In June 2006, I started to capturing my thoughts in relation to what has now become TPAssist 2007. Below is the second of three pieces I wrote on the subject:
"In this piece I explore an area, which speaking honestly, has been the single most significant contributing factor to my interest and investment in TPAssist.
To illustrate this concept, let us look at the collapse of middle management knowledge workers… Over the last couple of decades, middle management and more recently upper management has seen the brunt of repeated slash and burn campaigns. Every time an industry downturn appears, in come the management consultants and out go the middle managers. Now, I am no expert on management consulting or large corporations, however I feel there is a simplistic enough explanation for this repeat disaster for anyone unfortunately enough to get caught up in this process.
The theme to my opinion is similar to the old adage “promote a good engineer to management and you loose a good engineer and get a poor manager”. The problem in my view is linked to in adequate education system, the removal of PAs and the speed at which communication is enabled in modern workplaces.
Firstly, let us firstly explore education. Traditional education, as currently employed in most institutions, teaches us to follow, to regurgitate and to conform. We come out of tertiary education with some limited knowledge of the world, little or no knowledge or real working environments, hopefully some technical capability, a little idea of how to think independently but definitely no idea about managing an independent workload. I won’t even go into team participation or leadership. So in our first job we get taught a whole lot of skills including how to follow, regurgitate and to confirm. Down the track we’ll get ourselves promoted into team leader roles and then eventually management. The lucky ones amongst us will typically receive some rudimentary team management training, but mostly it is a matter of learn by your mistakes.
Secondly, I wish to explore the absence of the Personal Assistant (PA) in a growing number of middle management situations. The manager and PA partnership provided the backbone and framework on which the industrial age was built. Acting as the communications gatekeeper and general organiser, the PA, made the manager ultimately productive, by keeping the interference down to a minimum (see earlier blog). Removal of interference allowed the manager to concentrate on activities that added the highest value to their organisations. As the technology age moves into maturity, the role of the PA is steadily diminishing. The traditional communications gatekeeper role of the PA has been replaced by tools like cell phones, email and shared calendars. Unfortunately, restructuring has failed to recognise the value the PA offered in relation to general organisation.
The third and final structural condition I will briefly touch on is the phenomena known as “Information overload” and its association to communications. There are few amongst us in the business world who can truly claim they are on top of all the possible information sources they have at their disposal. The explosion of the Internet and associated technologies make it virtually impossible to read and process everything. I’ve often heard the complaint that it is virtually impossible to read all the received email. Further more; modern communications technologies put our customers, colleagues, managers and team members directly at our finger tips. We now carry around devices which instantly and automatically keep you up to date with your email, calendars and in a growing number of cases, our corporate and business information databases. This must be good thing, right? Whilst faster and more integrated communication technology does give you more flexibility in terms of where and when you work, in reality all this new functionality delivers is quicker access to your information overload problem.
So let us know recap and bring this all together. Modern middle managers, whilst highly skilled and proficient in functional and technical disciplines are often poorly equipped in leadership, team management and managing an independent workload. As we progressed up an organisation, where as in the past we were allocated a PA, we now must be self-sufficient when it comes to managing communications and workload. And finally whilst the evolution of communication technology has put significantly greater quantities of information at our finger tips we still have the same numbers of hours in a day.
In order to illustrate this problem I will explorer a typical scenario. Four years in the job and several near impossible exams later, Kim Smith gets promoted and is assigned full responsibility for a number of key customer engagements. These are all delivered to the highest standard and eventually Kim gets promoted to team leader. Whilst sounding very important, the difference in being a Team leader is only in that instead of getting all the routine work, the area boss now assigns more of the high profile work to Kim and involves Kim in more pre-engagement activities. In addition, Kim is required to complete the occasional performance review forms, is required to help proof team member’s work and occasionally sits in on new recruit interviews. After another four years, Kim’s boss is promoted to manage a bigger office in another city. In addition, the competition has increases and therefore margins are decreasing, so whilst still profitable, management decide that Kim’s boss won’t be replaced. Instead, management decide to promote from with-in. On reviewing the performance of all team leaders, management conclude that the work Kim has been doing has returned the greatest margin. Further more, everyone gets on really well with Kim and therefore Kim should be promoted to the area manager. Kim is thrilled with the promotion, the big salary increase, the great benefits and the opportunity to really make a difference. A number of crucial things now happen. Firstly a couple of the other team leaders, annoyed with being overlooked, start to drag their feet on completing pre-assigned work. Secondly, just before leaving, the previous boss helped secure a couple of new high profile engagements. Interestingly it was the boss’s success in securing the new business that help with the original promotion. And finally, the previous boss has been so preoccupied with securing the new business [and working on getting the promotion] that the performance reviews for the year had been postponed. So with in weeks of the new role, Kim has mounting pressure from staff to get reviewed in order to receive pay increases, there is pressure to assign resources to the newly secured engagements and existing assignments are running behind schedule. To completely seal Kim’s fate, as management had decided not to replace the boss, the overall team headcount is down so Kim has to help out with existing assignments workload. Oh and I forgot to mention that the Boss’s PA moved to the new office as well and guess what the new company policy on Personal Assistants? Before going any further, we should look at Kim’s daily activities in a little more detail. As a high-performing young prodigy, Kim managed the daily demands of the job through “unread” email and the occasional calendar reminder. For example when someone sent through an emailed requesting information or help, Kim would read the email and if some action was required, Kim would right-click and Mark-As-Unread. This provided Kim with a list of things to follow-up on. Similarly, if someone phoned through a request, Kim would compile a new self address message and send it. In this way Kim always had a list of un-read emails which needed action. Now seeing as Kim was generally focused on only two or three projects at one time, the list of emails never got bigger than a dozen or so items. Kim’s self management technical could be best described as reactive, in that a request was made, Kim then took a decision on how the request would be answered and then Kim went about answering the request, typically in a sequential manner, i.e. first request in, first request out. Further more, being a team member responsible for delivering on project tasks, the task list generally referred to something Kim had to do. Rarely did Kim rely on someone else in the team. Now in the new role, a couple of key changes took place. Firstly, the number of requests being made of Kim has grown three fold. And secondly and most importantly, Kim is no longer just reacting to requests. Kim is now dependant on the output or input of others. Before Kim got the management promotion, work load increased and decreased. Generally speaking when there was loads of work on, Kim just worked longer hours. Even so, the hours worked weren’t really that demanding because the boss was always mindful of distributing the workload evenly. Kim never really had to choose which activity to do first because the priority was generally made clear by emphasis provided by the boss when the work was allocated. In the new role, the responsibility for prioritisation clearly rested with Kim. Now this isn’t as much a problem for client engagements, because typically the deadlines and revenue potential drove the prioritisation. However, with regards to Kim’s own tasks and activities, Kim had total accountability for getting everything done and in the right order. In summary, Kim’s own task management skills were of reactive nature with little scope for prioritisation. As Kim total immersion in the new role deepened, more and more self addressed emails were being sent and marked as un-read. The ability to track other people’s activity became more and more difficult. It became harder and harder to remember what was said and what was promised. Kim was being pulled this way and that, was working longer and longer hours and more often than not, failed to met peoples demands and deadlines. Kim’s inability to prioritise requests and track activities had a direct impact on the overall performance of the team. With wavering direction and clarity, the team members started setting their own priorities and working to their own agendas. So with-in weeks, Kim has gone from a high-performing star team leader to an overworked manager of a failing business unit. Is there a way out for Kim?
The answer to that question, in my opinion rests clearly with effectively addressing time utilisation and productivity optimisation…. the subject of my next Blog."
