Emerging Technologies Managers

We do know this stuff, or at least we did

Chris is deeply concerned that social media might encourage people to segment into antagonist tribes and that have-nots will be increasingly disenfranchised. Coming in from an organizational design background, both in profits and not-for-profits, I am less concerned. Polarization and marginalization are risks, but not inevitable outcomes. We know the risks; they are old questions; and they are covered in basic training of “organizational scholars” as basics are in every profession.

‘Group think’, made famous by Kennedy’s failed invasion of Cuba, is 101 material - as are the trajectory to reach the point where groupthink is possible, and the manager’s role (as opposed to team leader’s role) when the group reaches that level. The protection of journalists as the fourth estate is critical to the management of group think, etc. etc. Pol Science 101.

What is a mystery, at least to me, is the apparent collapse of public administration in the UK. Missing computer disks, 20% tax on the minimum wage, crowds of people milling around a train station trying to find out about delayed trains - all beg the question “Where do people learn to manage in the UK? What do the learn? Who do they learn it from? What are the gradations in experience that a young person might expect?”

What I find more of an unknown, and therefore compelling, is the increasing split between consumers and producers.

In the media world, consumers have become producers, and producers have retreated, by-and-large, to making platforms. This is a complex issue that has taken place in other sectors too.

The hotel example is relatively easy to draw out into rules-of-thumb. If fine dining is to be replaced by a microwave, a hotplate, preprepared meals and packaged soup, the demand for skills changes. The call for what you and I think of as real skill, diminishes. The demand for chefs bifurcates. Top chefs need to be in restaurants where it is very clear we will pay for their skills in the price of our meal. Indifferent chefs are likely to be replaced with a management system such as we find at McDonalds. Now the skills are estimating the demand for chips, contracting for potatoes with farmers, persuading a lot of young people to do work where they learn little, etc.

From hotels to knowledge

The same pattern is being seen in the knowledge economy. We simply do not have a role if our consumers can “cook” better than us.

What becomes interesting from an HR point of view are these questions?

I listened to Brad Smith of Intuit, the accounting software people, talking about the challenge of moving from providing accounting advice to a platform where consumers advise each other. As he put it, we have to move from

Note, McDonalds doesn’t go this far. You get what you get. There are some services in the States though that do all your shopping for you, and sometimes your chopping and slicing. You get to cook. This is a different space where people don’t do as they are told!

I might be carrying forward basic organization theory inappropriately and I’d be happy to know I am wrong. In current thought, we distinguish between

I’ve done a lot of assessment center work and we watch out for adequate transitions between levels 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 (and thereafter but this is a pyramid!)

When a highly skilled person is transitioning between 1 and 2, they often make 1 of 2 mistakes.

The psychologists will be looking for the ability to say this is the situation, this is my goal, this is your goal, these are your resources and authority, this is how we will coordinate. Within the context of their sector, military guys are taught this stuff and the agile can carry it over to other sectors.

Between 2 and 3, a highly trained junior manager or supervisor, has to make another transition. They need to remember that they are talking to people who will go out to manage another team (as above). Again we see some ‘cuffing it’ but more often we see micro-management where they start quizzing the subordinate about what they did or did not do.

The psychologists want to see the task positioned “at the right level”. A clever trick, for anyone interested, is to delegate to the whole team of managers on one piece of paper. What is the situation, what is your goal, what is the goal for each subordinate manager (one line each only!), what resources and authority vary from normal, and how will the team coordinate. That keeps you focused on coordinating managers and and understanding the nature of the management task, how much it varies from day-to-day, etc.

Going back to the bifurcation of skills, a run-of-the-mill chef who joins McDonalds has to learn a new swathe of management skills, beginning but not ending with some “man management”. They cannot approach the day as if they are going to do the work themselves. Other people have to figure out what they are on about, deal with their own demons, adjust to small details, etc.

If the customers persist in talking to each other, and deciding what recipes should be used, running that restaurant takes on a massively new dimension. The manager cannot do everything. Customer Mary talks to Waiter Johnny who liaises with Chef Sam who might be buying in food from Farmer Lucy. To manage this business, even as a manager at the bottom of the pecking order, we need a a capacity to anticipate and conceptualize what needs to be done, what may need to be done, etc. This level of know-how used to be the province of people who gained experience in a leisurely fashion, often spending years in jobs such as Assistant GM of a hotel.

Conceptualizing the complicated decisions made by other people is our business now. Fantasizing here, the hotel business becomes the art of allowing an owner to manage the business. You won’t manage the business directly. And you will survive if they survive and continue to buy your services and pay your bill! Franchising takes us part of the way, but not all of the way because our clients own their own businesses.

Yes we can!

I am not catastrophizing here. This is not beyond our knowledge set. Everything we need to know about managing in these situations has already been written down - quite often 50 to 100 years ago. And while some education is certainly dumbed down, in my experience, Gen Y picks up information very very fast.

But we do need experience. We do need to practice doing things at speed in real-time. My question is this: where are the universities who are systematically championing the skills we need to run the transition of social media from service to platform? Where is the process where we pass on the skills to design massive role play games such as Jane McGonigal designs?

And as I always keep my eye on the business ball, which businesses are ripe for taking over by people who understand the way things are going and the skills that are needed to run them?

So my two questions are:

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment