The (P)roducer – (Paei) style
The first and most important role that management must perform in any organization is to (P)roduce the desired results for which the company or unit exists.
What does this mean? Every organization has its raison d’etre; it is not put together just to be put together. Some sociologists claim that the purpose of organizations is to survive. To me, that’s not normal; View 47 that’s a pathological phenomenon, like cancer. An organization must have a larger mission than survival.
So what is the purpose of a given organization’s existence? Let’s use an analogy:
Five friends get together on a Friday night and have some beers. As they are drinking, someone suggests they go on a hike to the nearby lake the next morning. The rest of the group enthusiastically agrees.
The next day, the five friends follow a mountain path that leads to the lake. It’s a very narrow path so they must walk single file. They have been walking on the path for hours. They’re singing, whistling, joking, and laughing.
This group can be described as an organization; in other words, it has common goals that continually change and progress: The first goal was to get together Friday night. The second was to have some beers. And the latest is to hike to the lake. A social scientist or psychologist would have a field day studying this primary group: Their interactions, their style, their leadership, how they communicate. But there is no management in this group – until this group of five people comes across a big rock that’s blocking the path and that none of them individually can lift.
Organizational management is born when a task evolves that cannot be performed by one person alone. That task, once defined, will drive the behavior – the interactions and the interdependencies – of the group. To lift that rock, they need to plan and organize and control and delegate; in other words, make decisions. They might decide to move the rock, or they might decide to camp out right there instead of trying to reach the lake, or they may go back home and have a barbecue.
Can an organization exist without management? In my consulting role, I have come across such organizations. But they are rather stressed places, where people continuously argue about why they are together or what their common goal is. There are interdependencies, but they are not managed; those interdependencies just happen organically. There are people who get paid as managers – but the organization is not being managed; it is like a plane flying without a pilot, and how it flies depends on the winds and the weather.
There can be no management without a task that requires interdependency, whether it is in the immediate term, the intermediate term (in which case it is called an “objective”), the long term (which is called a “goal”) or when it is more spiritual and continuous in nature (a “mission”). But no matter which word you use, there must always be a telos (the Greek word meaning “a purpose”) that cannot be achieved by one person alone.
This, to me, is the first major difference between social scientists and management practitioners. We have “a rock” to move. It’s not enough to talk about interactions and communications: Why does this organization exist? Why are we communicating? What for? Sometimes, reading books on social psychology, you start to wonder: All of this interaction, but what is the rock that they are moving?
I have seen organizations whose managers remind me of a group of hikers, sitting next to the rock and complaining that they cannot get to the lake. But no one is lifting a finger to move the rock.
So, what is the rock of a business organization? Why does a business organization exist? What result is it supposed to give you?
The typical answer, particularly from students of economics and those who distrust big business, is: “Profit!!!!!”
But guess what? Profit is not the answer.
We probably all know organizations that are extremely profitable and yet are going bankrupt – not in spite of but because of. In other words, constantly thinking about profit instead of about what the client needs is as futile as saying, “The purpose of my existence is to be happy.” If, every morning, you wake up and ask yourself, “Am I happy?” you will soon become quite miserable.
Playing tennis is another analogy. If you want to win, you don’t look at the scoreboard all the time; you watch the ball. If you hit the ball effectively, efficiently and repetitively, you will win. In other words: I know you want to go to the lake (profit), but for now, you need to focus on moving the rock.
And what is the rock? Instead of profit, you must concentrate on this: Who needs this organization? Who will cry if you die? Who needs you? What for? And these are not the stakeholders. Stakeholders are those you have to take into account and hold at bay or treat them right and satisfy their needs so that you can fulfill the purpose of your existence which is to satisfy your clients needs. Because unless you produce that for which your clients come to you, you are not going to be effective and if you do not fulfil your effectiveness efficiently, you’re not going to be profitable. For me, profit is a result of good management, not the purpose of it. If you perform all four roles, profit will occur in the short and long run.
Profit in a competitive market economy is how an organization adds value.
Let me explain. When people buy a product or a service in a competitive market, they are telling you, literally in dollars and cents, how much it is worth to them to satisfy a particular need.
But to (P)roduce that desired service or product, the company has to spend money. So when the company’s costs to satisfy a need are lower than the price the client is willing to pay and has a choice where to spend it, there is profit which can be seen also as a value added, because the company has (P)roduced that service or product for less than its perceived value to the client.
Thus, if a company (P)’s and (A)’s effectively and efficiently, it will be profitable and add value to the society – in the short run.(Note that I repetitively said that this is true only in a competitive environment where the clients have a choice)
So what, then, is the purpose for which your organization exists? What must your organization (P)roduce?
The answer is: Client satisfaction. That is the (P) function of every organization. The (A) function is to make it profitable.
Please note that I did not say customer satisfaction. Customers are the private case of the sales department; they are external. But every manager has clients, which are either external or internal. If your accounting department does not satisfy the needs of its client for information – the operations people or the marketing department, for 50 Ichak Adizes, The Ideal Executive example – there is a problem, isn’t there? Clients are all those people whose needs the organization was established to satisfy.
And how do you measure satisfaction? By repetitive sales! Are they coming back? Would they come back if they had a choice?
Marketing people use research to find out what their customers (clients) need, how they need it, when and at what price, etc. The same applies to any manager of production, accounting, or safety. First, find out who your clients are, then find out what they need, and then go and do what needs to be done and do it efficiently.
This applies to a marriage, too. Who is the client of each spouse? If your spouse is continually coming home late or not at all, there must be a reason. If the kids, who are also clients of the entity called “family,” leave and rarely come back, there must be a reason.
Your organization is effective in the short run if it provides for the present needs for which it exists – verified by the fact that your clients are coming back even if they could get the same or similar services elsewhere.
Management style
Let’s describe the style of a manager who excels in (P)roviding for the needs of the clients, thus (P)roducing the expected results while also meeting the threshold needs of (A)dministration, (E)ntrepreneurship, and (I)ntegration. This manager, whose code is (Paei), I call a (P)roducer, or (P) type.
As a manager, in order to (P)roduce, you must possess two qualities. The first quality is you must know what your clients need and why they are coming to you. What is your particular niche in the marketplace? Second – very important – you must know something about the technology of how to provide that for which they come to you.
The roles
Make the organization
In the
(P)rovides for client needs
Functional: thus effective
short run
Thus, it’s not true to say, “To manage is to manage is to manage is to manage – you can manage anything if you are a professional manager.” That is dangerously over-simplified, unless we add three more words: After some time. And what do you do during that time? You try to learn the peculiarities of the organization that you are managing. Because there are no two “rocks” alike in the world.
Any time you move from one branch to another in a bank – the same bank! – “the rock” is going to be different. The clients have particular needs – they might need parking or drive-through banking, which your previous workplace did not have. Even if you move from one department to another in the same organization, “the rock” is going to be different. So what does a good manager do before he starts doing anything else? He learns “the rock.” He learns what it is that his particular clients come to him for. Organizations are like men and women – everybody is different. You cannot treat them all alike. You have to know the particularities of what you are trying to manage, so that you can (P)roduce results, or (P)rovide for the expected needs.
But that’s not enough. Some people, despite being very knowledgeable, do not (P)roduce results. They can give you a beautiful report, they know the technology, their judgment is correct – but they lack what psychologists call “achievement motivation” – the urge to get in there and do it! Don’t just talk about it – do it! This is the desire to see the finalization of a task, like a salesman who won’t stop selling until he has a signature on the dotted line. They won’t let go until the need of the client is satisfied or the task is done and completed.
For me, then, a manager, a (P)roducer of results, must be a knowledgeable achiever.
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