The latest MBA: Management By App

One of things I’ve discovered since I started blogging and tweeting is how much I enjoy reading what other people have to say for themselves.  One of the sites I regularly visit is Inc. - it’s guaranteed to provide something of interest and I frequently tweet links to their articles.

For me, the best kind of article is not one that I necessarily agree with, but one that gets me all fired up, sending me off to jot down notes for a potential blog post of my own.  And that’s exactly what happened when I read 5 Brilliant People Management Tools.  The title itself was enough to make me curious, despite my growing weariness of posts with numbers in the title.  The opening sentence was also promising: ‘the formative years of any company have more to do with whom you hire and how you manage them than just about any other factor’. 

But then what happened?  There followed a list of the latest web tools designed to help you manage ‘essential HR and people management tasks’.  If how you manage people is so essential to the success of a new enterprise, somehow reducing it to a series of tasks that can be handled by the odd app or two doesn’t feel like you’ve really grasped how important it actually is. 

Now, I’m as much of a sucker for an elegant bit of software as the next person, and given that the author of this article writes about technical trends, his perspective is hardly surprising.  The problem I have has nothing to do with the use of web tools to manage certain processes – it’s about reducing people management to a series of processes in the first place. 

Process is important (it can for example help ensure compliance to employment legislation) but it is not the be all and end all.  As I’ve suggested before in one of my management clichés series, downgrading management to the administration of company process, policy and procedure can stifle a manager’s ability to motivate, inspire and engage people.  In the formative stages of any new enterprise, it is a manager’s leadership skills that will have the biggest impact on the performance of their people, not their ability to master the latest people management app.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

A passion for management

In the past, when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, traditional responses would include becoming a doctor, train driver, pilot and even explorer or astronaut.  Our present fascination with celebrity has possibly moved the emphasis more onto becoming famous, whether as a pop-star, actor or perhaps just for being famous. 

In any decade though, it is unlikely that manager would have been any child’s career of choice.  Being a manager is something few aspire towards; it is something people become while doing something else.  Scores of dedicated nurses, enthusiastic IT boffins and successful salespeople take on management responsibility, not because they are passionate about the challenges it offers, but as a way of earning more and progressing their careers.  For others, being a manager is seen as a stepping-stone on the path to greatness – the dues you have to pay if you want to become a senior executive with all the power and perceived glamour that entails. 

Having taken a step onto the management ladder, people often find it is not always a comfortable experience.  They spend less time doing what they love, and more time being caught in the middle of the organisation, blamed by both those above and those below for all its ills. According to research by the Hay Group, many company directors in the UK believe middle management to be the single greatest barrier to achieving company objectives, while dissatisfaction with a manager is a major factor in employees looking for a new job.

Given all of this, it would understandable if people were less than passionate about being a manager; and yet passion is exactly what managers need if they want to succeed.  It takes passion to motivate, engage and get the best out of people, and a passion for success and delivering the organisation’s strategic goals is what senior executives need from their managers.  

It is difficult to be passionate about something if your focus is elsewhere.  Many managers see the people management aspects of their role as interruptions that get in the way of their real work, be that caring for patients, solving some technical problem or closing a sale with a new customer.  Similarly, understanding the wider context of what is happening in the organisation sometimes seems like a distraction that has little to do with the day job. 

Turning irritation into passion takes effort; it starts with paying attention to what’s happening around you and instead of looking for quick fixes, getting curious about what’s creating the problems in the first place.  Curiosity sparks interest, and from here genuine passion can be ignited.  Passionate managers are rare, but hugely influential.  Although being a manager may not have been your first career choice, becoming a passionate one is something to aspire towards.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Management clichés: ‘People are our greatest asset’

This particular cliché is often used in the belief that it demonstrates to employees how much they are valued.  The truth behind its sentiment however is often debatable, and people are not usually taken in for long by nice words if they are not matched by appropriate action.

If we look at the definition of an asset, a completely different interpretation of this phrase emerges. In finance, an asset is any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation, especially one that can be converted into cash.  It would seem therefore that not since the abolition of the slave trade could people literally be considered assets, owned by the organisation, used and then disposed of.  Speaking figuratively, it’s not exactly a positive message, although some staff may consider it an accurate description of the relationship they have with their employers.  

Even when professing that employees are their greatest asset, most managers can identify certain individuals they regard as complete liabilities. This suggests that the phrase does not in fact cover all people; it could also be argued that in most cases it probably doesn’t even mean specific people.  There are few instances where an individual possesses the precise combination of knowledge, skills and expertise that makes them so indispensable that they couldn’t be replaced by someone else.  The phrase might therefore be interpreted as meaning the organisation needs people, but not necessarily you; again, this is hardly likely to increase motivation and engagement.

Like with most clichés, the intended impact of saying people are a company’s most valuable asset has been lost through overuse, and familiarity with the phrase has led if not to contempt at least to indifference.  Managers would do well to think of other ways of saying, or preferably showing, that they value their employees.  Without this, the most capable may well look for somewhere where their talents will be more appreciated, while those that remain may take on another characteristic typical of an asset, namely that their value to the company depreciates over time.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk