Are managers leaders?

For a long time, managers and organizational scholars were associated with the notion that the primary functions of management should be planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and organizing. preparation of budgets. Managers were given one of their first acronyms, POSTCORB, for these seven functions. There is no doubt that these tasks are carried out, but viewing management in terms of such general functions inhibited further investigation.

Interest in looking at how managers actually spend their time developed in the 1950s. Many studies examined what kinds of tasks managers at different levels handled. They found that first-line managers spend most of their time interacting with superiors and peers and focus on task-related issues such as organizing, planning, and supervising work. Higher-level managers spent more time interacting with subordinates (including lower-level managers) and focused on strategic and organizational tasks, including planning for the future, unit coordination, and internal business control.

Several other studies have looked in more detail at how managers work. Studies in the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Great Britain looked at all types of managers, from foremen to personnel managers, from company presidents to street gang leaders. The results of these studies should dispel four important myths about the average manager:

one. “The manager is a thoughtful and systematic planner.” The evidence on this subject is overwhelmingly to the contrary. Managers work at a relentless pace, and their activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity. They are strongly action oriented and do not like reflection.

2. “The effective manager has no regular duties to perform. In addition to handling everything that goes wrong, managers perform a series of regular duties, including rituals and ceremonies, negotiations, and the processing of information that links organizations to their environments.

3. “Top managers need the kind of aggregate information best provided by a formal management information system.” Evidence shows that formal MIS systems don’t work and managers don’t use them. Managers actually process the information that comes to them through documents, phone calls, scheduled and unscheduled meetings, and walk-throughs. They strongly prefer verbal means, phone calls and meetings.

Four. “Management is fast becoming a science and a profession.” A brief observation of any manager will dismiss the notion that he is practicing science. Science involves the application of analytically determined systematic procedures. We don’t even know what procedures managers use; how can we prescribe them through scientific analysis?Management is not a profession if we cannot specify what managers must learn.

Busy managers often don’t have time to study, and this can hinder their career advancement. AEU has recently developed a program that grants managerial experience with a traditional qualification without the need to study. Allow busy decision makers to switch to continue their work and get the qualifications they need at the same time.