The MIX

If only I had found this several weeks ago.....

The MIX - or Management Innovation eXchange - is a veritable treasure trove of management insights and know-how. It's full of articles and discussions on all sorts of management issues.

The people behind the site talk about how the MIX is all about reinventing management for the 21^st century. I like this idea. So much has changed about the workplace over the past few decades. Most offices could not exist without information technology anymore, there is a much larger number of women populating companies these days, the level of education of the average worker is much higher than it used to be, and within the field of management itself many people now receive specific training.

I find it interesting to think about how management has developed over time - from scientific management, to the Fordian construction line model, Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy, Hawthorne’s emphasis on the human factor, and the more contemporary open systems.  It’s very interesting to chart how attitudes to the workplace have changed in tandem with social shifts regarding the individual’s place in the larger company.

At the MIX it seems like they are trying to inspire a more holistic approach to managing a workplace, making it a more vibrant, creative and a happier environment to spend time in, as well as one that works more efficiently and effectively. And they emphasise that the management discussion is evolving all the time.

Looks like the MIX could be a really handy resource to have going forward.

Better late than never so.

A Fine Balancing Act

Another article of interest comes from The Independent this time. It tells of the case of a county council arts officer having to censor the work of the artist she’s exhibiting so that it does not offend the council staff who provided the funds and the space for the exhibition.

Aside from the fact that the issue may not have been best handled, it also brought home to me the position arts managers can find themselves in , having to perform a type of balancing act in order to keep all the various stakeholders happy. It reminded me of the documentary on the Glor centre that we watched in our very first management class. The managers in both cases had to walk a fine line to accommodate various people who all contribute to the arts process – be they council or board members, employees, managers, artists, or the general public themselves.

It must be quite difficult to preserve artistic integrity in trying to negotiate all these relationships. 

Women in the Workplace

The Financial Times has been running a lot of articles recently about the case of women in the business world. The gender divide issue always provides interesting issues for exploration. Although sometimes I do get fed up with the amount of analysis it receives and yet reality doesn’t always keep up with this. There’s so much talk about equality between the sexes, how the workplace benefits from the contributions of both men and women, and how we can cater to their respective needs. But then we’re confronted with the facts that men still occupy most top management positions and women do get paid less. I can never get over how it’s still so unbalanced.

And it’s particularly interesting for the area of arts management which employs so many women. In college as well, students of the arts are mainly women. In our MA class there are only two men out of 27 students. Does the gender imbalance apply in the arts sector too? Be interesting to know.

Anyway, on this subject of women in the workplace, the FT ran an article entitled “A final push can break the glass ceiling” back on Nov 17^th. It was relating the findings of recent research which posited that the reason for a lack of women in top management positions was because they lacked backing from co-workers and bosses to propel them up the ladder. This was mainly due to both men and women not encouraging these kinds of supporting relationships for fear of accusations of sexual misconduct.  

Aside from this rather sad state of affairs however, I was also struck yet again by how the role of the manager affects colleagues and staff, in particular how successful management can benefit the career prospects of others, or indeed harm them. I hadn’t really thought about the importance of having someone believe in your work and value your contribution. It seems obvious, but I just hadn’t considered the real effects it can have on why certain people end up in certain positions. And from the employee perspective, if you have a manager who doesn’t champion you, then if you want to progress up the ladder you’d probably have to make sure you could champion yourself.

Just something to be aware of.

Catch-up

Postings to the blog have been few of late, mainly due to other college projects that needed doing, but I have not been neglecting my management dossier completely. I’ve been scanning the papers and online resources and have a rake of articles piled up by my desk and bookmarked on my laptop. The problem has been finding the time to enter them here.

But I have a bit more free time now, so prepare for a slew of short, management-related snippets that have caught my eye from the previous weeks…..

IBM and "Corporate Volunteering"

There was an interesting article in The Economist a few weeks back– October 30^th, to be exact – about an innovative project from IBM. The company sends groups of its workers over to towns and cities in developing countries for short intervals to work on implementing various schemes, such as water supply, food safety, and transport initiatives. It is a strategy known as ‘corporate volunteering’ and is proving to be a very successful programme for all concerned.

The project fulfils many aims. It works as a training facility for IBM as the volunteers develop leadership, planning and team skills, while achieving a really positive contribution to the cities and towns they work in. At the same time, it acts as a marketing tool for the company by improving their image and introducing them to potential new business in these countries.

Members of staff who volunteer for the project also report that they find the experience extremely satisfying. They come back invigorated and more committed to staying with the company.

On the whole it would seem like the whole programme is the result of some very holistic management. It allows the staff to take a break, renew their batteries, develop skills and enjoy new experiences which they might otherwise never have had the opportunity to do. All the time feeding into the company in returning more effective, more motivated and more committed staff.

One could ask what the situation is like inside IBM that management feel the need to reinvigorate their employees by sending them overseas… but that’s probably just being cynical.

What if you get stuck?

“You are Jack/Jacq Johnson, head of the computing department. Tony/Toni Long, one of your subordinates, has special computing skills and is at present deeply involved in a major project. Something urgent has come up, an exciting software development programme for a major customer, and you have asked Tony to come in and see you, to give Tony this extra work on top of his or her existing workload – it cannot be passed on to anyone else.”

I was presented with this situation in class this week. The exercise was supposed to make you think about what type of management style you would adopt or which style would be best suited to the situation. The four main styles of management being categorised as:

Directive – authoritarian/dictating

Selling – persuasively explaining the rationale and benefits

Participation – getting people involved/asking what shall we do?

And      Delegating – handing over the responsibility

But aside from highlighting these different styles and the different occasions for which they could be appropriate, the exercise mainly served to make me aware of just how constrained a manager can be and how hard it can be to find a solution to make everyone happy.

Ideally, for the situation above I’d like to be able to offer more pay or more staff to help accomplish the task, or push the deadlines to make it more manageable time-wise. But in reality I can imagine that I probably wouldn’t be able to do so cause the resources probably wouldn’t be there.

And then I’m brought back to the ethics questions again surrounding the manager’s position of responsibility and power over staff. ‘Cause I could always simply tell the employee that they had no choice but to take on the extra project – probably causing them considerable struggle and stress, and no doubt alienating them from me. But that is the way the power dynamic works in the boss-employee relationship. And I can see how easy it would be to exploit that, but ultimately that would probably be to everyone’s detriment.

And what if the management is under pressure to get the task done from other sources, like senior management, or funders, or board members? And they're left to try and work out an unfeasible situation, but don’t want to sacrifice morals and ethics.  

It's a sticky situation.....

Autonomy in the Workplace, or Beware of Bored Staff

A few weeks ago an article appeared in The Irish Times telling of a threatened strike by security guards in the National Gallery. Unusually, the attendants are not striking over financial issues, but are instead protesting against the high levels of boredom involved in their jobs.

The working shift of a gallery attendant begins at 9:30am when they assume their position in their allocated room. They then stay in that room until 5:30pm when the gallery closes, and until 8:30pm on Thursdays when there is late opening. As security guards they must remain focused at all times, so they cannot relieve the monotony by reading or listening to music on headphones. Regardless of how many breaks they get, the tedium of their task is undeniable.

However, it could be that this boredom is a by-product of a deeper issue, that of a fundamental lack of autonomy.

Previously, the gallery attendants divided up their various tasks among themselves, sharing the time spent guarding pictures, patrolling and manning the entrances. Now they are divided up into two teams leaving some attendants standing in the one room all day.

The reason the management made this change is not stated. Maybe they did have legitimate cause to implement the new system, however it is clear that they did not consider the implications of this change from their staff’s perspective.

The National Gallery would not be drawn on the issue, stating only that they will “elicit the assistance of the Labour Relations Committee”. They did not mention whether or not they had entered into discussions with their staff on the matter. The very fact that the issue has reached the point of potential strike action would seem to indicate that there has been a break-down in communication between management and staff. The attendants clearly feel that they are not being listened to.

It would seem that the gallery management have really got themselves into an undesirable situation here. Removing the decision-making capabilities of their staff has only served to demoralise them. It does not seem as if the management really values the well-being of their staff, expecting them to put up with extreme boredom on a daily basis. Even if the situation is resolved before reaching a strike, the damage done to their relationship with their staff will probably take some time to repair. 

I know in these days of rampant unemployment some might say the gallery attendants should consider themselves lucky to have a job at all, but this does not absolve the management from their responsibilities to their employees. If this article has made me realise anything, it is that the role of a manager is not simply ensuring that what tasks need doing get done, but that the manager is beholden to their staff on a more holistic level. If I was in the position of management in the National Gallery, I would be very uncomfortable with the notion that I was making so many people miserable for such a substantial portion of their day-to-day lives.