On Management Style

A Quick Preliminary

I guess I should apologise for the long break in this blog and thank those who enquired solicitously about it and persuaded me to return to the task. The story is not too complicated, I wrote it regularly, pretty much weekly, for several years but it had started to feel like a burden rather than the pleasure it was at the outset. Perhaps, it may have seemed as if it was becoming forced, rather than an easier reflection of my interests, concerns and observations. I have always been conscious too, of the fact that a blog has readers (though, of course, not all of them) and I aspire to say things worth the reading, even if I do not always achieve it. Anyway, here it is again.

On Management Style

'What is your management style?' A typical interview question that like many such questions rarely elicits a useful reply from candidates. Exactly the sort of question that good practice  forbids. Occasionally however, the very open and nebulous nature of the question tempts the confident, the foolhardy and, perhaps, even the honest candidate to reveal something of themselves. In this spirit I am going to attempt an answer. A quick caveat: this is about my academic management style and I do not necessarily advocate it for others. 'Authenticity' is the key to management style, and when, as they say, you can successfully fake authenticity then you have what it takes to be a senior manager.

I think that management is about doing stuff, making change happen. The measure of management is not the length of strategy documents or the number of KPIs but the things that are actually done. You should be able to point and say "this is what we did, yesterday this did not exist and today it does". 

I believe that a sub-optimal decision made immediately is preferable to a theoretically better decision indefinitely delayed. Sometimes 'good enough' is just that, good enough. 

I hold firmly to the view that you should not get in the way of enthusiasts, even when you are not wholly convinced of their enthusiasms. 

I believe that most decisions have to start somewhere and that the role of management is to take a view on what should be done and express it clearly. I also believe that managers should be comfortable with, indeed actively seek, challenge to that view and be prepared to change direction quickly and positively, without rancour and without a backward look. 

I find it almost impossible to 'play my cards close to my chest' and am temperamentally inclined to openness. There has to be a very good reason not to be let people know what you are inclined to do. 

Management involves making tough, sometimes painful, decisions. Just because a decision is tough and painful however, does not make it good management. 

All management decisions entail risk and the belief that through planning you can eliminate risk is a dangerous illusion. The purpose of planning is to calculate and reveal the scope and nature of risk. Organisations that seek to avoid risky decisions are unable to secure opportunities. 

Just because the outcomes of a decision taken under risk turn out to be adverse does not mean the initial decision was wrong. Persistence in a failed enterprise does not show determination, more stubbornness, and the willingness to give up does not entail conceding that the original decision to engage in that enterprise was unsound. 

Fun is a good reason to do things because it means enthusiasm and engagement. Another good reason to do things is simply that it is 'the right thing to do', ethically, morally, it just is. If there is no scope for having fun and doing the right things there is no point in the job, so who cares if somebody does not like it. 

As a manager you are, hopefully, trusted by your manager, and have to make decisions that your staff have to rely upon. They need to trust you, particularly to represent their interests and to protect them. What goes around, comes around. You cannot be trusted if you do not yourself trust those who work for you.