The Changing Managerial Profession

From the earliest times of civilization, there have been those who have assumed leadership and managerial roles, including those of a king or queen, a chief, or a priest. Each held influence over a flock, directing efforts toward the communal benefit of the group. Over the centuries, the roles and responsibilities of a manager have evolved, requiring a broader and more intricate set of knowledge and skills today than in times previous. In fact, some of the greatest challenges to management have occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century, caused by events and circumstances that were unforeseen save for a few.

The financial collapse of the world economy in the later part of the first decade of the twenty-first century has had a profound impact on the economic, political, and social fabric of our nation. Now known as the Great Recession, the reverberations of that cataclysmic event still haunt a society struggling to normalize and stabilize its economy and those who actively participate in it. Following catastrophic events of this nature, there is a natural tendency to find someone or something to blame, and two entities have received the most attention: the federal government (the politicians and the bureaucrats) and the managerial profession (managers and supervisors). The government's inability to accurately forecast and prevent this collapse has been well chronicled in a host of books and articles. Similarly, the mistakes by management to competently manage its business have grabbed the nation's attention — especially those in the banking profession — and provoked anger at some managers' unethical and duplicitous conduct.

Unfortunately, this anger has been targeted at the broader managerial profession rather than at a minute segment of the profession whose actions were irresponsible and unprofessional, if not immoral. Consequently, the image and reputation of the management profession in general, and a manager in particular, has been profoundly affected by the continued onslaught of blame for all that ills the economy and those people who seek to be employed by it. I am convinced, though, that the image and profession of a manager can be rehabilitated. Identifying the attributes of a good manager, as outlined in this book, is an important contribution to that effort. First, however, it is beneficial to provide a broad context on the role of the manager in organizations, along with how the circumstances and events of the past years have fundamentally altered the profession, thus requiring a new way of thinking from today's manager.

What Is a Manager?

"Manager" is a difficult term to define in business. This seems odd to some, especially since thousands of books have been written on the art and science of management, not including the countless books written about organizations, governments, and businesses, all in which a manager plays a key role in their success and failure. Yet it is also surprising how few managers can give a succinct and refined definition of their job and their profession, or understand the principal tenets, tasks, and responsibilities that form the core of the managerial profession.

Let's start with a fairly comprehensive definition of a manager: a manager is someone who has the responsibility to utilize an organization's material resources and to leverage cooperation from employees in order to attain a goal that is deemed important to the organization's success. More simply defined, a manager is the person in charge who uses certain resources to accomplish certain tasks. What are these resources? Resources primarily revolve around people, money, and physical and intellectual property. Some of the more prominent examples of resources would include employees, computers, budgets, patents, research, office space, and volunteers.

Managers hope to utilize these resources in the most efficient and effective manner. Efficiency is the use of a minimal amount of resources — raw materials, money, people, and time, to offer a few examples — to produce a desired volume of output; effectiveness is the degree to which the organization achieves a stated objective. If managers can accomplish their objectives in an efficient and effective manner, they can give the organization to which they belong a better chance of achieving its stated strategic objectives, whether that is producing a more innovative product or generating a more profitable service.

It is a common misunderstanding of the management profession to believe that managers and leaders are one and the same. It is also a misperception that a good manager will naturally be or become a good leader. It is true that a person can be both: some individuals can envision the future of an organization or an industry (a key trait of a leader) and then marshal the necessary organizational resources to achieve that vision (a key role of a manager). I believe, though, that distinction is more the exception than the rule. Each organizational role, both leader and a manager, has a different skill set, and it is the rare person who possesses both. Steve Jobs offers a good example. For a number of years after he and Steve Wozniak cofounded Apple in 1976, Steve Jobs was its chief executive officer. After the company's initial success building and selling the personal computer, however, he parted with the company in 1985, a victim not only of an internal power struggle among investors but also having found that managing an organization is much different, and less interesting, than creating it. Of course, he later made a triumphant return to the top position at Apple, having learned the skills necessary to manage an organization. Prior to his untimely death in 2011, his tenure at Apple provided a sterling example of how leadership abilities can coexist with managerial skills, and that management skills can be learned if you have the knowledge, desire, and ability to do so.

Estée Lauder was another example of a revolutionary businessperson with strong management skills and leadership abilities. It was her uncle that created the beauty products that initially launched the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, but it was Estée who foresaw the future of youth creams and other products that could be bought by the average woman. She had the innate skills to sell what her uncle created and also the unique and cunning ability to create products of her own, including Youth Dew bath oil/ perfume, a pioneering cosmetic that eventually sold hundreds of millions of bottles (and still is a major-selling cosmetic to this day). She believed in a simple marketing concept, "telephone, telegraph, tell-a-woman," yet also created groundbreaking marketing concepts such as the "gift with purchase," a concept where customers were given a sample of one product when they bought another.

From the launch of her original four products in 1946 until her...