The Manager’s Job

Summary of – Harvard Business Review – Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact (HBR Classic)

No Job is this society is more vital than that of a manager. If a society should exist an thrive, its social institutions should function well. It is the managers who decides if any social institutions should perform well.

In this modern age, it is time to have a realistic study of the managerial roles and strip off the traditional concepts and folklore associate with it.
Here, Henry Mintzberg counters the classical view about managers with his research-based facts.

He says that a manager’s job is not about, organizing, coordinating, planning and controlling. The four words defining the managerial job – Organize, Co-ordinate, plan and control, have been dominating the management vocabulary since the French industrialist Henry Fayol introduced it first. Although these indicate the vague objectives of managers’ job, managers do much more. So, what does a anger actually do? Without a clear answer, how can we teach management? By not knowing the actual truth of what’s a manager’s job, how can we design planning and information systems for managers? Without this, it is not possible to improve the practice of management at all.

It’s because we are ignorant to the basics of the managerial work, in modern day organizations face some of the serious policy problems. The manager – the person in charge of the organization or one of its subunits has been forgotten somehow in the rush to automate production and to use traditional management science in the functional areas of marketing and finance.

In order to explain the actual job of a manager, Mintzberg uses description, which derived from his review and synthesis of research on how various mangers have spent their time.

Based on some studies, where managers were observed, who generally worked in United States, Canada, Sweden and Great Britain. It involved all kinds of managers from foremen to presidents of companies and nations. The extract of these findings portrays a picture different from the Fayol’s view of Managers.

Managerial Role – Folklore and Facts

Folklore	Mintzberg’s Findings	Facts
The manager is a reflective systematic planner	The managers wanted to encourage the flow of current information. Although they were aware of their ever-present obligations like answering mails and calling clients – they appreciated the opportunity cost of their own time. Most of the top managers, planned implicitly and randomly unlike through set aside process. They responded to their stimuli and were not were reflective planners.	Extensive study has shown that managers work at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by Brevity, variety and discontinuity and that they are strongly oriented to action and dislike reflective activates
The effective manager has n regular duties to perform. .	Presidents of small companies found to engaged in routine activities due thin structure. So, any single absence of staff required to president to substitute.   In his study he found that certain ceremonial duties – meeting visiting dignitaries, presiding at dinners were an intrinsic part of Chief Executives’ job. Managers played a key role in securing ‘soft’ external information by using the opus of their status and passing it to their subordinates.	Managerial work involves performing a number of regular duties, including rituals and ceremony, negotiations, and processing of soft information that links the organisation with its environment.
The senior manager needs aggregated information, which a formal management information system best provides.	The enthusiasm to use Management Information Systems has dwindled amongst the new generation managers. So how do managers actually process information? Managers spent most of their time in verbal (oral communications) . Managers cherished soft information’s – like Gossip, hearsay and speculations as believed that today’s gossip is tomorrow’s fact. Thus, the strategic data bank of the organization is not in the memory of its computers but in the minds of its managers. As most these data are only stored in the brains and not transferred to hard copies, the mangers find it hard to delegate the tasks. Thus, there are damned to their own information system to a dilemma of delegation. Hence, they end up either – To Do Too Much or To delegate to subordinates with inadequate briefing.	Managers strongly favour verbal media, telephone calls and meetings, over documents.
Management is, or at least is quickly becoming, a science and a profession.	Management cannot be a science or a profession, but rather an art. Mintzberg’s finding was that there was no difference between modern managers and their counterparts f a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, in terms seeking information. The information they need differs, but they seek it in the same way – word of mouth. Managers are over pressured. With obligations, yet they are unable to delegate tasks. Those days are gone when managers needed to respond only to their owners and directors, now they are obligated to their subordinates due to democratic norms and global influences.	The managers’ programs – to schedule time, process information, make decisions, and so on – remain locked deep inside their brains. Thus, they are based on judgment and intuition.

When we relook in to the basic description of a managerial work – We understand that a Manager is someone who is vested with formal authority over an organization unit. From such a formal authority comes a status. These authoritative statuses help build various interpersonal relationships and through these relationships comes information. These information helps the managers make decisions and strategies for the unit.

According to Mintzberg, the manager’s job comprises ten roles.

These ten roles are inseparable and form an integration of a Managers’ Job.

Thus moving towards more effective management, the performance of managers depends on how well a manager understands and responds to the pressures and dilemmas of a job.

Finally Mintzberg talks about the Educator’s job about training the managers. He places importance in cognitive learning for the managers.

What is good about the article ?
In this article Mintzberg opens up the mind towards actual realities of a managerial job and strips off the traditional concepts and folklore associated with it. The classical view says that the manager organizes, coordinates, plans, and controls; buts the facts as provided by Mintzberg in this article suggest otherwise. What Mintzberg suggests about “What managers do”, even managers themselves does not know about it, but would definitely realise the same when Mintzberg’s facts are learnt. The four Myths of Managers job – Plan, Organise, Co-ordinate and Control are no longer in use. The facts suggested in Mintzberg’s article show that brevity, fragmentation and verbal communication characterise manager’s job. The intrinsic ideas of Mintzberg article – The manager’s Job – The Folklore and Fact applies to even the modern day managers.

Management training institutions cannot train managers in the conventional way. Manager’s education remains an abstract area. Management is no science nor profession ,but management is an art. This art can be learned only through cognitive learning, when the managers are put into situations where the skills can be practiced and exercised.

How can the article be Improved?
Although Mintzberg’s ideas can be widely understood and realised, there are various differences between a manager who works for a small company and manager from a large scale company. Considering that Mintzberg’s article was first published in 1975, when there was influences of internet on mankind. Mintzberg points that managers constantly look out for information, mostly verbal and intrinsic. Contradicting this point to today’s generation and sources of information, the internet definitely plays a crucial information in gathering information.
A Manager / Director / CEO of an organisation unit can draw news and information from internet. The competition new, customer updates , public review of customer business and such can be derived from internet.
Mintzberg points that certain managers felt responding to mails an obligatory rituals. In modern managers are able to approve and respond to subordinate even on WhatsApp and mobile apps for business.

The basics of Mintzberg article – The manager’s Job – The Folklore and Fact applies to even present day managerial culture. But however, needs to consider the advantages of newer trends of communication in the virtually connected world.

Mintzberg also notifies that management cannot be taught in institutes in a conventional way like science or any other profession and he insists on cognitive learning through experiences. In current day scenario, few more insights can be considered. Insights into the way you work, Systematic ways to share privileged information, time management, turn obligations into advantages.