Who will manage the managers?

Not all man­agers are good, and poor ones can have a cat­a­stroph­ic effect on any busi­ness. At best they cre­ate a cul­ture of low morale and resent­ment; at worst they make bad deci­sions that can lose mon­ey or even bring a com­pa­ny down.

Any­one who has ever been an employ­ee will know at least one indi­vid­ual who was good at their job, got pro­mot­ed and then found them­selves dis­as­trous­ly ill-equipped to man­age oth­ers.

A recent sur­vey by the Char­tered Man­age­ment Insti­tute (CMI) sug­gests that inef­fec­tive man­age­ment could be cost­ing UK busi­ness­es more than £19 bil­lion per year in lost work­ing hours. The study of 2,000 employ­ees revealed that 75 per cent of work­ers waste almost two hours out of their work­ing week due to inef­fi­cient man­agers.

The worst man­age­ment prac­tices respon­si­ble for time lost include unclear com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lack of sup­port, micro-man­age­ment and lack of direc­tion, while 13 per cent of those sur­veyed had wit­nessed man­agers exhibit­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry behav­iour towards employ­ees and 27 per cent had wit­nessed man­agers bul­ly­ing or harass­ing their staff.

Man­age­ment train­ing is an often neglect­ed area, with com­pa­nies under­es­ti­mat­ing the impor­tance of a strong cor­po­rate cul­ture, struc­tured train­ing pro­grammes, clear objec­tives and effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“Peo­ple devel­op­ment doesn’t have to cost a lot of mon­ey,” says Mandy Cress­well Phillips, a coach­ing and devel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­al. “The impor­tant thing is to remove poor man­agers and replace them with good ones who can spot and nur­ture tal­ent and use a more demo­c­ra­t­ic style to moti­vate, col­lab­o­rate and increase staff poten­tial and morale.”

Effec­tive train­ing is obvi­ous­ly one method of tack­ling the prob­lem but there are also a num­ber of tech­no­log­i­cal tools that can help. “Peo­ple man­age­ment needs peo­ple skills and no tech­nol­o­gy can assist there,” says Tony Pou­los, mar­ket strate­gist for indus­try asso­ci­a­tion TM Forum.

“How­ev­er, there are no end of man­age­ment train­ing guides avail­able dig­i­tal­ly and appli­ca­tions that emu­late busi­ness sce­nar­ios. Online man­age­ment cours­es abound, as well as online knowl­edge bases with answers to many man­age­ment queries or ref­er­ences to solu­tions oth­ers have tried. There are even man­age­ment games where one can pit one’s man­age­ment skills against an online pro­gramme or a num­ber of oth­er online play­ers.”

When the right tech­nol­o­gy is found, it can improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

The growth of Gen­er­a­tion Y has brought about a sea change in the work­ing envi­ron­ment. The so-called mil­len­ni­al work­force (those born after 1982) is heav­i­ly reliant on the mobile inter­net and this has led to a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way in which busi­ness­es are run. Smart­phones, lap­tops and tablets are part of the worker’s every­day arse­nal. Staff are con­stant­ly online and have instant access to data in real time: com­mu­ni­cat­ing with col­leagues and cus­tomers around the world, and using social and pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing sites.

Man­agers need to be aware of this and encour­age their staff to max­imise the poten­tial of the tech­nol­o­gy at their dis­pos­al. At the same time they need to man­age the process, ensur­ing that infor­ma­tion shar­ing and net­work­ing is pro­duc­tive rather than a dis­trac­tion.

The eco­nom­ic down­turn means that accu­rate busi­ness intel­li­gence is a high­ly prized com­mod­i­ty, as com­pa­nies strive to bet­ter under­stand their cus­tomers, make bet­ter deci­sions and achieve a lean­er oper­a­tion. Accu­rate data is key and busi­ness ana­lyt­ics, which involves the use of data, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis and pre­dic­tive mod­el­ling to dri­ve deci­sion mak­ing, can also be an effec­tive tool for the man­ag­er.

“Today’s busi­ness ana­lyt­ics and mod­el­ling tools are easy to use,” says Mr Pou­los. “Users are able to access data from almost any source and the results can be pre­sent­ed in mul­ti­ple ways, often as dash­boards, visu­al graphs and spread­sheets. This pro­vides ide­al media for dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion, web brows­er access and even to appli­ca­tions on mobile devices for pre­sen­ta­tion any­where, any­time.”

Tech­nol­o­gy that utilis­es indus­try key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors can help com­pa­nies and indi­vid­ual staff bench­mark their per­for­mance against sim­i­lar play­ers in the mar­ket­place. “When tied with busi­ness ana­lyt­ics, these become invalu­able tools for today’s man­age­ment,” adds Mr Pou­los. Locat­ing the most suit­able tools can take time, which is hard­ly ide­al when look­ing to improve per­for­mance.

“Find­ing the right tech­nol­o­gy is one thing, imple­ment­ing and main­tain­ing it, quite anoth­er,” he says. “Tech­nol­o­gy, in this case, can become a dis­trac­tion. But when the right one is found, it can improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the qual­i­ty of deci­sion-mak­ing.”

Ulti­mate­ly, tech­nol­o­gy is only a tool to assist and eval­u­ate the indi­vid­ual. Tra­di­tion­al man­age­ment dis­ci­plines are still impor­tant, though tech­nol­o­gy can be a use­ful ally. “It has to be the right per­son and they have to have clear direc­tion and lead­er­ship,” says Ms Cress­well Phillips.“Management cul­ture has to come from the top down and inef­fec­tive lead­er­ship at this lev­el will result in inef­fec­tive mid­dle man­age­ment.”

What­ev­er the man­age­ment skills a busi­ness needs, it is the clever com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al train­ing and today’s tech­nol­o­gy that will make a real dif­fer­ence.

Not all managers are good, and poor ones can have a catastrophic effect on any business. At best they create a culture of low morale and resentment; at worst they make bad decisions that can lose money or even bring a company down.