Redefining management

In 'Management Rewired', Charles Jacobs tells a story about a study at GE demonstrating exactly the opposite [1]. Not only did performance appraisal not work - it produced the opposite effects of what was intended. Positive feedback had no impact on performance, whereas criticism had a negative effect on the achievement of goals. The findings of this study have been published in the 60s by the Harvard Business Review, but they have been largely ignored.

[1] Herbert H Meyer et al, Split Roles in Performance Appraisal, Harvard Business Review, January 1, 1964 http://bit.ly/9JZgLp

The best you can hope for is to understand some of your customers, some of the time. Important customers may be visited by salespeople regularly. Provided your salespeople do a good job at reporting, and you have a good CRM system to log these reports, you may know something about these customers. But you know the bulk of your customers only through surveys, sporadic contact or not at all.

There is always room for improvement, and perfectionists will always need more time. As a project develops, the weight of the decision needs to gradually shift from engineering and operations towards marketing. Marketing is in the best position to judge whether the product is ready or not. While this call is always difficult to make, if the delay is needed to make the product more complete or complex, that's usually not a good call.

Especially for software, best practice is to release early, get feedback from the market, use the most loyal customers for testing, have a responsive customer service and a policy of regular updates.

The usual fallacy where everybody thinks that they're above average, and a recipe for complacence. Actually, the best you may hope for is to outperform some of your competitors on some characteristics for some of the time. For quality suppliers in a mature niche market, differences are smaller than one might expect. Nobody has the resources to be competitive on technology, quality, service and price all the time.

The loss of Gary Kasparov against Deep Blue is well known. What is less well known is that an average chess player, with an average computer and a good gaming strategy will beat Deep Blue most of the time. It's the clever combination of man and machine that augments our performance. Without intelligent use of technology, men is better off without it.

The planning fallacy. Plans are mere guesses. A minimum of planning effort is needed, but actively managing a project through its many unexpected events is much more important. Plans should not be followed blindly, and serial planners need to be taken out of their comfort zone of planning to make plans. In short: "plan - do - check - adjust", preferably with a short turnaround cycle.

More people can lead to more politics, overhead, internal meetings and reporting. Unless you're willing to scale up the organisation, working more intelligently with the same team often provides a better alternative.

This declaration anticipates a poor outcome and sets up a team for failure. The right question to ask is rather 'what return can we expect on the investment, and by when?' Why would a project with an exit strategy be worth starting?

"We cannot possibly measure the impact of what we are doing."
Answer: If it cannot be measured, why is it worth doing? And besides, everything can be measured.

"We need to avoid failure at all cost."
Answer: A lack of failure indicates low risk-taking and hence average return. Without failures to show for, you're playing it too much safe.

"If only we worked harder, we would catch up."
Answer: Information overload is a chronic disease.

"We need more branding."
Answer: Strong brands result from strong and consistent actions over a prolonged period of time. They're outcomes, not inputs.

"This will only take a minute."
Answer: We spectacularly fail to define the effort required for our own work, and even more so for the work of others. Define the effort that is justified on a task, but it will never be a minute.

"Follow best practice."
Answer: In marketing, the same recipe rarely works twice.

So is management doomed to irrelevance? With knowledge workers who each know so much more about their subject area than those they report to, are managers doomed to the role of figureheads?

Not necessarily. Management can be about alleviating barriers. Experts fail to see the big picture. They do not always see the linkages. Managers can give purpose to efforts, drive projects through, find alternative paths, work through differences but also know when to quit. You're always better off teaming up the guys deep in the trenches with a big picture guy.

Management is about creating opportunities. How people perform is always a compromise between what they think they can do and what others believe they can. A great manager can bring a team to new heights, but poor management surely can bring them down as well.

Management is about the productive use of an organisation's resources. It's about managing flows. Keep pipelines clean. Have systems in place. Promote routine where it makes sense. Take quick decisions.