The Editor’s Chair / Dennis W. Organ, Editor

Why Make Managers?

In traditional industries, where the man- agement chain of command waspre- cisely defined, a person making a certain kind of decision was a person occupying aparticularposition in the organization chart. As the saying went, authority (to make decisions) ujent with responsibilit?/ (position in the management hierarchy) Howeveier, in businesses that mostly deal with irzformation and know-how, a man- ager has to cope with a newphenom- enon. Here a rapid divergence develops between power based on position and power based on knowledge, which occurs because the base qf knowledge that COYZ- stitutes the foundation qf* the business changes rapidly.

At Intel, anyuq, we managers get a little more obsolete eve y day.

-Grove (1993)

lean, flat, egalitarian, networking, flexible, and nimble are just a few that are used in the description. But if we are to have a truly revo- lutionary way of think- ing about today’s and tomorrow’s organiza- tion, we will have to reconsider long-held ideas about the relative value and status of managers. Traditionally, prestige and riches have accrued to those best and brightest who crossed over into the ranks of management. Does that fit the bill? Mr. Meyer has some timely words to inform our thinking about such matters.

A t the time of his writing, Andrew S. Grove, the CEO of Intel, seemed to think that the divergence between the

authority of position and the authority of knowl- edge was a threat mainly to high-tech industries. No doubt his observation was particularly pert- nent to that sphere. But one gets the sense that the “phenomenon” to which he referred is now pervasive; it is just as noticeable in the marketing of beer as it is in the making of microprocessors. Put simply, the rules of the game keep changing in one industry after another. No way can a per- son do a good job of managing and still stay on top of the changes in the way things are done. And, to anticipate Mr. Meyer (below), someone who is good at keeping up with the changes is too valuable to be pushed “upstairs” (as we used to think of it) into administrative overhead.

Already we have heard much about the kind of organization that will be fit to survive in the 1990s and beyond. You know the magic words:

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Why Make Managers?

Peter Meyer

J ane looked back at me and proceeded to ruin my whole day. We had planned the reorganization of our division carefully, placing people where they could contribute

the most. Jane saw that, but she wanted to be a manager instead. From the time she had begun working for us, getting her management card punched was a major career step. Employees received increases in salary just for becoming managers. As managers, we were rewarded for making more like ourselves. Management was a career step on which everyone focused.

Why Make Managers?

Since then, we have grown smarter. Should everyone be a manager? Hardly. Should we all be developing managers? I think we know better now.

When Jane started with us, proceeding to lead others in one’s own skill was the next logi- cal step. Then it made sense. If you were good at something, and you could show others how to do it, we’d put you in charge of people who did the same thing. So salespeople became sales Illanagers, engineers became vice presidents of engineering. financial analysts became control- lers. It made sense if a company needed people who were good at what their would-be subordi- nates did.

But everything changes-so fast that the old structures get in the way. For instance, technol- ogy changes faster than I can monitor and still focus on other tasks. The marketplace changes faster than management can cope with. The pace of financial change is intense enough to require ongoing attention from the best minds we have. Now, we need our best and brightest people on the front line. If they are truly expert, we can’t afford the overhead of having them do something they have not mastered. We designed our reorga- nization with that principle. The best people should do the work.

As their areas of expertise changed, people quickly came to know more than their managers. Managers can never remain current. They will always be a step behind changes in the field. How much of a problem would that be? When we were honest with ourselves, we decided that this is nothing new.

Instead of trying to stretch the best people to be excellent at two things, we decided to elimi- nate the management roles. Who needs a man- ager who needs to be updated constantly? We asked: If people are really the best at what they do. and they know what to do. do they need a manager at all? The answer is yes. We don’t need managers to supervise those old skills; we need them to manage resources \visely. That is another skill entirely.

Instead of making management a career step, we decided to make it a career. Then we decided it is a career that should get no more compensa- tion or reward than any other. Clearly, some technical skills are worth even more to us than management skills. We started to compensate by skill set, not status.

This is not what Jane was thinking. She was concerned that we would hold her career back

by not making her a manager. I told her all this. She WIS not convinced. What did convince her WIS the way we now treat our individual con- tributors. We honor them to death. We pay them, of course. and well. But what really makes people want to do more work is the opportunity to connect their contribution to their own sense of value-what Maslow called self-actualization. We do that religiously.

That is a skill only some people have. We train for that skill just as we train salespeople to work their territory and technicians to test the hardware. This skill is what we call management. Managers are skill workers just like salespeople and engineers.

And Jane? She sees now that we reward for contribution from skill, whether that person is a manager or not. In fact, we reward her more than many managers because she is excelling in a skill that her managers can’t keep up with. She is happy, and she no longer ruins my day.

T

here are two critical managerial skills. First, a manager working for us must be able to set a clear picture of what the

other skill workers are to accomplish, and then get out of the way. This is a delicate balance. We can liken it to showing someone the boxtop of a jigsaw puzzle without explaining how to as- semble the pieces.

Second, our managers must know how to help individuals recognize their own contribu- tions. This generally means that a good manager does not just tell people how good they are; a good manager also helps people discover it themselves. To do this, we train good managers to talk less and ask many questions. What is my job as a general manager? Develop those two skills and make sure they are honored at every level.

In our world, managers are skill workers, but at skills they do not yet have. We need, train, compensate, and honor them, but no more and no less than we do for our engineers and our salespeople. 0

Peter Meyer is a speaker and writer on strategy and management issues, and is a principal of The Meyer Group, a firm based in Scotts Valley, California.