Improving Managerial Effectiveness
Because managers have authority, we view management as a decision making role. Of course, managers make key decisions, but when they manage knowledge workers they should do more facilitating than deciding. As catalysts, they bring the right people together for complex projects, including outsiders. They liaise between functions to foster collaboration.
So effective managers operate as catalysts, enablers, developers and coaches to help others make decisions instead of making them all themselves.
Indeed, managers could spend a whole day mainly asking provocative questions to ensure that others make the best decisions. Of course, they also have to manage themselves which clearly calls for making decisions as only they can decide how best to use their own time.
Effectiveness can't be determined solely by output. Success also depends on the actions of competitors, collaboration of key stakeholders, market forces, the economy and other factors. Of course, we would doubt the effectiveness of a manager who never achieved any targets. Still, results are not enough to assess whether a manager is effective.
To improve their effectiveness, managers should regularly review how they are allocating their time and all other resources at their disposal. This is what they would do to manage their financial investments after all.
They need to be challenged to justify their allocations of resources in hard business terms. However much they can justify doing things, they could improve their effectiveness by spending more time engaging, facilitating, coaching, developing and operating as catalysts.
Managers who manage themselves effectively think strategically about their own time and talent with questions such as: * How can I best add value today or in this situation? * What are my core strengths and how can I leverage them here and