Compound Thinking

What is Management?

Yesterday I spent too much time complaining about bad management, and MBA programs. As a young manager, I had some time to think about what I wanted to be as a manager. But, my recent thoughts have been sparked by thinking about what I want to see in a manager when I do various interviews for a new job.

So, it’s in the context of reflecting on what I’ve learned as a manager over the last few years, and what I’m looking for in a manager over the next few years that I’ve been trying to define how I see “good management.”

Management the negotiation of shared aspirations, goals, and tactics.

When it is done well it is marked by the allocation of resources to achieve the highest dreams of the team, the company, and the community in which they are embedded.

One of the keys to good management is understanding that the most abundant, and most fickle resource of the community is passion. Passion is motivation, it’s the energy it takes to get things done. And everybody has passion for something. A manager’s job is to find the right people with the right passions, organize them in a way that directs their passion into group accomplishment.

Management is helping others become great.

In the book First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham points out that great managers are characterized by an appreciation of individual differences, individual performance hang-ups, and individual talents. They treat employees differently than one another, not because they are “playing favorites” but because they strive to give each employee what they need to succeed.

Management is not budget accounting, or status-log maintenance — it’s coaching, negotiation, organization, and motivation. I’ve been lucky to know some great managers: but many of them weren’t officially managers. They were just people on the team who “magically’ made the team better, and helped get things done.

Management isn’t about authority, it’s about serving the needs of the team in service of the goals of the organization.

By this definition many of the best managers I know are volunteers who understand that if they help people engage their passion in the service of a greater good they can make a lot more impact than they ever could by themselves. They care more about the goal than about status, and they are willing to let other people do the “fun stuff” and have their moment in the spotlight.