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September 6, 2008

Management Improvisation

Normally, management authorizes actions based on information. But the most frequent and expected connotation of the word "manage" is the word "control".

Given that management is undertaken to provide some assurance of "success", this connotation may be why management effectiveness is most often sought in terms of proof of control. The problem with this attitude is that it ignores more than half of the range of opportunity that is available to deliberately effect valuable progress in an endeavor.

In the framework below, a much fuller range of management is identified, in a way that puts "control" in context -- and shows it to be not only more varied than we typically allow it to be, but also that it is accompanied by important complements and alternatives for driving progress. To start with, the framework shows how the usual old notion of "control" is probably contained by items (left column) that are not best called control but rather "organization".

As seen here, a new semantics of "controls" is proposed (and explained later below). And still, the value of controls is to promote success.

A simple observation that may capture the ambitions about success in management is this: if it takes scoring to win, intending to score is more essential than planning to win. In management, progress is essentially like scoring. Given that, strategy is fundamentally about how to enable progress under the prevailing circumstances -- which in turn means that as circumstances change, strategy dynamically identifies and solves the problem of sustaining an ability to progress.

This readiness to improvise the action -- to take the "fast break", acknowledges that the circumstances of the game are all incidental within the basic boundaries that others play within as well. That is, within the same standing set of boundaries, many separate games are played -- and one game never necessarily predicts the next even if it winds up resembling it.

In that regard, what may be most difficult about competitive strategy is, first, to identify the boundaries that most matter; and second, to invent relevant actions within that awareness. In a competitive situation, much of what truly surprises the competition is an action that they didn't foresee because they hadn't identified the pertinent boundaries yet. (This is exactly why we often tend to speak of game-breaking competitors as being outfits that "change the rules"...)

Arriving at the necessary awareness is the product of surveillance and analysis, to which much dazzling and complex effort is formally dedicated now through business intelligence and knowledge management.

But the framework above imagines it more simply. It is not hard to see that the three forms of "management affects" -- controls, influences* and standards -- correspond respectively to knowledge, communications, and references -- are different modalities of common information that generate authority and action. The question is, how are the modalities currently being used?

So, what we get from this framework, mainly, is another perspective from which to assess how we manage now and whether the right modes are applied in the right ways.

Along with showing how information figures in, the framework helps show that the nature of management authority ranges (bottom to top) from being externally objective (standards) to being more cooperatively elective (influences) to finally being internally directive (controls). This tracks the application of recognized authority from its lightest to its heaviest.

The layout of the framework also corresponds (left to right) to the difference between micromanagement (organization) and macromanagement(improvisation). From that viewpoint, when we think of managed action as execution, the span of potential methodologies shows up being quite broad. Assumptions about what is needed to realize a strategy are challenged by showing that taking management more "micro" is possibly an inhibitor, but really just a supporting option, not a defacto requirement. For example, we have to allow for the possibility that individual contributors, rogues or artists -- left unbridled amongst changes -- may be enough, or even best.

In short, the old notion of control is really micromanagement. And as argued by the framework here, a big implication is that micromanagement and strategy are possibly allergic to each other or at least require arbitration -- a thought that may be the cause of some fresh assessment of management.

* While the word "influences" seems somewhat forced here (and may be replaced in the future), the intended sense of it is as a degree of imposition, here being neither benign (like standards) nor compelled (like controls).

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at September 6, 2008 4:57 PM