
What Do Managers Do?
- What do managers do to help organizations achieve top performance?
Managers
are in constant action. Virtually every study of managers in action has
found that they "switch frequently from task to task, changing their
focus of attention to respond to issues as they arise, and engaging in a
large volume of tasks of short duration". Mintzberg observed CEOs on
the job to get some idea of what they do and how they spend their time.
He found, for instance, that they averaged 36 written and 16 verbal
contacts per day, almost every one of them dealing with a distinct or
different issue. Most of these activities were brief, lasting less than
nine minutes.
Kotter studied a number of successful general
managers over a five-year period and found that they spend most of their
time with others, including subordinates, their bosses, and numerous
people from outside the organization. Kotter's study found that the
average manager spent just 25% of his time working alone, and that time
was spent largely at home, on airplanes, or commuting. Few of them spent
less than 70% of their time with others, and some spent up to 90% of
their working time this way.
Kotter also found that the breadth
of topics in their discussions with others was extremely wide, with
unimportant issues taking time alongside important business matters. His
study revealed that managers rarely make "big decisions" during these
conversations and rarely give orders in a traditional sense. They often
react to others' initiatives and spend substantial amounts of time in
unplanned activities that aren't on their calendars. He found that
managers will spend most of their time with others in short, disjointed
conversations. "Discussions of a single question or issue rarely last
more than ten minutes," he notes. "It is not at all unusual for a
general manager to cover ten unrelated topics in a five-minute
conversation". More recently, managers studied by Sproull showed
similar patterns. During the course of a day, they engaged in 58
different activities with an average duration of just nine minutes.
Interruptions
also appear to be a natural part of the job. Stewart found that the
managers she studied could work uninterrupted for half an hour only nine
times during the four weeks she studied them. Managers, in fact, spend
very little time by themselves. Contrary to the image offered by
management textbooks, they are rarely alone drawing up plans or worrying
about important decisions. Instead, they spend most of their time
interacting with others - both inside and outside the organization. If
casual interactions in hallways, phone conversations, one-on-one
meetings, and larger group meetings are included, managers spend about
two-thirds of their time with other people. As Mintzberg has pointed
out, "Unlike other workers, the manager does not leave the telephone or
the meeting to get back to work. Rather, these contacts are his work".
The
interactive nature of management means that most management work is
conversational. When managers are in action, they are talking and
listening. Studies on the nature of managerial work indicate that
managers spend about two-thirds to three-quarters of their time in
verbal activity. These verbal conversations, according to Eccles and
Nohria, are the means by which managers gather information, stay on top
of things, identify problems, negotiate shared meanings, develop plans,
put things in motion, give orders, assert authority, develop
relationships, and spread gossip. In short, they are what the manager's
daily practice is all about. "Through other forms of talk, such as
speeches and presentations," they write, "managers establish definitions
and meanings for their own actions and give others a sense of what the
organization is about, where it is at, and what it is up to".
Concept Check
- What do managers do to help organizations achieve top performance?