Management
Issue No. 33 - February/March 2007
The changing role of managers
by Dr Adrian Geering
In many organizations, managers have been taught to carry out the classical functions of management - planning, organizing, leading and evaluation. Yet any observer of human behaviour would have to conclude that by and large this has not happened. Many managers have not understood their roles nor carried out their management functions at all well - particularly planning and evaluating.
One of the major issues that I have with classical management theory and practice is that it is based on outmoded views of human behaviour. It assumes also that we live in a stable, unchanging environment which can be predicted with accuracy so that the organization can appropriately respond.
This model of management also assumes that the most competent, the very best performers and the most creative thinkers become managers - and we know that that is not true!
As training for many managers is limited or non-existent, then managers will tend to manage as they themselves were managed.
So managers become “people watchers” rather than process facilitators. Unfortunately, because creative people do not thrive in this kind of tension-filled, static, low-morale environment and may be a threat to the existing power base, they may feel quite unrecognized and unrewarded.
In future, people will get restless, look for organizations that accommodate their intellectual property and will leave those that thwart this desire for creative fulfilment. This will be very detrimental to those companies which refuse to change as the competition for management talent will be fierce.
Many modern organizations are built on industrial assumptions that assume work can be broken down into demeaning bits with people in little boxes - someone thinks about the work, another plans it, someone does it and a further person evaluates it. Organizations and managers have failed to see the growing need that workers have to experience these processes and to be released and empow...
