Here is a description of a typical day in the life of a successful
executive, in this case the president of an investment management firm.
7:35a.m. Michael
Richardson arrives at work after a short commute, unpacks his
briefcase, gets some coffee, and begins a to-do list for the day.
7:40 Jerry Bradshaw arrives at his office, which is
right next to Richardson’s. One of Bradshaw’s duties is to act as an
assistant to Richardson.
7:45 Bradshaw and Richardson converse about a
number of topics. Richardson shows Bradshaw some pictures he recently
took at his summer home.
8:00 They talk about a schedule and priorities for
the day. In the process, they touch on a dozen different subjects
relating to customers and employees.
8:20 Frank Wilson, another subordinate, drops in.
He asks a few questions about a personnel problem and then joins in the
ongoing discussion, which is straightforward, rapid, and occasionally
punctuated with humor.
8:30 Fred Holly, the chair of the firm and
Richardson’s boss, stops in and joins in the conversation. He asks about
an appointment scheduled for 11 o’clock and brings up a few other
topics as well.
8:40 Richardson leaves to get more coffee. Bradshaw, Holly, and Wilson continue their conversation.
8:42 Richardson comes back. A subordinate of a subordinate stops in and says hello. The others leave.
8:43 Bradshaw drops off a report, hands Richardson instructions that go with it, and leaves.
8:45 Joan Swanson, Richardson’s secretary, arrives.
They discuss her new apartment and arrangements for a meeting later in
the morning.
8:49 Richardson gets a phone call from a
subordinate who is returning a call from the day before. They talk
primarily about the subject of the report Richardson just received.
8:55 He leaves his office and goes to a regular
morning meeting that one of his subordinates runs. About 30 people
attend. Richardson reads during the meeting.
9:09 The meeting ends. Richardson stops one of the people there and talks to him briefly.
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9:15 He walks over to the office of one of his
subordinates, who is corporate counsel. Richardson’s boss, Holly, is
there, too. They discuss a phone call the lawyer just received. The
three talk about possible responses to the problem. As before, the
exchange is quick and includes some humor.
9:30 Richardson goes back to his office for a
meeting with the vice chair of another company (a potential customer and
supplier). One other person, a liaison to that company and a
subordinate’s subordinate, also attends. The discussion is cordial and
covers many topics, from the company’s products to U.S. foreign
relations.
9:50 The visitor and the subordinate’s subordinate leave. He opens the adjoining door to Bradshaw’s office and asks a question.
9:52 Swanson comes in with five items of business.
9:55 Bradshaw drops in, asks a question about a customer, and then leaves.
9:58 Wilson and one of his people arrive. He gives
Richardson a memo and then the three talk about an important legal
problem. Wilson doesn’t like a decision that Richardson has tentatively
made and urges him to reconsider. The discussion goes back and forth for
20 minutes until they agree on the next action and schedule it for 9
o’clock the next day.
10:35 They leave. Richardson looks over papers on
his desk and then picks one up and calls Holly’s secretary regarding the
minutes of the last board meeting. He asks her to make a few
corrections.
10:41 Swanson comes in with a card for a friend who is sick. Richardson writes a note to go with the card.
10:50 He gets a brief phone call, then goes back to the papers on his desk.
11:03 His boss stops in. Before Richardson and
Holly can begin to talk, Richardson gets another call. After the call,
he tells Swanson that someone didn’t get a letter he sent and asks her
to send another.
11:05 Holly brings up a couple of issues, and then
Bradshaw comes in. The three start talking about Jerry Phillips, whose
work has become a problem. Bradshaw leads the conversation, telling the
others what he has done during the last few days regarding the problem.
Richardson and Holly ask questions. After a while, Richardson begins to
take notes. The exchange, as before, is rapid and straightforward. They
try to define the problem, and they outline possible next steps.
Richardson lets the discussion roam away from and back to the topic
again and again. Finally, they agree on the next step.
Noon Richardson orders lunch for himself and
Bradshaw. Bradshaw comes in and goes over a dozen items. Wilson stops by
to say that he has already followed up on their earlier conversation.
12:10 A staff person stops by with some
calculations Richardson had requested. He thanks her and they have a
brief, amicable conversation.
12:20 Lunch arrives. Richardson and Bradshaw eat in
the conference room. Over lunch, they pursue business and nonbusiness
subjects, laughing often at each other’s humor. They end the lunch
talking about a potential major customer.
1:15 Back in Richardson’s office, they continue the
discussion about the customer. Bradshaw gets a pad, and they go over in
detail a presentation to the customer. Bradshaw leaves.
1:40 Working at his desk, Richardson looks over a new marketing brochure.
1:50 Bradshaw comes in again; he and Richardson go
over another dozen details regarding the presentation to the potential
customer. Bradshaw leaves.
1:55 Jerry Thomas, another of Richardson’s
subordinates, comes in. He has scheduled for the afternoon some key
performance appraisals, which he and Richardson will hold in
Richardson’s office. They talk briefly about how they will handle each
appraisal.
2:00 Fred Jacobs (a subordinate of Thomas) joins
them. Thomas runs the meeting. He goes over Jacobs’s bonus for the year
and the reason for it. Then the three of them talk about Jacobs’s role
in the upcoming year. They generally agree, and Jacobs leaves.
2:30 Jane Kimble comes in. The appraisal follows
the same format. Richardson asks a lot of questions and praises Kimble
at times. The meeting ends on a friendly note of agreement.
3:00 George Houston comes in; the appraisal format is repeated.
3:30 When Houston leaves, Richardson and Thomas
talk briefly about how well they have accomplished their objectives in
the meetings. Then they talk briefly about some of Thomas’s other
subordinates. Thomas leaves.
3:45 Richardson gets a short phone call. Swanson and Bradshaw come in with a list of requests.
3:50 Richardson receives a call from Jerry
Phillips. He gets his notes from the 11 o’clock meeting about Phillips.
They go back and forth on the phone talking about lost business, unhappy
subordinates, who did what to whom, and what should be done now. It is a
long, circular, and sometimes emotional conversation. By the end,
Phillips is agreeing with Richardson on the next step and thanking him.
4:55 Bradshaw, Wilson, and Holly all step in. Each
is following up on different issues that were discussed earlier in the
day. Richardson briefly tells them of his conversation with Phillips.
Bradshaw and Holly leave.
5:10 Richardson and Wilson have a light conversation about three or four items.
5:20 Jerry Thomas stops in. He describes a new
personnel problem, and the three of them discuss it. More and more humor
enters the conversation. They agree on an action to take.
5:30 Richardson begins to pack his briefcase. Five people briefly stop by, one or two at a time.
5:45 He leaves the office.
The behavior Richardson demonstrates throughout his day is consistent
with other studies of managerial behavior, especially those of
high-level managers. Nevertheless, as Henry Mintzberg has pointed out,
this behavior is hard to reconcile, on the surface at least, with
traditional notions of what top managers do (or should do).
1
It is hard to fit the behavior into categories like planning,
organizing, controlling, directing, or staffing. The implication is that
such behavior is not appropriate for top managers. But effective
executives carry our their planning and organizing in just such a
hit-or-miss way.
How Effective Executives Approach Their Jobs
To understand why effective GMs behave as they do, it is essential
first to recognize two fundamental challenges and dilemmas found in most
of their jobs:
- figuring out what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of potentially relevant information;
- getting things done through a large and diverse group of people despite having little direct control over most of them.
These are severe challenges with powerful implications for the
traditional management functions of planning, staffing, organizing,
directing, and controlling. To tackle those challenges, effective
general managers rely on agenda setting and network building. The best
ones aggressively seek information (including bad news), skillfully ask
questions, and seek out programs and projects that can help accomplish
multiple objectives.
Agenda Setting.
During their first six months to a year in a new job, GMs usually
spend a considerable amount of time establishing their agendas; they
devote less time to updating them later on. Effective executives develop
agendas that are made up of loosely connected goals and plans that
address their long-, medium-, and short-term responsibilities. The
agendas usually address a broad range of financial, product, market, and
organizational issues. They include both vague and specific items. (See
the exhibit “A Typical GM’s Agenda.”)
A Typical GM’s Agenda
Although most corporations today have formal planning processes that
produce written plans, GMs’ agendas always include goals, priorities,
strategies, and plans that are not in those documents. This is not to
say that formal plans and GMs’ agendas are incompatible, but they differ
in at least three important ways.
First, the formal plans tend to be written mostly in terms of
detailed financial numbers. GMs’ agendas tend to be less detailed in
financial objectives and more detailed in strategies and plans for the
business or the organization. Second, formal plans usually focus
entirely on the short and moderate run (3 months to 5 years), whereas
GMs’ agendas tend to focus on a broader time frame, which includes the
immediate future (1 to 30 days) and the longer run (5 to 20 years).
Finally, the formal plans tend to be explicit, rigorous, and logical,
especially regarding how various financial items fit together. GMs’
agendas often contain lists of goals or plans that are not explicitly
connected.
Executives begin the process of developing their agendas immediately
after starting their jobs, if not before. They use their knowledge of
the businesses and organizations involved along with new information
that they receive each day to quickly develop a rough agenda—typically, a
loosely connected and incomplete set of objectives, along with a few
specific strategies and plans. Then over time, as they gather more
information, they complete and connect the agendas.
In gathering information to set their agendas, effective GMs rely
more on discussions with others than on books, magazines, or reports.
These people tend to be individuals with whom they have relationships,
not necessarily people in “appropriate” jobs or functions (such as
people in the planning function). In this way, they obtain information
continually, not just at planning meetings. And they do so by using
their current knowledge of the business and organization and of
management in general to help them direct their questioning, not by
asking broad or general questions.
Having acquired the necessary information, GMs make agenda-setting
decisions both consciously (or analytically) and unconsciously (or
intuitively) in a process that is largely internal. Indeed, important
agenda-setting decisions are often not observable. In selecting specific
activities to include on their agendas, GMs look for those that
accomplish multiple goals, are consistent with all other goals and
plans, and are within their power to implement. Projects and programs
that seem important and logical but do not meet those criteria tend to
be discarded or at least resisted.
Network Building.
In addition to setting agendas, effective GMs allocate significant
time and effort to developing a network of cooperative relationships
among the people they feel are needed to satisfy their emerging agendas.
This activity is generally most intense during the first months in a
job. After that, GMs’ attention shifts toward using their networks to
implement and to help update the agendas.
Network-building activity is aimed at much more than just direct
subordinates. GMs develop cooperative relationships with and among
peers, outsiders, their bosses’ boss, and their subordinates’
subordinates. Indeed, they develop relationships with (and sometimes
among) any and all of the hundreds or even thousands of people on whom
they feel in some way dependent. Just as they create an agenda that is
different from, although generally consistent with, formal plans, they
also create a network that is different from, but generally consistent
with, the formal organizational structure. (See the exhibit “A General
Manager’s Network.”)
A General Manager’s Network
The nature of their relationships varies significantly, and GMs use
numerous methods to develop them. They try to make others feel
legitimately obliged to them by doing favors or by stressing their
formal relationships. They act in ways that encourage others to identify
with them. They carefully nurture their professional reputations. They
even maneuver to make others feel that they are particularly dependent
on them for resources, career advancement, or other support.
In addition to developing relationships with existing personnel,
effective GMs also often shape their networks by moving, hiring, and
firing subordinates. In a similar way, they also change suppliers or
bankers, lobby to get different people into peer positions, and even
restructure their boards. And they try to create an environment—in terms
of norms and values—in which people are willing to work hard on the
GM’s agenda and cooperate for the greater good. Although executives
sometimes try to create such an environment among peers, bosses, or
outsiders, they do so most often among their subordinates.
Execution: Getting Networks to Implement Agendas
GMs often call on virtually their entire network of relationships to
help implement their agendas. I have seen GMs call on peers, corporate
staff, subordinates reporting three or four levels below them, bosses
reporting two or three levels above them, suppliers and customers, and
even competitors to help them get something done.
In each case, the basic pattern was the same. The GM was trying to
get some action on items in his agenda that he felt would not be
accomplished without his intervention. And he chose the people and his
approach with an eye toward achieving multiple objectives without
disturbing important relationships in the network.
GMs often influence people by simply asking or suggesting that they
do something, knowing that because of their relationship, he or she will
comply. In some cases, depending on the issue involved and the nature
of the relationship, GMs also use their knowledge and information to
help persuade people to act in a way that supports their agenda. Under
other circumstances, they will use resources available to them to
negotiate a trade. And occasionally, they resort to intimidation and
coercion.
Effective GMs also often use their networks to exert indirect
influence on people. In some cases, GMs will convince one person who is
in the GM’s network to get a second, who is not, to take some needed
action. More indirectly still, GMs will sometimes approach a number of
different people, requesting them to take actions that would then shape
events that influence other individuals. Perhaps the most common example
of exerting indirect influence involves staging a meeting or some other
event.
GMs achieve much of their more indirect influence through symbolic
methods. They use meetings, language, stories about the organization,
even architecture, in order to get some message across indirectly.
All effective GMs seem to get things done with these methods, but the
best performers tend to mobilize more people to get more things done,
and do so using a wider range of tactics to influence people.
“Excellent” performers ask, encourage, cajole, praise, reward, demand,
manipulate, and generally motivate others with great skill in
face-to-face situations. They also rely more on indirect influence than
do the “good” managers, who tend to apply a narrower range of techniques
with less finesse.
How the Job Determines Behavior
Most of the visible patterns in daily behavior seem to be direct
consequences of the way GMs approach their jobs, and thus consequences
of the nature of the job itself and the type of people involved.
Spending most of their time with others (pattern 1) seems to be a
natural consequence of the GM’s overall approach to the job and the
central role the network of relationships plays. Likewise, because the
network tends to include all those the GM depends on, it is hardly
surprising to find the GM spending time with many others besides a boss
and direct subordinates (pattern 2). And because the agenda tends to
include items related to all the long-, medium-, and short-run
responsibilities associated with the job, it is to be expected that the
breadth of topics covered in daily conversations will be very wide
(pattern 3).
Other patterns are direct consequences of the agenda-setting approach
employed by GMs. As we saw earlier, agenda setting involves gathering
information on a continual basis from network members, usually by asking
questions. That GMs ask a lot of questions (pattern 4) follows
directly. With the information in hand, we saw that GMs create largely
unwritten agendas. Hence, major agenda-setting decisions are often
invisible: they are made in the GM’s mind (pattern 5).
We also saw that network building involves the use of a wide range of
interpersonal tactics. Since humor and nonwork discussions can be used
as effective tools for building relationships and maintaining them under
stressful conditions, we should not be surprised to find these tools
used often (pattern 6). Because maintaining relationships requires GMs
to deal with issues that other people feel are important (regardless of
their centrality to the business), it is also not surprising to find
that they spend time on issues that seem unimportant to them (pattern
7).
GMs implement their agendas by using a wide variety of direct and
indirect influence methods. Giving orders is only one of many methods.
Under these circumstances, one would expect to find them rarely ordering
others (pattern 8) but spending a lot of time trying to influence
people (pattern 9).
The Efficiency of Seemingly Inefficient Behavior
Of all the patterns visible in daily behavior, perhaps the two most
difficult to appreciate are that the executives do not plan their days
in much detail but instead react (pattern 10), and that conversations
are short and disjointed (pattern 11). On the surface at least, such
behavior seems particularly unmanagerial. Yet these patterns are
possibly the most important and efficient of all.
The following is an example of the effectiveness and efficiency of
“reactive” behavior. On his way to a meeting, a GM bumped into a staff
member who did not report to him. Using this two-minute opportunity, he
asked two questions and received the information he needed, reinforced
their good relationship by sincerely complimenting the staff member on
something he had recently done, and got the staff member to agree to do
something that the GM needed done.
The agenda in his mind guided the executive through this encounter,
prompting him to ask important questions and to request a needed action.
And his relationship with this member of his network allowed him to get
the cooperation he needed very quickly. Had he tried to plan this
encounter in advance, he would have had to set up and attend a meeting,
which would have taken at least 15 to 30 minutes—much more time than the
chance encounter. And if he had not already had a good relationship
with the person, the meeting may have taken even longer or been
ineffective.
Similarly, agendas and networks allow GMs to engage in short and
disjointed—but extremely efficient—conversations. Consider the following
dialogue, taken from a day in the life of John Thompson, a division
manager in a financial services corporation. It includes three of
Thompson’s subordinates, Phil Dodge, Jud Smith, and Laura Turner, as
well as his colleague Bob Lawrence.
Thompson: What about Potter?
Dodge: He’s okay.
Smith: Don’t forget about Chicago.
Dodge: Oh yeah. [Makes a note to himself.]
Thompson: Okay. Then what about next week?
Dodge: We’re set.
Thompson: Good. By the way, how is Ted doing?
Smith: Better. He got back from the hospital on Tuesday. Phyllis says he looks good.
Thompson: That’s good to hear. I hope he doesn’t have a relapse.
Dodge: I’ll see you this afternoon. [Leaves the room.]
Thompson: Okay. [To Smith.] Are we all set for now?
Smith: Yeah. [He gets up and starts to leave.]
Lawrence: [Steps into the doorway from the hall and speaks to Thompson.] Have you seen the April numbers yet?
Thompson: No, have you?
Lawrence: Yes, five minutes ago. They’re good except for CD, which is off by 5
%.
Thompson: That’s better than I expected.
Smith: I bet George is happy.
Thompson: [Laughing.] If he is, he won’t be after I
talk to him. [Turner sticks her head through the doorway and tells him
Bill Larson is on the phone.]
Thompson: I’ll take it. Will you ask George to stop
by later? [The others leave and he picks up the phone.] “Bill, good
morning, how are you? … Yeah… Is that right? … No, don’t worry about it.
I think about a million and a half. Yeah… Okay… Yeah, Sally enjoyed the
other night, too. Thanks again. Okay. Bye.
Lawrence: [Steps back into the office.] What do you think about the Gerald proposal?
Thompson: I don’t like it. It doesn’t fit with what we’ve promised corporate or Hines.”
Lawrence: Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. What is Jerry going to do about it?
Thompson: I haven’t talked to him yet. [He turns to the phone and dials.] Let’s see if he’s in.
This dialogue may seem chaotic to an outsider, but only because an
outsider does not share the business or organizational knowledge these
managers have and does not know Thompson’s agenda. More important,
beyond being not chaotic, these conversations are in fact amazingly
efficient. In less than two minutes, Thompson accomplished all of the
following:
- He learned that Mike Potter agreed to help with a problem loan.
That problem, if not resolved successfully, could have seriously hurt
Thompson’s plan to increase the division’s business in a certain area.
- He found out that one of his managers would call someone in Chicago in reference to that loan.
- He found out that the plans for next week about that loan were all
set. They included two internal meetings and a talk with the client.
- He learned that Ted Jenkins was feeling better after an operation.
Jenkins works for Thompson and is an important part of his plans for the
direction of the division over the next two years.
- He found out that division income for April was on budget except in
one area, which reduced pressure on him to focus on monthly income and
to divert attention from an effort to build revenues in that area.
- He initiated a meeting with George Masolia to talk about the April
figures. Thompson had been considering various alternatives for the CD
product line, which he felt must get on budget to support his overall
thrust for the division.
- He provided some information (as a favor) to Bill Larson, a peer in
another part of the bank. Larson had been helpful to Thompson in the
past and was in a position to be helpful in the future.
- He initiated a call to Jerry Wilkins, one of his subordinates, to
find out his reaction to a proposal from another division that would
affect Thompson’s division. He was concerned that the proposal could
interfere with the division’s five-year revenue goals.
In a general sense, John Thompson and most of the other effective GMs
I have known are, as Tom Peters has put it, “adept at grasping and
taking advantage of each item in the random succession of time and issue
fragments that crowd his day.”
2 That seems to be
particularly true for the best performers. Their agendas allow them to
react in an opportunistic (and highly efficient) way to the flow of
events around them, all the while knowing that they are doing so within
some broader and more rational framework. The networks allow terse (and
very efficient) conversations to happen. Together, the agenda and
networks allow GMs to achieve the efficiency they need to cope with very
demanding jobs in fewer than 60 hours per week through daily behavior
patterns that on the surface can look unmanagerial.
What Should Top Managers Do?
What are the implications? First and foremost, putting someone in a
GM job who does not already know the business or the people involved,
simply because he or she is a successful “professional manager,” is
risky. Unless the business is easy to learn, it will be very difficult
for the new general manager to learn enough, fast enough, to develop a
good agenda. And unless the situation involves only a few people, it
will be difficult to build a strong network fast enough to implement the
agenda.
Especially for large and complex businesses, this condition suggests
that “growing” one’s own executives should be a high priority. Many
companies today say that developing their own executives is important,
but in light of the booming executive search business, one has to
conclude that either they are not trying hard or their efforts simply
are not succeeding.
Second, management training courses, offered both in universities and
in corporations, probably overemphasize formal tools, unambiguous
problems, and situations that deal simplistically with human
relationships.
Some of the time-management programs currently in vogue are a good
example of the problem. Based on simplistic conceptions about the nature
of managerial work, these programs instruct managers to stop letting
people and problems “interrupt” their daily work. They often tell
potential executives that short and disjointed conversations are
ineffective. They advise managers to discipline themselves not to let
“irrelevant” people and topics into their schedules. Similarly, training
programs that emphasize formal quantitative tools operate on the
assumption that such tools are central to effective performance. All
evidence suggests that while these tools are sometimes relevant, they
are hardly central.
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Third, people who are new in general management positions can
probably be gotten up to speed more effectively than is the norm today.
Initially, a new GM usually needs to spend a considerable amount of time
collecting information, establishing relationships, selecting a basic
direction for his or her area of responsibilities, and developing a
supporting organization. During the first three to six months on the
job, demands from superiors to accomplish specific tasks or to work on
pet projects—anything that significantly diverts attention away from
agenda setting and network building—can be counterproductive.
In a positive sense, those who oversee general managers can probably
be most helpful initially if they are sensitive to where the new
executive is likely to have problems and try to help him or her in those
areas. Such areas are often quite predictable. For example, if people
have spent their careers going up the ladder in one function and have
been promoted into the general manager’s job in an autonomous division
(a common occurrence, especially in manufacturing organizations), they
will likely have difficulties with agenda setting because they lack
detailed knowledge about the other functions in the division.
On the other hand, if people have spent most of their early careers
in professional, staff, or assistant jobs and are promoted into a
general manager’s job where they suddenly have responsibility for
hundreds or thousands of people, they will probably have great
difficulty at first building a network. They don’t have many
relationships to begin with, and they are not used to spending time
developing a large network.
Finally, the formal planning systems within which many GMs must
operate probably hinder effective performance. A good planning system
should help a general manager create an intelligent agenda and a strong
network. It should encourage the GM to think strategically, to consider
both the long and the short term and, regardless of the time frame, to
take into account financial, product, market, and organizational issues.
Furthermore, it should be a flexible tool so that, depending on what
kind of environment among subordinates is desired, he or she can use the
planning system to help achieve the goals.
Unfortunately, many of the planning systems used by corporations do
nothing of the sort. Instead, they impose a rigid “number crunching”
requirement on GMs that often does not require much strategic or
long-range thinking in agenda setting and that can make network building
and maintenance needlessly difficult by creating unnecessary stress
among people. Indeed, some systems seem to do nothing but generate
paper, often a lot of it, and distract executives from doing those
things that are really important.
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