Henry Mintzberg
If management itself is the hardest bone to chew in the process of mastering management knowledge, it is probably because we have been actively subdividing our work and never grasped the overall situation.
Traditionally, people are used to describing management as independent behaviors such as leadership, control and communication, which makes the comprehensive work of management lose its bias. Everyone is generally regarded as an independent individual and a member of a series of roles. The model introduced by the author of this paper is an attempt to integrate the management knowledge we have at present under the framework of "concentric circles". The core content of this paper is personnel, work structure and work schedule. These contents are all around the roles of managers in information management, personnel management and activity management, and each role is carried out inside and outside the enterprise. In order to demonstrate the usage of the model, especially to understand different management styles, the examples used in this paper are all from the results of the author's observation and interview with managers from all walks of life. He concluded that management must be a "comprehensive" job.
Tom peters said that a good manager is an actor (Wall Street said that a good manager is a "trader"). Michael Porter said that a good manager is a thinker, while Abraham ZaReznik and Warren Behnes said that a good manager is actually a leader. However, for most of this century, classic management scientists such as henri fayol and lyndall Urwick have always believed that excellent managers are mainly controllers.
There has always been a strange phenomenon in management literature, that is to say, well-known scholars seem to emphasize only a certain part of management work and never involve other aspects. These contents may include all the contents together, but even so, they cannot describe the whole picture of management work.
If you consult more official documents, you can also find various lists of tasks (or roles or "abilities"). However, the list is not a model (even if the list is expressed in the form of an end-to-end ring), so the management of this comprehensive work is still a little lost in the specific description. Without such a model, we can neither correctly understand the management work nor meet many important needs in design, selection, training and support.
For example, if the most difficult bone to chew in the process of mastering management knowledge is management itself, it is probably because we have been actively subdividing our work and never grasped the overall situation. So, now we must consider how to manage this comprehensive work.
A few years ago, I started to do this after I saw so many lists and circles in management literature (actually including my own early management research results first published in 1973). I don't think it's necessary to look at what managers are doing. In the past few decades, a lot of research results have been published, so I think everyone knows what managers are doing. We just need a framework to integrate all the content. If you like, you can call this framework a management model. In order to comprehensively deal with its components and consider the interaction between them, each work must be regarded as a whole. In fact, with the gradual development of the discussion, you will find that my metaphor of layer-by-layer shelling immediately becomes vivid, because this model appears in the form of a series of interacting concentric rings.
I stay with managers at work for two purposes, one is to test this model, and the other is to constantly enrich the model so that it can be applied to various management work and styles. I've been with many managers, and I usually spend a day alone. On this day, I will not only observe them, but also visit them. The results did not draw any clear conclusions, but only had a preliminary understanding of various management work and management styles. From the head of the largest national health care system in Europe to the "front-line" manager of a hilltop park in Canada (the examples used throughout this article make people feel that I have studied various managers so far).
This paper mainly introduces this model, which develops from the core personnel structure to the outside layer by layer, and constructs the image of management work for readers from the inside out. After describing the model, I will briefly discuss the work and style of some managers I have observed, so that readers can have a basic understanding of how to use this model to improve their work and the work of managers around them. I will also comment on the effective application of management in practice. At the end of this paper, it will be concluded that management must be a "comprehensive" work.
Let's talk about the core personnel first. When people start a new management job, they are not only forced to be shaped according to the job requirements. In fact, if we can see this fact clearly, we will choose managers more carefully at the beginning, and then let them adjust their work more flexibly according to their own specific conditions.
As shown in figure 1, everyone who takes over management has a set of values. At this stage of life, values may be quite stable. For example, a radio station managed by one person will provide information fees and bring a whole set of experiences. On the one hand, he may have cultivated a series of skills or abilities from this experience through training and tempering. On the other hand, this experience also laid a knowledge foundation for him. For example, another person worked in the police station for 35 years and became the police chief. Of course, this kind of knowledge can be used directly, but it can also be transformed into a series of psychological models, through which managers mainly explain the world around them. For example, what does the head nurse in the hospital ward think of the behavior of the surgeon she is having an affair with? The combination of these characteristics largely determines the manager's solution to a certain job, that is, his management style. Style is the way managers implement job requirements.
Working framework
After a given management job is arranged with suitable managers, the core of management work becomes to determine a working framework, that is, the management concept of the current managers. To be sure, the work architecture is a strategy, even a vision, but the work architecture is more than that. As shown in Figure 2, starting from the manager in the center of the circle, the work structure can be divided into three specific parts.
The first part is the purpose, that is, the basic content of managers' handling of their own management units, for example, increasing government funding for hospitals or opening more branches in retail chain stores. As shown in Figure 2, around the circle in the figure, the manager can first create a unit, then maintain the effective operation of the established unit, adjust the unit according to some new situations, or create a new unit ambitiously. For example, managers can first establish a conventional method, then keep the unit running normally, improve or change the previously established conventional method, and even re-establish a new method. The head nurse's goal is to make the unit she manages run smoothly, and the CEO of the state health care system accepts the government's order for a major reorganization.
The two circles outside the target circle further describe the other two parts of the work structure-strategy and structure. One is angle, which is equivalent to peter drucker's "enterprise theory" (or any management unit theory). Angle is a comprehensive management method, which includes the concepts of "vision" and "culture". The other part is location. Contrary to the angle, the position is more specific and closer to Michael Porter's strategic view and the structural view of many consulting companies. These positions consider the specific position of the management unit in the environment and the specific working methods of the management unit, such as what products are produced, why the market provides services, what structure and system are designed, and what convenience can be provided.
Alain Noel, after studying the work structure of three small companies and CEO's work, said that managers have "things to deal with" and "first things". The work architecture describes the "first transaction", while the role (discussed later) describes the "transaction to be processed". But the work structure does promote the first function of this model, which is what I call "conception", that is, carefully consider the purpose, angle and position of a specific management unit in a specific period.
Different managers conceive the work structure in different ways. In other words, different managers may have different styles in playing the role of "conception". First of all, the work structure may be imposed on the manager by someone outside, otherwise the manager can design it himself. Secondly, the work structure can be quite clear, such as "year-end cost reduction10%"; It can also be quite vague, such as "manage this place well", as shown in the circular model of the management work structure in Figure 2, which is similar to a magnet that attracts the surrounding behavior. As long as the architecture is clear, these behaviors can be tightly bound around it. However, if this framework is rather vague, the different issues considered and the different activities involved may be scattered in all directions. In recent years, more and more people need a clear "vision" when they think strategically, which is probably the reason.
As shown in table 1, these two dimensions * * * can produce four styles of conceptual works structure. Although the rather vague framework designed by managers gives managers considerable freedom of action, it has no real guiding significance. The management style may be a bit like opportunism, for example, a health care manager tries his best to manage his unit in order. However, if a manager is forced to accept a vague framework (such as "empowering employees"), it will not be of any substantial help to the manager, and it will also lead to a passive management style (except, of course, if the manager himself gradually clarifies the work framework). If managers choose a clear work structure, they will generally form a management style sometimes called "foresight". For example, the head of a fashion museum thinks that he has played a role in protecting the national heritage. But if the manager is forced to accept a clear work structure, he may form a driving management style, and the CEO of the national medical system who tries to follow the government's intentions is an excellent example.
Work record
If a person is engaged in a specific management job according to a specific work structure, there will be a problem of how this job is expressed through a specific form of activity. This is mainly achieved through work scheduling and related scheduling roles, which has attracted considerable attention in management literature. For example, John Kurt's empirical research work is carried out around this aspect. Here we mainly consider the schedule from two aspects, and we still use concentric rings to express it. As shown in Figure 3, the arrangement of the inner ring is wider and the arrangement of the outer ring is more specific.
First of all, the work structure is obviously a series of problems to be considered at present. In fact, any problem that managers care about will be divided into several controllable units, which tom peters likes to call "chunks". You can ask any manager how their work is going. Their first reaction is almost always the "problem" they are most concerned about. These things are urgent, such as opening museums to the public and building state-of-the-art clothes storage rooms. You can also look at the agenda of the meeting, and you will also find a series of issues to consider (instead of making decisions). These problems are actually to put the arranged schedule into practice (of course, new topics can be added to change the schedule).
We now find that the clearer the work structure, the more the problem needs to be solved comprehensively, and the problem may be easier to solve, because the vague work structure will lead to the phenomenon that the "desired work" in the organization cannot be completed. Sometimes, the work structure may be quite clear, and the problems are also closely combined, so they can all be summed up as what Noel called "major obstacles." In fact, all the issues that managers care about revolve around a core issue, such as forcing the national health care system to implement those changes or expanding retail chain stores.
Secondly, adopting a more specific timetable, that is, arranging management time by day, will make the work structure and problems clearer. This part also includes setting the priority of each topic, but it is not obvious. Scheduling time and the priority of topics are obviously the most concerned issues for all managers. But in fact, this arrangement itself will take up a large part of management time. Therefore, these problems have also aroused widespread concern in academic circles. For example, there are many "time management" courses.
If the staff of the work structure clearly expressed in the schedule (that is, all the circles we are discussing at present) are regarded as the core of management work, then I will discuss the working environment in which this core is located.
As shown in Figure 4, we use lines around the core to represent the working environment. Up to now, I have been using the word "unit" without any constraints. More specifically, the definition of manager is that an organizational unit can exercise formal power, the organizational unit managed by CEO is the whole organization, and the organizational unit managed by manager at management level is business department, department or branch. Therefore, the working environment can be divided into three parts, as shown in Figure 4, that is, inside the management unit, inside the organization and outside the unit.
The interior of the company refers to the management unit, which is located below the manager in Figure 4, indicating the area where the manager exercises formal power over his employees and activities. For example, for the head nurse of a hospital, the unit is the ward of the hospital. The inside of the organization is located to the right of the manager in Figure 4, which refers to other areas in the whole organization that the manager has no formal authority to manage but must cooperate with, including other members or units in the organization. For example, for the head nurse, there are doctors, kitchens, physiotherapists and so on in the organization. (Of course, for the CEO, there is no difference between the unit and the organization: he can exercise formal power over the whole organization. Outside the unit refers to the part of the working environment that managers must cooperate with but do not formally belong to the scope of the organization, such as head nurses, patients' families, medical institutions and medical associations designated by some patients for a long time. It is very important to make this distinction (for the convenience of discussion, we mainly refer to the distinction between internal and external units), because a lot of management work is obviously carried out directly within the unit, and managers should be formally responsible for it. Under various boundary conditions, even if there is no formal responsibility, managers must take corresponding actions.
Three levels of management
Let's begin to discuss the practical actions taken by managers to complete their duties. In other words, we now turn to discuss the tangible role of completing tasks from the two roles of the brain, namely the conception and progress of the core part. The purpose of my design of this model is to enable everyone to comprehensively inspect the management work. The core of this model is to play each of the above roles completely from three continuous levels inside and outside the unit. As shown in Figure 5, we use concentric rings (from the inside out, the work content becomes more and more specific).
From the outside (or specific layer) to the inside, managers can directly manage activities, they can also manage employees and encourage them to take necessary actions, and they can also manage information to influence employees to take necessary actions. In other words, the ultimate goal of management activities and the normal operation of any organizational unit are to take necessary actions, which can be directly managed, indirectly managed by employees, and even indirectly influenced by information management. Therefore, the manager can choose to intervene at any level, but once the manager intervenes at any level, he/she must handle all the work at the other two levels.
We will find later that which level a particular manager likes to intervene in largely determines what kind of management style he adopts. So we should distinguish between "actors", "leaders" and "managers". Actors generally like to take action directly, "leaders" tend to manage through employees, and "managers" like to manage through information.
Next, we will discuss the behavior of managers from the perspective of roles, each role is related to a given level, and it is directly aimed at the inside or outside of the unit (or inside and outside). Let's start with the most abstract role in the internal information ring and move closer to the more specific role in turn.
In the process of introducing these roles, I think it needs to be emphasized that the core of all management work is to implement these roles we introduced. Of course, different managers will have different styles, but the difference is not whether these roles are implemented in place, but what roles managers tend to play and the specific implementation process of these roles. The role hierarchy model I introduced is aimed directly at the inside and outside of the management unit, so it lays a solid foundation for us to understand different management styles and different management working environments. (This article was published with the authorization of the author, but it was slightly deleted due to space limitations. Translated by Zhan Zhengmao. )
Comprehensive Management (Ⅱ) —— Interpretation of mintzberg
Henry Mintzberg
Managers should not only communicate around the whole ring, but also perform tasks around the whole ring.
Traditionally, people are used to describing management as independent behaviors such as leadership, control and communication, which makes the comprehensive work of management biased. Everyone is generally regarded as an independent individual and a member of a series of roles. The model introduced by the author of this paper is an attempt to integrate the management knowledge we have at present under the framework of "concentric circles". The core content of this paper is personnel, work structure and work schedule. These contents are all around the roles of managers in information management, personnel management and activity management, and each role is carried out inside and outside the enterprise. In order to demonstrate the usage of the model, especially to understand different management styles, the examples used in this paper are all from the results of the author's observation and interview with managers from all walks of life. He concluded that management must be a "comprehensive" job.
Action management
If managers can passively manage through information or actively manage through personnel, they can also actively manage through personal and direct participation. Since the 20th century, the focus of management has shifted from control to leadership, and then to strategic conception. Although these seem to hide the importance of action management, in fact, management through direct participation in actions has always been a deep-rooted view of management. However, from his book 1964 to the work leader published by 1993, Leonard sayles firmly adhered to this view. He believes that the manager must be the focus of the internal actions of the management unit. According to his theory, the direct participation of managers must be more important than leading tension and controlling thrust.
I call this manager's direct participation an executive role. However, if we want to use the popular management term "execution", we must first make it clear that managers actually do almost nothing. Their work is almost entirely speaking and listening, and of course there are observation and "experience". By the way, the core of the model in the article is the manager's head, not the whole body, which is why. )
Therefore, the general meaning of the word "execution" is closer to the action level, only one layer away from the action level. Management executives directly manage the implementation of actions, not indirectly through personnel management or information processing. In fact, the "executor" is the person who finishes the work. From the decision-making level mentioned above, the managers of the action level should not only make decisions, but also make diagnosis and design, and fully participate in the management of specific actions. I once spent a day with the person in charge of a small retail chain store and saw all kinds of people coming and going, most of whom were related to the development or operation of the store. They are all here to get specific instructions for the next step. This manager is obviously not authorizing, but managing specific development projects step by step.
Managers should communicate around the whole ring. Similarly, managers should "execute" tasks around the whole ring. They manage projects in their own units, solve practical problems or put out fires; They "make deals" and negotiate agreements with outsiders. Let's discuss them one by one.
The objects of internal execution are projects and problems. This does not mean that the project has nothing to do with the problem, nor does it mean that the project and the problem are absolute internal affairs. Instead, most of the "execution" work is related to the active and passive changes of the unit itself. Managers support change in order to give their own units opportunities to explore. They often deal with their own problems and crises through "direct" participation.
The difference between making a decision as a controller and making a decision as an executor is actually the difference between sitting in the manager's office to convey your judgment on some problems and going out of the office to actively pay attention to a problem from the beginning to the final solution. This kind of manager is the real designer, but not the designer of abstract strategy or overall architecture, but the designer of real change projects. Facts show that managers at all levels are generally responsible for many such projects at the same time, and the CEO may even be responsible for dozens of projects. Therefore, it is not surprising that the word "project management" is so popular now.
The object of "execution" within managers also includes two other aspects. On the one hand, they sometimes perform some routine work in their own units rather than other units. On the other hand, some managers will continue to do some routine work after becoming managers. For example, the head nurse will keep visiting patients. Execution itself can be regarded as a job that has nothing to do with management, but the reason for doing actual work often has a lot to do with management. This may be an effective way to keep in touch with the work of the unit and find out the problems of the unit. At this time, the "communication" role of managers comes into play. Doing practical work is sometimes to show that you want to work with other people in your unit. At this time, the role of "creating culture" and "leading" of managers will play a role.
External execution generally takes the form of transaction and negotiation. I emphasize once again that transaction and negotiation are two sides of the same thing, because the purpose of manager negotiation is to "conclude a transaction", and once the transaction is completed, negotiations should also be held. A lot of evidence shows that negotiation and transaction are of unparalleled importance in management. The most prominent example I have observed is the managing director of a film company, who has to negotiate many complicated transactions many times a day. The film company is relatively small, and trading is one of the main tasks of the management director. In some large-scale companies, senior managers may need various professional negotiators to provide them with support (for example, lawyers are needed for signing contracts, and labor management experts are needed for labor negotiation, etc.). However, with these assistants, it doesn't mean that you can get away. They have to spend a lot of time negotiating in person, especially at the critical moment. After all, only they have the right to use their own resources, and only they are the rational center of unit strategy, the nerve center of unit information and the energy center of unit activities. Therefore, the action layer is connected with the personnel layer, and the personnel layer is connected with the information layer, thus connecting the whole framework.
Mature management work
At the beginning of this paper, it is pointed out that the most famous management scientists seem to emphasize only one aspect of management, such as tom peters's execution, Michael Porter's conception, the leadership of Abraham Seznik and Warren Behnes, and the control of traditional management scientists. Now everyone may understand why they are all wrong: because only paying attention to the opinions of any one of them will definitely make the actual management work biased. Unbalanced management work is like a tire out of balance in vibration, which is easy to get out of control. Therefore, it is very important to display all the elements of management work on a comprehensive map, as shown in Figure 8, so that people can remember that a job is composed of these inseparable elements at a glance.
If you accept tom peters's point of view-"Forget it, I am in favor of implementation", then there is a lack of a solid framework to fix the management work at the core, and the management work will be dispersed like a centrifugal explosion. However, if we accept the spirit of Michael Porter's opposite argument-the most important thing is the concept of framework, especially the concept of strategic positioning, the result is not much better, because in this way, all management work will erupt coherently in the closed brain and cannot form tangible links with external actions. Thinking is heavy, which may crush the will of the incumbent, while action is relatively easy and it is unlikely to completely get the manager. Therefore, only by combining the two can we realize the typical feature of effective management-balance.
Too much emphasis on leadership and management may become empty-there is no goal, no framework, no action, and if too much emphasis is placed on building relationships, the work may be divorced from the internal foundation. Managers who only pay attention to communication or conception can never complete any task, while managers who only pay attention to "execution" can finally complete the task independently. Of course, we all know what happens to managers who think organizational control is the core of management. If you add the role of thinking, you can get a model of "thinking-connection-leadership-execution". Some people may understand this model as follows: "Well, management is a way of thinking and leading through execution."
Therefore, managers must do a mature job. To be sure, different roles can replace each other to some extent, but more importantly, different roles can complement each other.
In fact, although we can abstractly separate the various elements of management, these elements cannot be truly separated through practical actions. In other words, it is very effective and even necessary to distinguish each element for the purpose of design, selection, training and support. But management is not completed by a series of independent parts. As we know, the core attracts the rest like a magnet, while the communication ring is an isolation membrane, which allows information to flow between the internal thinking layer and the external behavior layer. This kind of isolation membrane itself also has the function of close contact and action.
In fact, the most interesting part of management work may fall on the boundaries of various components of management work. For example, Andrew Grove, president of Intel Corporation, likes to describe his work as "pushing gently", which can be said to be a perfect combination of control, leadership and execution. This word means that there is nothing aggressive to push others' actual actions. The same is true of pure execution, which will not give people a cold feeling. So is pure control, which gives people a sense of leadership. The boundaries between internal and external, thinking and behavior, communication and control are similar.
Managers who try to "do" outside but don't "do" inside will inevitably send themselves to prison. You only need to look at the CEOs who "clinch a deal" to buy other companies and then leave the specific matters to others to carry out, and you will understand this truth. Similarly, it doesn't make much sense to lead people to take action without thinking about the action framework, nor does it make much sense to just conceive without leading people to take action. Management can be carried out by a small team, but team members must be closely United (especially around the communication circle) to operate as a single entity.
As I mentioned earlier, although we can regard leadership as some concrete actions, leaders generally integrate almost all management work, as do communication, ideas and schedules. Similarly, just as the core role of conception is inseparable from the surface role of execution, the internal role of control, leadership and execution is inseparable from the external role of establishing social relations and execution. In fact, in extreme cases, these roles are interpenetrating. For example, we have always described leadership and control as internal roles, and establishing social relations is an external role, but a manager who has considerable influence on external personnel may lead or directly control him, and when employees start to act as free men and do not accept the leadership of managers, managers may have to establish relationships with employees as relationship builders rather than leaders.
management style
Describing all the elements that make up management work as a complete thing that can be combined with each other does not mean that all managers have completed all the work regardless of the key points. According to the needs of specific jobs and the characteristics of current managers, there are indeed differences in management. Therefore, different managers will emphasize different priorities in different ways. Paradoxically, the best way to understand this is to establish a systematic framework for managers to work together. Therefore, I use the number 8.