Managers must be trained

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Editor's note: In the preface to "The Practice of Management" published in 1954, Dulac said: All early management books dealt with only one aspect of management, And this book is the first real "management" book, the first management book that regards management as a whole, takes the lead in explaining that management is a special function of an enterprise, and that managers shoulder a clear responsibility.

The book articulates the basic principles of almost all important areas of management, including concepts such as social responsibility, corporate culture, etc., which only became 'explicit' in management decades later. This section of this publication on developing managers (now commonly referred to as "leadership development") remains as profound and relevant today.

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Administration has become increasingly complex. Because of rapid technological change, day-to-day competition has become more important and more urgent, at least in the United States, so today's managers must be able to handle many new "relationships"—with governments, with suppliers, and with Relationships with customers, relationships with employees or unions—all these require better managers.

Today's businesses also need more managers. The essence of industrial society is that theoretical knowledge, organizational skills, and leadership (in short, management skills) gradually replace manual skills. In fact, the United States is the first society to face this kind of trouble. Basically, the question is no longer how many educated people our society can tolerate without having to worry about raising a family, but: how much can our society tolerate? Educated people?

Cultivating managers is also a responsibility that companies have to society - if companies don't do their own thing, society will force them to take action. Because the continuity of enterprises, especially the continuity of large enterprises, is a very important thing. Society will not tolerate this wealth-creating resource being compromised by business executives who cannot find a competent successor. Our citizens increasingly look to businesses to deliver on society's fundamental beliefs and commitments, especially the commitment to "equal opportunity." From this perspective, developing managers is nothing more than a technical term, representing the means by which we realize our basic social beliefs and political traditions.

Citizens in the modern industrial society are increasingly looking to work to satisfy their creative desires and to develop their nature, hoping that work can transcend economic needs and satisfy personal self-esteem and pride. Therefore, training managers is just another way for corporate management to fulfill its social obligations, so that the meaning of work and industrial development is not just a means of making a living. By providing challenges and opportunities, the company allows each manager to unleash their full potential, thereby fulfilling its obligations to society and turning work into a "lifestyle".

The need to develop managers has suddenly become the focus of corporate America over the past few years. Fifteen years ago, when I first became interested in this topic, I found that only one company had noticed it—Sears. There are literally hundreds of manager training programs in progress today. Almost every large company has a similar program, and even more and more small companies are developing their own manager training programs.

These methods are not to train managers

To train managers cannot be just "promotion plans", but only for "employees who can be promoted", hoping to find "back-up candidates" for senior management positions. Because the term "reserve candidate" itself implies that the manager's job and the company's organizational structure remain the same, the company is simply looking for someone to replace the current executive. What we can be sure of, however, is that, just as in the past, job requirements and organizational structures will continue to change in the future. So we need to develop managers who can meet the demands of tomorrow's work, not those who can only do yesterday's tasks.

General Electric President Cordina has made it clear: "If we had to rely entirely on traditional ways to increase productivity, I would consider the goal (to increase GE's productivity by 50 percent in less than ten years) Just wishful thinking. Our labs and factories will continue to find ways to make more and better products with less time, effort and cost, but we can't expect physics to take all the heavy lifting.

"American industry has come to understand that today we have a great opportunity to find ways to fully develop human resources - especially business executives. No matter now or in the future, due to the continuous advancement of technology and the increasing complexity of management, training managers is not only necessary, but also contains great opportunities. Those familiar with the field believe that with better management, GE has the opportunity to increase productivity by 50 percent over the next decade.

The practice of finding backups for top executives ignores the fact that the most important decision is made long before a person is promoted to a senior management position. Today's lower-level executives will be tomorrow's executives Supervisor. By the time we have to find someone to take over as a factory manager or a sales department supervisor, we are limited to three or four people. When we assign employees to be foremen, department heads, regional sales managers or auditors , we've already made critical decisions about our future. In making these decisions, the typical back-up is not really helpful.

All in all, the notion of finding people with great potential and worth promoting is a complete fallacy. I haven't seen any way to predict a person's long-term development. Even if we can predict a person's growth, we still have no right to play the role of God. No matter how "scientific" these methods are, it is still only 60-70% at most No one has the right to arrange the career development of others based on odds.

More importantly, this concept of "promotable candidates" values only one-tenth of all talents, at best Only one-fifth is accounted for, but the remaining nine-tenths are ignored. However, it is not these backup candidates or the talents that the company wants to promote that need to train managers the most, but those who are not good enough to be promoted step by step. But not so bad that they need to be fired. They make up the majority of the business, and they also do a lot of the actual business management. Most of them will still be in their current jobs 10 years from now. Unless they To be able to improve themselves to meet the requirements of future work, otherwise no matter how excellent the talents promoted by the company are and how carefully they have been screened and cultivated, the entire management team will still be insufficient. The benefits, the distortions and resentment of the neglected majority will offset these effects. No matter how carefully companies screen for the talent they want to promote, just because they make a choice, in the eyes of many managers, the entire selection system is still Dictatorial, arbitrary, favoritism.

These principles are used to develop managers

Therefore, the first principle in developing future supervisors is that all managers must be developed. We spend a lot of time and money just to improve the efficiency of generators by 5%, but it may not take that much time and money to improve manager performance by 5%, and the energy will be much greater. many.

The second principle is that developing managers must be a dynamic activity and must never be aimed solely at replacing the present - replacing today's supervisors, their jobs or their qualifications, but must always focus on tomorrow on demand. We have to ask, what kind of organization do we need to achieve tomorrow? So what kind of management positions would be required? In order to meet the needs of tomorrow, what must managers have? What new skills, knowledge and capabilities do they need to acquire?

As a result, many of today's popular tools for cultivating managers are no longer applicable. Not only is the method of back-up candidates insufficient, but the favorite tool for most companies - "job rotation" is no longer enough. . Generally speaking, there are two forms of job rotation. Companies move specialists from one department to another for a period of time—often one after the other in a rotation. Or the company feels that the employee does not know enough about other departments to perform management work, so he arranges for him to receive special training from his work. A major manufacturer announced not long ago that "employees on the promotion list will be rotated into departments they are unfamiliar with for a period of six months to two years in each assigned position."

However, What companies need is not engineers who have little knowledge of accounting, but engineers who can manage the company. A person will not become a generalist just by adding a few more majors. Only by looking at the enterprise as a whole can a person's vision be improved. How much can an employee understand in just six months in a huge area like marketing or engineering? Maybe you know some nouns. From a good marketing course or a good book list, he may have learned more. The whole concept of training work goes against established rules and experience. We should never give employees a job that isn't a real job, a job that doesn't require performance.

In summary, a manager training program must include all managers in the enterprise, with the goal of motivating everyone's growth and self-development; emphasizing performance, not commitment, and emphasizing tomorrow's requirements, not today's needs; must It is dynamic and heavy, rather than static personnel changes based on mechanized rotation. Developing tomorrow's executives actually means making today's executives more important and better managers.

These directions guide the development of managers

Because the work of developing tomorrow's supervisors is too large and too important, we cannot regard it as a special activity, and its performance depends on all the elements of management managers: the arrangement of work, Relationships with superiors and subordinates, organizational ethos, and organizational structure. For example, in an organization that bullies the weak and fears the strong, and does not pay attention to character when selecting management talents, no amount of special training activities will be enough to train future managers. Likewise, in a centralized organization, no amount of special training activities will be enough to produce future managers, only future experts. Conversely, true decentralized management does not require any additional development activities to develop, train, and test out future managers.

The job of developing future executives is important and cannot be seen as a by-product. Of course, in large organizations, special training activities are only auxiliary tools, but they are very necessary auxiliary tools. At the very least, these activities can highlight the importance the company places on the issue, and thus motivate managers to help their subordinates develop their potential.

In fact, what really matters is self-development. The most absurd thing in the world is that the company shoulders the responsibility of developing employees. It is the individual who really should take on this responsibility, and it is only by one's own ability and effort that he can become a good supervisor. No business has the ability or obligation to take the place of employees' personal self-development efforts. This is not only a patriarchal inappropriate intervention, but also a display of stupid vanity.

However, every business executive has the opportunity to encourage or inhibit, guide or mislead an individual's self-development. Enterprises should specifically assign managers to be responsible for assisting all colleagues who work with him to cohere and apply self-development efforts. Every company should also systematically provide managers with self-development challenges.

First, every manager should think thoroughly about the capabilities of their subordinates. Of course, thinking about this should be based on the aforementioned systematic performance appraisal. After analyzing the subordinate's capabilities, two questions should be asked: Are we putting this person in the position where they can make the greatest contribution to the company? What other areas does he need to learn, and what weaknesses do he need to overcome in order to give full play to his strengths and abilities?

The answers to these two questions determine what actions the company should take to unlock his potential, possibly transferring him to other jobs, possibly giving him a formal education in a subject or management principle, possibly assigning him to a certain specific issues, research new policy proposals or capital investment plans. Especially in large corporations, there is no shortage of such opportunities (provided the company does not allow "staff" to take on management roles.

Companies shouldn't set things up for people. In smaller companies, however, when the scope of an employee's job changes, the need for personal development is often also met. Large companies often have job vacancies, and when suitable job opportunities arise, they should be filled based on an analysis of the development needs of individual executives. Of course, this is an important decision of life and death, so before the personnel order takes effect, it should be carefully evaluated by the superior, and the parties should also be given the opportunity to fully participate.

Next, through "manager planning for managers", according to the requirements and needs of future management positions, review whether the company's efforts in cultivating managers are sufficient.

Managerial workforce planning begins with an analysis of the company's future needs and goals—in other words, how the company's career will look in the future, as this will determine the company's future organizational structure, jobs, and job requirements why. Short-term manager workforce planning—just looking at the next two years—is really a promotion plan. But the planning that really matters is the long-term plan—thinking about the manpower of managers five or ten years from now. Because in this plan, whether it is the company's goals, organizational structure, and the age structure of managers, all must be considered, and the company also formulates the direction of training managers accordingly.

In long-term planning, management must not forget that it was never their intention to close the business at the end of their term. In other words, just finding the right people to meet the needs of the next five years is not enough. How much the next five years will yield won't be seen until ten or 15 years from now, but what happens now and in the next few years will likely determine the company's continued viability.

Today, we no longer have to debate whether developing managers is just a luxury that big companies can afford in good times. Most large companies, as well as many small ones, are well aware that developing managers, like research labs, is no longer a luxury. Today, there is no longer even a need to worry about companies producing too many good people, as in the past. Most executives are finding that the supply of good talent is increasingly in short supply, and even the most successful executive development programs are not developing talent at a rate that can keep up with the increase in demand. (Smart entrepreneurs know that being called "the cradle of CEOs" never hurts a company. Rather, a company's attraction to great talent is directly related to its ability to nurture successful talent for itself and other companies. Reputation.)

Cultivating managers has become a must, as modern enterprises have become the basic institutions of society. Finding, nurturing, and testing future leaders in any major institution, be it the church or the military, is a very important job, and the best people must devote their full attention to this work.

Expecting today's managers to develop tomorrow's managers is necessary to boost their morale, expand their vision, and improve their performance. The so-called teaching and learning means that when a person teaches others, he often learns the most; when a person tries to help others develop their own potential, they can also fully develop themselves. Indeed, in the process of nurturing others, managers can develop themselves and raise their demands on themselves. The top figures in any industry regard the talent they cultivate as the proudest monument they can live on.

This article, with permission from the Huazhang Branch of China Machinery Industry Press, is selected from Chapter 15 "The Training of Managers" in the forthcoming book "The Practice of Management" by Peter Dulac of China Machinery Industry Press. The title and subheading are Added by the editor of this journal.