What does a manager do?

Title

Creator

Drucker, Peter

Language

English

Source

The Republic Volume I (No. 2) 1-15 October 1975

Year

1975

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

THE REPUBLIC The Government 1-15 October, 1975 13 Manager must lead. But how? Here, Peter Drucker, a major management theorist and adviser to several top cor porations, expounds on the subject. (From his book. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.) TO BE A MANAGER requires more than a title, a big office, and other out ward symbols of rank. It requires com petence and performance of a high or der. But does the job demand genius'.’ Is it done by intuition or by method? I low does the manager do his work? A manager has two specific tasks. The first is creation of a true whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, a pro ductive entity that turns out more than the sum of the resources put into it. One analogy is the conductor of a symphony orchestra, through whose effort,vision, and leadership individual instrumental parts become the living whole of a musical performance. But the conductor has the composer’s score; he is only in terpreter. The manager is both compos er and conductor. This task requires the manager to make effective whatever strength there is in his resources-above all, in the hu man resources-and neutralize whatever there is of weakness. This is the only way in which a genuine whole can be created. It requires the manager to balance and harmonize major functions of the business enterprise: managing a business; managing worker and work; and man aging the enterprise in community and society. A decision or action that satis fies a need in one of these functions by weakening performance in another weak ens the whole enterprise. A decision must always be sound in all three areas. The second specific task of the manager is to harmonize in every deci sion and action the requirements of immediate and long-range future. He cannot sacrifice cither without endan gering the enterprise. He must, so to speak, keep his nose to the grindstone while lifting his eyes to the hills-which is quite an acrobatic feat. Or, to vary the metaphor, he can afford to say neither “We will cross this bridge when we come to it,” nor “It’s the next hundred years that count.” He not only has to prepare for crossing distant bridges-he has to build them long before he gets there. And if he does not take care of the next hundred days, there will be no next hundred years-thcre may not even be a next five years. Whatever the manager does should be sound in expediency as well as in basic long-range objective and principle. And where he cannot harm onize the two time dimensions, he must at least balance them. He must calculate the sacrifice he imposes on the longrange future of the enterprise to protect its immediate interests, or the sacrifice he makes today for the sake of tomor row. He must limit either sacrifice as much as possible. And he must repair as soon as possible the damage it inflicts. He lives and acts in two time dimensions, and he is responsible for the performance of the whole enterprise and of his own component in it. ^^OST MANAGERS spend most of their time on things that are not “manag ing.” A sales manager makes a statistical analysis or placates an important cus tomer. A foreman repairs a tool or fills out a production report. A manufacWhat does a manager do? Peter Drucker Lucio Martinez, Lonely Duke, 1969. turing manager designs a new plant lay out or tests new materials. A company president works through the details of a bank loan or negotiates a big contract or spends hours presiding at a dinner in honor of long-servicc employees. All these things pertain to a particular func tion. All are necessary and have to be done well. There are five basic operations in the work of the manager. Together they result in the integration of resources into a viable growing organism. A manager, in the first place, sets objectives. He determines what the ob jectives should be. He determines what the goals in each area of objectives should be. He decides what has to be done to reach these objectives. He makes the objectives effective by communica ting them to the people whose perfor mance is needed to attain them. Second, a manager organizes. He analyzes the activities, decisions, and re lations needed. He classifies the work. He divides it into manageable activities and further divides the activities into manageable jobs. He groups these units and jobs into an organization structure. He selects people for the management of these units and for jobs to be done. Next, a manager motivates and com municates. He makes a team out of the people that arc responsible for various jobs. He does that through the practices with which he works. He docs it in his own relations to the men with whom he works. He does it through his “people decisions" on pay, placement, and pro motion. And he does it through constant communication, to and from his subor dinates, and to and from his superior. and to and from his colleagues. The fourth basic element in the work of the manager is measurement. The manager establishes yardsticks-and few factors are as important to the per formance of the organization and of eve ry man it it. He sees to it that each man hasmcasurementsavailable to him which arc focused on the performance of the whole organization and which, at the same time, focus on the work of the in dividual and help him do it. He'analyzes, appraises, and interprets performance. As in all other areas of his work, he commynicates the meaning of the measurements and their findings to his subordinates, to his superiors, and to colleagues. Finally, a manager develops people, including himself. Every one of these categories can be divided further into subcategories, and each of the subcategories could be dis cussed in a book of its own. Moreover, every category requires differentqualities and qualifications. Setting objectives, for instance, is a problem of balances: a balance between business results and the realization of the principles one believes in; a balance between the immediate needs of the business and those of the future; a bal ance between desirable ends and avail able means. Setting objectives clearly needs analytical and synthesizing ability. Organizing, too, requires analytical ability. For it demands the most econo mical use of scarce resources. But it deals with human beings, and therefore stands under the principle of justice and re quires integrity. Analytical ability and integrity are similarly required for the development of people. The skill needed for motivating and communicating is primarily social. Ins tead of analysis, integration and syn thesis are needed. Justice dominates as the principle, economy is secondary. And integrity is of much greater im portance than analytical ability. Measuring requires, first and fore most, analytical ability. But it also de mands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the out side and above-that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measure ments are used as a weapon of an in ternal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weak est area in the manager's performance. Setting objectives, organizing, moti vating and communicating, measuring, and developing people are formal, clas sifying categories. Only a manager’s ex perience can bring them to life, concrete and meaningful. But because they arc formal, they apply to every manager and to everything he does as a manager. They can therefore be used by every manager to appraise his own skill and performance and to work systematically on improving himself and his perfor mance as a manager. J. HE MANAGER works with a specific resource: man. And the human being is a unique resource requiring peculiar qualities in whoever attempts to work with it. “Working” the human being always means developing him. The direction which this development takes decides whetherthc human being-bothas a man and as a resource-will become more pro ductive or cease, ultimately, to be pro ductive at all. This applies, as cannot be emphasized too strongly, not alone to the man who is being managed but also to' the manager. Whether he develops his subordinates in the right direction, helps them to grow and become bigger and richer persons, will directly determine whether he himself will develop, will grow or wither, become richer or become impoverished, improve or deteriorate. One can learn certain skills in man aging people-for instance, the skill to lead a conference or to conduct an in terview. One can set down practices that are conducive to development—in the structure of the relationship between manager and subordinate, in a promo tion system, in the rewards and incen tives of an organization. But when all is said and done, developing men ft ill re quires a basic quality in the manager which cannot be created by supplying skills or by emphasizing the importance of the task. It requires integrity of character. There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping’ people, getting along with people, as qualifica tions for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful or ganization there is one boss who docs not like people, who does not help them, and who docs not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workman ship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of bril liance, he never rates intellectual bril liance above integrity in others. The manager1 who lacks these qualities of character-no matter how likable, help ful; or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant-is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a man ager and a gentleman." What a manager does can be anal yzed systematically. What a manager has to be able to do can be learned (though perhaps not always taught). But one quality cannot be learned, one qualifica tion that the manager cannot acquire but must bring with him. It is not gen ius; it is character.

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