An interesting thought came up "What behavior change needed in senior management during change
especially in context of organization agility? How will you convey all these to
them?" from a friend....!!!
I responded "Stop being
a manager" :)
Follow up to my response "But why? Someone can manage resources, finance, inventory,
facility, vendors, process, quality and many more"
Here is why managers should stop being a
manager..
A simpler philosophical view - Our evolution is a manifestation of our past behaviors. We
(mankind) have derived our responsibility based on the the role which is
logical , but where it has gone haywire is when we started to derive power and
positions based on it.
A professional view - Managers was carved as a role to ensure continuity of
status-quo and/or also to ensure the status of a new work-item is on track to
be completed. Multiple entities have to be managed - resources, finances,
inventory, facility, vendor, process , quality and many more as my friend
pointed.
Alas, we suddenly feel "manager" is a
very critical role. You bet it is. This is the person who should be responsible
for all bouquet and brick bats, infact taking a leadership view, he/she should
be the person who takes all brick-bats and passes the bouquets to his/her team.
Does this happen in reality ? We are today have
reached very far from how the role was
conceptualized.
In today's world, the net effect of our
misplaced evolution and priorities wrt to organizational agility over the years
gets to the point where -
Managers have to told not to be manager of
today, but of yesterday.
Yesterday's manager was a role and today's
manager is position of power.
Tomorrow's manager would be a role which is
absolutely Thankless and your role is an expectation and not a service to your
team, wait who would your team - In every-sense a bunch of dumb-smart machines
(including humans), from who all you get is status than and doesn't care a bit.
So managers , please stop soon being one and
change to being a worker , who's job is work with entities and not manage them.
To the second part of his question, how you
convey to them - It very simple show them their future.....!!!
At a recent conference , an engineer from a
leading organization said, if your manager is not understanding the complexity
of your work, instead always asks status - simple solution - pull them into
your mid-night/on-support/peak-support calls . They don't continue to be a
manager but instead learn to manage their work.
Happy Managing, but stop being a Manager!
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