What do I think 'management' is?
In my current role as a director i think management is about driving the business forward, making the right decisions, coming to a consensus with colleagues and helping those below you on the corporate ladder to flourish, encouraging them to see your vision and help you achieve it. Its also about delegation, seeing the 'bigger picture', trying not to get distracted by the nuts and bolts of everyday problems (although inevitably you do get involved - it seems impossible not to), making difficult decisions and having responsibility, great responsibility for 'stuff', including your staff, the shareholders requirements, colleagues expectations....etc.
I want to go back to the beginning now and explore this a bit further, i think my view of management has changed as i've got older, as i've learned more about business and as i've been hoiked up the corporate ladder by someone at the top (lets be honest here - there's no way i should be a director just yet - but i inhabit a small family firm with my father as the leader).
At Securicor there was a constant flow of managers in and managers out, it was a stressful job clearly, i thought it was hard in the van managing customers on the ground but the managers got it in the neck from all the customers all day long. I think they'd had enough of my bolshiness in the vans when there was suddenly 2 spaces in management (in fact CIT at that time had no managers as they'd both left simultaneously) and several people suggested i apply. I didn't (although i thought about it) because it sort of terrified me being on the other side of the fence, i was only 22 and thought i was way too young to be in charge of people who were in many cases decades older than i with many more years of experience in CIT, let alone life! I knew that once you crossed that invisible line with the word 'management' on it, you were never the same. My point was proven when one of my allies was one who moved up to that higher sphere - we barely spoke after that. I think at the time i saw Management (with a capital M) as a dominate and control position, one which was not unattractive to me, being that i have a dominant personality and a desire to control matters (people and events), but i also saw it as a negative thing within the context of the work i was doing. I was shop floor and the camaraderie you experience there was very much 'us and them'. At the time i didn't want to be 'them' because i was scared of losing my mates, but i was also hungry for promotion and in hindsight i sometimes kick myself for not applying (i probably wouldn't have got it anyway). Soon after i left to move to Hertfordshire and on to more complicated matters.
I never wanted to join the family business, i always said i could never work for my father. Stupid girl - why didn't listen!
My career at Tozers didn't start well and hasn't really picked up from then. As a sales numpty for Plant Solutions i was given bugger all training, managed by an old man who had never been a manager before and in all honesty should never have been made one - he just didn't have the skills or competence. Has anything changed? no. i digress....
My frustration at a lack of knowledge transfer within the business probably started my thirst for career advancement, in the first year or two i was just working to earn money to go travelling. This is not to say i didn't try hard and want to do well, because i did. I put effort into the marketing, and the sales (even though i wasn't very good) but reporting to my then 'manager' was a joke, i respected him and feared what might happen if he thought i hadn't been performing but there was no real guidance along the way. When i came back from travelling i felt like i'd started again, i suppose i was thinking more long term then, growing up, wanting to stretch myself professionally. I hadn't really thought about management per se until my father suggested (i should say 'requested') that i take a short course in management - he thought it would be beneficial in the long term. Little did he realise that that 6 month course changed my entire perception of management and what it 'should be' not what it currently was at Plant Solutions. I was suddenly hungry to show i could do it better, to 'fix it', to prove i had it in me etc. but when they switched things round and i WAS the manager it wasn't quite what i expected. It was hard, really hard. 'Managing' my team was a bit of a nonsense really, the two guys are both double my age with a lifetime of experience in the industry but at least they knew their jobs. My first aim was to control stock, to stop this ridiculous bulk purchasing that had been going on and damaging our cash flow, but my problem was i inherited so much stock i didn't know what to do with it! The damaging stock levels had now become MY responsibility and I was expected to do something about it - the problem was i didn't know how or what to do. Nothing had changed there - my predecessor hadn't known either (rather he lived in a fantasy land where everything got sold eventually) but then the RESPONSIBILITY for that had been his, so the pressure was off.
Management is a lonely place to be sometimes, it doesn't matter if you're top of the pile or somewhere in the middle you're not one of the gang (not that i've ever been one of them but anyway) and if it all goes tits up those above you will come down on you like a ton of bricks. It probably doesn't help that i've never really had anyone managing ME since i've been at Tozers, from my beginnings as a sales numpty with a next to useless manager, to manager of Plant Solutions with a Sales Director too busy to manage me effectively, and now as a Director myself, with no clear defined responsibilities and a Managing Director who still thinks the Sales Director is managing me, when the Sales Director feels he can't because we're now peers. I feel like i exist in my own little pocket at Tozer's, neither management nor worker, staff nor family. I don't feel respected and i don't feel like i contribute as much as i could....but i desperately want to.
I think without management it can also be a difficult place to be, with no direction and no boundaries you end up spinning around on the spot racing from one thing to another. But perhaps that is actually what management is as well, i've heard it said as much.
Now what about family? what about it indeed. Management within family business is often different, its certainly 'different' at Tozers, bacuase, well, there isn't really any. My father constantly asks "what is it that managers do? nothing! we don't want managers, we want workers". He conforms to the traditionalist view perhaps where management is about planning, controlling, directing, reporting etc. and the stereotypical manager sits in his office overseeing his minions beavering away at their tasks, which he then checks on periodically and barks at them to "do it again!" if its not up to scratch. Little wonder he thinks of this as the function of management since this is in fact his OWN style of management, one which tends to rub most people up the wrong way and creates deep seated resentment over a long period of time (and garners a complete lack of respect i might add). If he took the time to look at what the few managers we have actually do, he would see that is almost certainly not the case, all the managers at Tozer run themselves ragged sorting problems, helping other staff, planning what needs to be done next week, next year, doing the nuts and bolts of the job that they really should delegate but just cant etc. My worry is that we're not encouraging our managers to think strategically enough. I think there has been a sea change recently, with some of the managers thinking more about what every department does to contribute towards the business success, not just how their department performs (not that we'd know - seeing as we don't have budgets or targets, but that's for another day's discussion i think). I have noticed over the last 12 months more 'middle' type managers thinking about costs for example - "why are we doing it like this - surely its more expensive this way?" what we need to do now is empower those managers to act on those ideas and filter that way of thinking back down to those they manage.
I like using metaphors, they sometimes explain what i cannot in words. I sometimes think of the management as a big group hug, except my super long go-go-gadget arms are the ones around everyone and we're all going together towards the big goal we can see in the distance. I don't think its a very good metaphor but its all i've got at the moment. Perhaps its a reflection of who i want to be as a manager, rather than what management actually is. I want to be seen as the one with the ideas, or if not the ideas, the one who facilitates others ideas becoming reality, driving upwards, constant improvement. My deep desire to be noticed, respected, appreciated, particularly by my father will undoubtedly be a big part of this view of management. I don't like his style of management and i suppose i do everything i can to NOT be like him. When colleagues come out with comments like "that sounded just like your father" it hurts, it hurts a lot as he's the one person i DON'T want to sound like. Perhaps its an innate part of my personality - it would make sense since i am his daughter. I try to empathise with the rest of my colleagues, particularly staff lower down in the company - mainly because up until recently i WAS one of them. I don't want to lose that part of my managerial style because i think it grounds you. Managing resources (including people) is the single most important aspect of being a 'manager' and how can you do that if you're not in tune to those people?
Tony Watson's article makes an interesting point; how a manager shapes and expresses their identity and interests is as important in how they act as a manager, as their role and desire to help shape and steer the company they work for is. He concludes that managers are 'in search of themselves'.
I will muse on this some more while I go and seek more articles for my dissertation.........
