RESPECT AND UNDERSTAND MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES
“Know your place in an organisation, and respect the place of others”
A manager functions best when they know their role, and those around them also know their role; and boundaries are respected.
Within any business, there are organizational structures, these may be formal and informal. In a business, people will know who to go to for what, who is responsible for what. As a manager, it is important to be aware of these formal and informal structures. For example, Bill is a manager and does not understand some commission payment reports he has received. John and Julie are both responsible for commission reports, but John tends to focus on preparing the reports, whilst Julie is responsible for distribution, information gathering and analysis of the reports. So Bill needs to decide who to go to to ask about his queries as John and Julie are both very territorial. It may sound silly, but if you can find the best ways to work with people, you get the best out of them. People like to know that you recognize that they are the “expert” in their field, that they are the person you go to for this type of problem, so it is important to know who that person is. So whilst the formal structure may be John or Julie, the informal structure would only be one of them.
In any business, there are also hierarchies. In ABC firm, there are three receptionists. Simon has been there for six months, Anita for three years and Joan for ten years. They are all paid the same, they are all receptionists, but Joan tends to be the person to go to as she has been there the longest and appears to be more in “control” of reception, even though she does not have that official role. So with hierarchies, there may also be formal and informal hierarchies.
With formal hierarchies it is important to know who is where in the hierarchy. Many firms will have a formal hierarchy chart e.g. A flow chart, but it may not always be written down. It is important for any manager to be aware of how the hierarchy works. If you have a problem with a staff member, do you go to the staff member themselves or their supervisor or their manager? It is important to be aware of these subtleties within a hierarchy as it is easy to cause offence.
Structural Change
Organisations do change. Firms can change how they are organized, who does what. Some firms change often, others hardly ever change. Change can be good. It can helps firms and staff from becoming too static, but it can also cause disruption and make staff feel unsettled.
Some firms can spend more time planning structural changes than actually focusing on what their business is supposed to be doing.
With any changes within a firm, it is important to look at what needs to be changed and why.
Case Study – Firm CDX has an administration and secretarial team of twenty. All twenty staff are involved in general administrative and secretarial tasks. They also answer the phones from customers. CDX finds that the phones are not often being answered and some staff focus solely on typing letters, rather than administrative tasks. After reviewing the staff involved and the way the department works, CDX decide to split the departments into three – two staff become solely involved with answering the phones. Eight staff become solely secretaries and the remaining ten staff are then focused on the administrative aspects of the job. All staff were consulted about this and asked for their opinions and what they would like to do. All staff were happy and felt this worked much better than the current arrangement.
It could of course go the other way with staff being very unhappy about the changes, but with any structural changes within a business, it is important to ensure that staff are consulted and reasons for changes made clear to them.
Types of Managers
As we said before, there are many different types of managers and many reasons why they became managers. The amount of managers and what they will do will really depend on the size of the organization they work for.
For example, a small firm may have one manager who is responsible for the running of the business and answerable only to the manager. A larger business may have a string of managers at different levels.
They may have first line management who are responsible for staff, then second line managers who are responsible for groups of managers, then a third level of managers who are responsible for a group of second level managers and so on.
The Role of A Manager
When defining a management role, we have to consider the business or organization in which we are a manager. What a manager is expected to do will vary from organization to organization, but basically a manager is expected to manage. What does that mean? Well if we take the word manage, this means various things –
- To be in charge of
- To administer
- To run
- To regulate
- To govern
- To conduct
- To direct
- To control
- To have power over
So is a manager expected to do all of those things? Well, yes, to a lesser or greater extent depending on the organization they work for.
This is an extract from a Management ebook by John Mason and staff of ACS Distance Education
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