Finding the Flexible Manager

TRIMILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT
Finding the Flexible Manager

By K.N. Memani

Millenial managers will be specialists by education and training, but the quality that separates them from their 20th century peers will be flexibility. this will be reflected in their response to the rapidly changing environmental constraints

The manager plays a pivotal role in identifying growth opportunities, deploying physical and human resources, implementing the organisation's vision and, eventually, contributing towards the maximisation of shareholder value within an organisation. During the last few decades, the manager's role has continually evolved as organisations have moved through cycles of M&A, diversification, rightsizing, infotech advancement, outsourcing, and ERP implementation. As we enter the New Millennium, the stupendous growth of the Net seems set to pose a challenge to the conventional manager's role as brick and mortar organisations struggle to compete with Net upstarts.

Successful managers will largely depend on an insightful understanding of people, processes and technology. That an organisation should manufacture goods and services in the most competitive manner is almost axiomatic. This, in turn, necessitates companies to possess and develop rare skills and leverage them. The paradigm of management has already shifted from the twentieth century mode to a twenty-first century one. Thus, it is not a question of when to transform managements. Rather, it is a question of how to do so as to quickly meet the expectations of employees and customers.

In the next few years, command-and-control structures will have to give way to continuously adaptive management styles. Based on this eventuality we can arrive at some of the more important attributes of a successful manager. The first and most important characteristic is the ability to initiate a culture of communication in an open environment. This is critical as it enables out-of-the-box thinking. This translates into an awesome responsibility for managers: walking the talk, creating challenges for themselves; searching and researching best practices which can be emulated; and, most importantly, using instinct and intuition.

Millennial managers also need to be always conscious of the need to balance work and life. But, perhaps, the most significant way in which managers in this century will be different from those in the last is in terms of managing the external interface. It is unlikely that all skills and knowledge required for a company's success are resident in it; thus, managers need to learn how to leverage skills and expertise from external constituents. One fall out of this phenomenon will be the emerging focus of the manager: on competencies that are systemic and rise from the alignment of people, processes, and technology, not just on those that are related to products or processes. Terms like constructive tension, mentoring, and peer evaluation will enter the lexicon of the manager.

Towards the end of the 20th Century, most Indian enterprises embarked on a journey of business transformation. This wasn't spontaneous; in most cases, it was the response of these organisations to events that had long overtaken them. Now, at the beginning of the new century, a simple post-mortem indicates that the survivors are those companies that anticipated change. In effect, they changed before the environment did. They consolidated their operations; divested those businesses that did not make money; right-sized; and reengineered their operations.

This is a lesson that newer companies and managers have assimilated. There are examples this new consciousness-Zee Network, infotech companies like Infosys, Satyam, and Wipro; Orchid Chemicals; the Bharti Group; Dr Reddy's Laboratories; Ranbaxy, and other similar organisations have made knowledge an integral strategic tool.

What of the managers in these companies? I think you will find in them more of the attributes I mentioned earlier. Nilly Ostro writes on the 'corporate brain' that gave Texas Instruments the ability to generate additional capacity in a tight market. Through the sharing of internal best practices and enabling technologies such as groupware and intranets, knowledge management pioneers are unlocking the hidden value of their companies' intangible assets. On the flip side, there is also the danger of information clutter leading to paralysis by analysis. The smart manager will, therefore, sift data and archive only that which makes sense to the organisation.

I have often tried to answer the question on what kind of managers we really need. I think the answer lies in finding and developing skills in managing disparate quality and quantity of information into usable, actionable, and profitable pursuits and, at the same time, leapfrogging to a higher level of corporate sensitivity and maturity. I do not think that academic discipline matters; what is important is the capacity to think and work in an environment that fosters core values. Unless you are in the R&D business, you will not need prima donnas. What the millennial manager, therefore, needs to possess is belief in organisation's core values and mission.

It is my personal belief that adaptive thinking, and the necessity to temper best practices will be a sought-after quality among millennial managers. Let us not forget that we expect these people to be knowledge managers who create and sustain an abiding faith in the mantra of customer satisfaction. All millennial managers will be specialists by education and training, but the quality that separates them from their 20th Century peers is flexibility. This will be reflected, not just in their approach to the task of managing the organisation, but in their response to the rapidly-changing environmental constraints.

Above all, mangers in this millennium will have to think and work like entrepreneurs who can take risks, manage profitable business units, spot emerging opportunities, and create value and wealth. The ability to deliver value to customers and create bottomline growth will be more critical than the ability to manage organisational hierarchies. Entrepreneurial managers will need to subject their business operations to sophisticated measures of wealth creation such as EVA and ensure that their businesses are net wealth generators.

Where can we find such managers? In most cases, you may find them within your own organisation. Unfortunately, finding them is a difficult process. So, having found them, do not let them merely exist, wrapped up in internal constraints. Liberate them, invest in them, and participate actively in developing them as true millennium managers!

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