The House of the Rising Sun

TRIMILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT
The House of the Rising Sun

By Mrinalini Narendra

Sweeping changes are ahead for the economy, people, markets, management-styles, and organisations in this millennium. The manager of the future needs to recognise this and make provisions for managing her tomorrow

What is the future of the manager? What competencies do managers need to function in the rapidly-changing environment of today? How far are companies equipped with managers who are empowered to cope with the challenges thrown up by the millennium? What do managers and organisations need to do to prevent obsolescence in a new era characterised by a ceaseless quest for quality and continual change ?

Actually, a lot. The rapid pace of change demands that organisations today be fleet-footed and agile enough to respond to shifting market realities swiftly and surely. This calls for flat structures, dispersed decision making, multi-skilling and empowered managers. The command-and-control era is giving way to leadership by influence, leading to role- and task-ambiguity for employees. And, the revolution in communication technology has blurred geographical, economic and cultural boundaries. This implies that the millennial manager works in a multi-cultural environment with a bewildering array of knowledge and information tools, adding to ambiguity and uncertainty.

What exactly does this mean for the manager? What skills can she acquire to deal with such ambiguity and pace of change. Speed of response to changing business realities will be the essence of survival in this millennium. The manager needs to be multi-skilled, so as to be comfortable in a variety of roles. She will have to be well-versed in the latest management tools and techniques to make the right strategic and operational choices. And have the flexibility to tailor her knowledge and experience to existing business realities.

The millennial manager will also need to be clued in to her external environment. She should be capable of identifying and understanding key political, social, legal, and competitive variables impacting her organisation and, more important, her customers-both external and internal. Her thoughts and actions must preempt that of the customers. Only this will enable her to respond to the latters' needs in the shortest possible time.

As the dismantling of tariff barriers becomes imperative , the millennial manager must be able to develop a global perspective on the products and services of her organisation as well as the market it caters to, instead of being content with a knowledge of the local markets and products and paradigms. She also must strive to continuously expand her horizons and knowledge base as the need will be to manage the future. Finally, the manager must have a high degree of time-management and stress-management capabilities. As companies become lean and bereft of hierarchies, each manager will need to perform multiple tasks and meet measurable performance targets. The pressure to maintain a work-life balance will be tremendous.

What implications does this have for the organisations? To begin with, they have to change the process of decision-making. According to consultant and writer H.A. Simon, managerial decision making is the key factor in the process of management. In the company of tomorrow, decisions will need to be accurate and speedy, and decision-making authority will need to flow through the organisation. Further, the factors to be considered in decision-making will be multiple, varied and complex. The organisation will have to enable the manager to assess them quickly by being lean, flat and empowering.

Knowledge will be the source of power. The organisation will have to invest heavily in training and education to equip the manager of the future with tools to distill information, and use it. As the manager will continuously have to acquire new skills, in order to keep pace with the changes in her environment, she must also have the ability to convert this knowledge into strategic and operational deliverables. She must also learn to innovate and create new competitive space.

Obviously, not all managers will possess these abilities even with the right organisational inputs. Companies then will have to refine and revamp their recruitment process to recruit managers with the right skill and competency profiles. This would include superior analytical capabilities, multi-tasking and problem-solving skills and an ability to handle extreme uncertainty. The organisation's competitive advantage will also lie in its ability to preserve and enhance its skill and knowledge base, through retaining its employees and by institutionalising its repertoire of knowledge. Focused recruitment, right motivation through the provision of the appropriate hygiene factors as well as satisfiers will be the key to retention. The organisation must develop work paradigms such flexi-time, and home and virtual offices..

Finally, to enhance employee loyalty, there will have to be a strong psychological contract between the manager and the enterprise. This would take the form of recognising interdependencies, as the enterprise will not be able to function as effectively without the manager, while the manager will not command the resources she does, outside the organisation.

Sweeping changes are ahead for the economy, people, markets, management-styles, and organisations this millennium. The manager of the future needs to recognise this and make provisions for managing her tomorrow. And the organisation has to help her do this. Management Guru Peter Drucker sums this up: ''There are enormous opportunities, because change is opportunity. But there is no predictability. Turbulence is characterised by having no predictability. It is certain that the unexpected will happen; but it is impossible to predict where, when, or how. We live in a very turbulent time, not because there is so much change, but because it moves in so many directions. In this situation, the effective executive has to be able to run with opportunity, to learn, and constantly to refresh the knowledge base.''

In the recognition of the challenges inherent in these words lies the success or failure of the millennial manager.

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