marry in haste, repent at leisure

Imagine. Your organization has the right strategy. It also has the right structure (since that follows strategy). Are you happy? Not yet. You do not have enough of the right stuff. The Right Stuff. The right stuff are inspiring, caring, infusing, and initiating managers who go about their business quietly, on the word of Henry Mintzberg. Warren Bennis, always keen on leaders, thinks that they are white knights who can somehow herd cats. Most people would be happy with either variety. Indeed, they would be happy with any of the prototypical characters drawn in management textbooks. But the fact is that such high-caliber material is not available for nearly all organizations. So it is important to make the most of what organizations do have. And to spend, therefore, more time, integrity, and brainpower on managing people and making people decisions than on anything else. There are good reasons for this: experience shows that one in three promotions ends in failure, that one in three is just about effective, and that one in three comes to pass right. The quality of promotion and staffing decisions reveals how competent management is, what its standards and values are, and whether it takes its duties seriously. Managerial Responsibility. To whom do these decisions relate? Let us look at what is required. Managers bear responsibility for ensuring that they profit the organization and do not jeopardize its chances in any way. This accountability is absolute and cannot be relinquished. Once upon a time, the standard tasks of managers were to set objectives, organize, motivate and communicate, measure accomplishments, and develop people. Excepting the smallest organizations, they must now also know how to make strategic decisions, manage by objective, take greater risks more often over longer periods, build cohesive teams, communicate information rapidly and succinctly, visualize their organization as a whole and blend their function within it, and integrate worldwide phenomena into their own decisions. Without a doubt, management is more complex and there is no room for safe mediocrity. Manager development. It follows, then, that managers must be groomed and developed. As luck would have it, however, the art of manager development is in its infancy. Mistaken beliefs abound: manager development is not about attending courses; it is not about finding potential; it is not promotion or replacement planning; and it is not a means to change personality. Its sole purpose is to make a person effective. For this reason, manager development must deal with the structure of management relations, with tasks, with the management skills that a person needs, and with the changes in behavior that are likely to sharpen existing skills and make them more operative. Managing Managers. It follows further that human resource management needs to change. Too often, what passes for management of human resources has little to do with human resources and even less with management. Detractors say that most human resource divisions would be hard pressed to prove that they are making a real difference. As a minimum, it should be recognized that the majority of people want to work productively and that managing them is the responsibility of their manager, not that of a human resource specialist. But there are vital roles that are best carried out by human resource divisions. One of them is the management of managers. These days, people do not so readily accept as manager someone whose credentials they do not admire. If persons are promoted because they are politicians, others will deride management for forcing them to become politicians. They will stop performing or they will quit. This should matter very much. When rewards and perquisites go to mere cleverness, obsequiousness, or nonperformance, an organization declines in tune with these attributes. As another adage has it, trees die from the top. (August 2001) Copyright ©2002 Olivier Serrat