, 1990), and leadership abilities (Bennis, 1989).

To improve manager skills and knowledge, learning professionals have generally employed traditional training and educational delivery methods for conducting management development (Marsick, 1987). These methods have consisted of providing knowledge and skill training primarily through classroom lecture, guided discussion, role-plays and media presentations of 'good' and 'bad' behavior. Management skills and knowledge are also taught in a sequence of topical subjects and skill sets that are rarely tied back to some strategic or over-arching context or model. For example, three major training vendors offer first-line management training curriculum with module topics as listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparison of Vendor Management Training Programs

Vendor A	Vendor B	Vendor C
• Your Role & the Basic Principles	• Perception	• The Creative Process
• Giving Constructive Feedback	• Organizing & Planning	• Planning
• Getting Good Information from Others	• Decision-making	• Organizing
• Getting Your Ideas Across	• Decisiveness	• Directing
• Dealing With Emotional Behavior	• Interpersonal Relations	• Coordinating
• Recognizing Positive Results	• Leadership	• Delegation
	• Control & Follow-up	• Control
	• Flexibility	• Decision-Making
	•Oral Communications	• Communication
	• Written Communications	• Motivation
		• Inspiration

Each of these programs consists of a number of modules which offer knowledge and skills practice on specific management tasks or functions (e.g. how to make decisions, get information from others, delegate, etc.) While these approaches may be effective for teaching specific skill sets, they are not effective at helping managers understand how to apply that skill within the context of a dynamic work environment. Not surprisingly, research indicates that long-term knowledge retention and behavioral change is not always achieved using these methods (Laird, 1985). Marsick and Watkins (1990, p. 4) observe, "Employees may demonstrate that they have learned new knowledge and skills at the end of a training activity, but they find it difficult to transfer this learning to their normal work environment."

If current methods of preparing managers for their roles by focusing on teaching specific management skills are not resulting in sufficient long-term knowledge retention and behavioral change, one can surmise that a new paradigm is needed to assist managers to learn and perform on-the-job is needed. Albert Einstein observed, "The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them" (cited in Covey, 1989, p. 42). Accordingly, a manager should not be expected to exhibit radical changes in skill, knowledge or behavior if prompted by the same traditional training methods. Spreitzer and Quinn (1996) agree, noting that traditional approaches to management training have a limited ability to achieve behavioral change. In an extensive research effort with 3,000 Ford Motor Company managers, Spreitzer and Quinn found that an effective transformational management program would need to be designed on a new set of assumptions. Results indicated that a successful program should go beyond informing managers, to providing them with opportunities to transform themselves and their mental frame—to challenge traditional assumptions, roles, and organizational practices (Spreitzer & Quinn, 1996).

Previous Management Research

The tendency to focus on individual aspects of a manager's job by those in the training industry is reflective of traditional research approaches to studying what managers do. Several 'generations' of research have been conducted in the field of management over the past century. Some early researchers focused upon determining how to make managers more efficient by focusing on tasks or definitive work assignments (Taylor, 1911). Others focused upon describing the various 'managerial functions' that made up the totality of managerial work as they knew it (Fayol, 1930, Gulick, 1937). Later researchers worked to clarify the responsibilities inherent to the position of a managers authority (Barnard, 1938, Drucker, 1967). Still other researchers focused their attention on the experiences of individual managers, drawing from specific case studies and making generalizations associated with what successful managers do (Newcomer, 1955, Dale, 1960). More recently, scholars have explored the competencies associated with managerial success (McClelland, 1973...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Review of the Literature
• Chapter 3. Research Methodology
• Chapter 4. Results
• Chapter 5. Findings and Conclusions
• Appendix A. Interview Questions
• Appendix B. Research Cover Letter
• Appendix C. Annual Achievement Summary
• Appendix D. Company Data
• Appendix E. Division Data
• Appendix F. Cumulative Systems, Performance Appraisal & Focal Rankings
• Appendix G. Scatter Plots
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index