How many times have we heard employees or colleagues ask this question about a manager:
What does he/she actually do?
You may have asked that same question about another manager. The answers are not always straight forward and whilst some managers are extremely good at delivering tangible results, others achieve things that are less measurable or obvious. As a rule you could say that performance has to be measurable, otherwise the credibility and legitimacy of managers are flawed. But is it really so easy to measure these things?
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggest that there are four main areas of results, these are:
Management Practice - this is about the operational running of processes within organisation and their infrastructure, within the existing management structure.
Delivering Change - change management is about awareness of needs for change, planning, and implementing, and to remove the uncertainties of the business environment. Managers are required to respond to external changes and drive internal change initiatives.
Enhancing Customer Relations - this involves putting customer requirements into measurable results, e.g. sales, after-sale income, new business, re-sales, etc.
Enabling Continuous Improvement - this area is concerned with striving for excellence, continuous quality improvement, and Kaizen processes for products and services.
As can be seen in the figure above, the relative allocation of 'measurable' management activity is around 40/20/20/20, although it could be said that the four areas often blend into one. However, there is a need for balance and managers must make sure they do not neglect any one of their 'result domains'. Managers are often bogged down with 'the running of things', but if you spend too much time on operational 'drudgery' and neglect your change management, continuous quality improvement (CQI), and customer relations, then you could potentially miss opportunities to be more effective. Generally, the whole is more important than the sum of all.
The Baldridge Model for Performance Excellence, first developed by the U.S. Government in 1980, defines seven more specific areas of management activity (See figure below).
As can be seen, the diagram purposefully shows no hierarchy of performance areas. This should remind us that balance is key for managers. If you focus too strongly on leadership you will inevitably neglect any of the others but if leadership is lacking, your team will remind of it very soon!
Going back to the question raised above, i.e. what does he/she actually do??!
Well, the answer seems more obvious now:
He/she is trying to balance several areas of performance but is not quite managing to do so. The reasons for this could be as varied as the tasks at hand and we have to remember that managers (especially middle-managers) often may not receive support from their superiors.
So, if you feel under pressure to justify 'what you actually do', perhaps reflect upon the above areas of performance.
Here is a 37-hour week Exercise (Reflective Key questions worksheet):
Fill in your personal answers in the boxes, i.e. how many hours do you spend on each task? This is based on your typical working week.
Performance Area:
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Key Reflective Questions:
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Leadership
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- How much time do I spend with my team?
- How much time do I spend on directing processes in my team, responding to my team’s initiatives and needs?
- How much do I represent my team in contact with other parts of the organisation or customers?
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Strategic Planning
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- How much time do I spend on setting objectives?
- How much time do I spend on prioritising, forecasting, planning my team’s next move, and setting new milestones?
- How much time do I spend on planning the immediate future of my team?
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Customer and Market Focus
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How much time do I spend on any of the following:
- Keeping in touch with customers.
- Creating a customer care and customer meaning culture in my team.
- Measuring and monitoring customer service levels.
- Talking to my team about service quality, customer expectations and how to meet them.
- Developing a new customer care initiative.
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Measurement, Analysis
and Knowledge Measurement
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How much time do I spend on any of the following:
- Establishing key results of my work and my team’s work.
- Review if and how my team and I have achieved the set objectives (and were these SMART)?
- Review the effectiveness of my team in contributing to the organisation’s overall goals.
- Review resources, timescales, and information.
- Record team achievements, completed tasks, non-achievements, incomplete tasks, and workload.
- Take stock of overall team performance.
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Human Resource Focus
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How much time do I spend on:
- Developing a positive culture within my team.
- Reviewing performance and training needs of my team members and myself.
- Allocating tasks fairly and working with my team to develop every team member.
- Solve problems to do with sickness, non-compliance, absence, and performance.
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Process Measurement
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How much time do I spend on:
- Reviewing working processes for efficiency and effectiveness.
- Identifying and reducing wastes and ‘dummy activities’.
- Try something different and measuring its outcome.
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Excellence Levels and Trends
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How much time do I spend on:
- Improving my team’s tools, techniques and development.
- Think of ways of improving quality for my customers and my team.
- Communicating shared values and beliefs that define and support the quality of my team’s and my work.
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If you spend very little, or no time at all on one, or several of the above areas, then it might be worth re-thinking the operational side of your role as a manager. Too many managers spend too much time on one or two areas and neglect (often not by choice) other areas of performance. Consequentially, many end up in a rut, from which it is hard to escape. A healthy balance is the way to go and it is up to the individual to claim back some time to level your performance. Creating that balance will ensure that nobody asks 'that question' about you!
For further reading I can suggest Managing for Results, by Gillian Watson and Kevin Gallagher:
Watson, G. and Gallagher, K. (2006) Managing for Results. 2nd ed., London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
For a free MS Word doc of the above worksheet follow this Blog by email!
