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have to be done well."Communicating is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time doing but the medium through which managerial work is constituted" (Hales 1986:101). Managers take in information through what Sayles (1964) has called monitoring activities, which enable them to be the nerve centers of their units, and they send their information out through what can be called disseminating activities inside the unit and spokesperson activities outside it. Monitoring As monitors, managers reach out for every scrap of useful information they can get--about internal operations and external events, trends and analyses, everything imaginable. They are also bombarded with such information, significantly as a consequence of the networks they build up for themselves. The manager, in contrast, is the relative generalist among them, overseeing it all. He or she may not know as much about any particular specialty as the person charged with it, but usually more than any of them about the whole set of specialties together. And so the manager develops the broadest base of information within the unit. As a consequence of the monitoring activities, the manager becomes the nerve center of the unit--its best-informed member, at least if he or she is doing the job well (Barnard 1938:218). This can apply to the president of the United States compared with the cabinet secretaries and the CEO of a company compared with the vice presidents no less than to a fi rst-line manager compared with the workers. As Morris et al. put it about those school principals: "Inside the building, the principal is the key exchange point, the information switchboard through which all important messages pass" (1982:690).Also shown, within their own heads, managers frame (conceive strategies, establish priorities, etc.) and schedule (their own time).(Homans 1950:187)...

have to be done well. But they are apart from that work which every
manager does whatever his function or activity, whatever his rank
and position, work which is common to all managers and peculiar
to them. (1954:343)
Before we throw out the managerial baby with the selling bathwater,
let’s ask ourselves why senior managers of consulting fi rms do this selling.
The obvious answer is that many consulting services have to be sold at
senior levels in the buying company, and so they require the intervention
of senior managers in the selling company. On one hand, therefore, the
task is specialized and context-specifi c; on the other hand, it has to be done by
managers and so is intrinsically managerial (see also Hales and Mustapha
2000:22).
Indeed, a good deal of what we generally accept as intrinsically managerial corresponds to specialized functions in the organization: managers brief
subordinates, but their organizations have formal information systems; managers serve as fi gureheads at ceremonial events despite the presence of
public relations specialists; managers have long been described as planners
and controllers, while near them can be found planning departments and
controllership offi ces. A good part of the work of managing involves
doing what specialists do, but in particular ways that make use of
the manager’s special contacts, status, and information.
So let’s get past our myths and our deities, and get on with understanding managing as it is practiced.
TOWARD A GENERAL MODEL
When I opened those boxes and looked at those books, my intention
was not to fi nd out what managers do—we knew that already—but to
weave that into a comprehensive model. Hence, I did not set out to do
more research, not yet (the twenty-nine days of observation mostly came
later), but simply to draw together the results of existing descriptions and
research. My focus was really quite simple: to get it all on one sheet of
paper, in the form of a single diagram. This was not meant to trivialize
the job or to suggest that all its nuanced complexity could be described
on one page, only to offer the reader a place where the whole of managing
could be seen all at once—comprehensively, coherently, interactively—
even if that page required many more of explanation
After perhaps a dozen efforts over many years, I developed that one
page to my satisfaction, as reproduced in Figure 3.2.4 The fi rst time I
showed it to a manager—a friend, over dinner—he immediately pointed
to where were the strengths and the weaknesses of the managers in his
company. That was exactly the response I wanted.5
The fi gure has come out looking a bit like an egg, perhaps in honor of
Humpty Dumpty. In the spirit of the opening quotation of this chapter, my
earlier effort had held together long enough to get me to this model, which
I hope will hold together long enough to help others get to better models
An Overview of the Model
Figure 3.2 puts the manager in the center, between the unit for which
he or she has formal responsibility (by defi nition) and its surroundings,
of two kinds: the rest of the organization (unless the manager is chief
executive, responsible for the entire organization), and the outside world
relevant to the unit (customers, partners, etc.).
The overriding purpose of managing is to ensure that the unit serves
its basic purpose, whether that be to sell products in a retail chain or care
for the elderly in a nursing home. This, of course, requires the taking of
effective actions. Mostly other people in the unit do that, each a specialist
in his or her own right. But sometimes a manager gets close to this action,
as when Jacques Benz, Director-General of GSI, joined the meeting of a
project team that was developing a new system for a customer.
More commonly, however, the manager takes one or two steps back
from the action. One step back, he or she encourages other people to take
action—the manager gets things done through other people by coaching, motivating, building teams, strengthening culture, and so forth. Two
steps back, the manager gets things done by using information to drive
other people to take action. He or she imposes a target on a sales team,
or carries a comment from a government offi cial to a staff specialist.
So as shown in the fi gure, managing takes place on three planes,
from the conceptual to the concrete: with information, through
people, and to action directly.6
• On the day of observation, Carol Haslam of Hawskhead could be
seen working on all three planes. On the action plane, she was
deeply involved with developing projects for new films—she was
doing deals galore. On the people plane, she was maintaining
her vast network of contacts used to promote these projects,
as well as building teams of filmmakers to execute them. And
on the information plane, all day long she was collecting and
disseminating ideas, data, advice, and other information.
Two roles are shown as being performed on each plane. On the information plane, managers communicate (all around) and control (inside).
On the people plane, they lead (inside) and link (to the outside)
the action plane, they do (inside) and deal (outside). Also shown, within
their own heads, managers frame (conceive strategies, establish priorities,
etc.) and schedule (their own time). Each aspect of the model is discussed
in turn before all of them are discussed together in conclusion.
THE PERSON IN THE JOB
Positioned at the center of the model is the manager, who personally carries out two roles in particular: framing and scheduling.
Framing the Job
Framing defi nes how a manager approaches his or her particular job.
Managers frame their work by making particular decisions, focusing on particular issues, developing particular strategies, and
so forth, to establish the context for everyone else working in the
unit.7 Alain Noël (1989) has called these the managers’ preoccupations,
as compared with their occupations (what they actually do)—which can
sometimes amount to a single “magnifi cent obsession.”
• Brian Adams, Program Manager for the Global Express aircraft
at Bombardier, had a magnificent obsession, imposed by the
senior management: to “get it in the air” by June. “Then, we’ll
see,” he commented. In contrast, John Cleghorn of the Royal
Bank of Canada had a variety of preoccupations as its chairman,
concerning the improvement and success of the company. (Both
their days are described in the appendix.)
One of the new managers studied by Linda Hill quickly found out
about the importance of framing: “I expected to come out of the starting
gate with the knowledge . . . now I fi nd I’m out here inventing the wheel”
(2003:51). We return to framing in our discussion of managerial styles in
Chapter 4 and strategy formation in Chapter 5
Scheduling the Work
Scheduling is of great concern to all managers: the agenda inevitably gets
a lot of attention. A half century ago, Sune Carlson noted how managers
“become slaves to their appointment diaries—they get a kind of ‘diary
complex’” (1951:71). Scheduling is important because it brings
the frame to life, determines much of what the manager seeks to
do, and enables him or her to use whatever degrees of freedom
are available (Stewart 1979).
Needless to say, scheduling was evident in all twenty-nine days of observation. It has to be done in all managerial jobs, but as a means to other
ends—namely, the performance of the other roles. Thus, the diaries were
often out, and much juggling of schedules took place.8
The manager’s schedule can have enormous infl uence over
everyone else in the unit: whatever gets in the agenda is taken as
a signal of what matters in the unit. In fact, when managers schedule, they are often allocating not only their own time but also that of the
people who report to them.9
Scheduling amounts to what Peters and Waterman (1982) have
called “chunking”—slicing up managerial concerns into distinct tasks,
to be carried out in specifi c slots of time. The problem, of course (which
we shall discuss under the Labyrinth of Decomposition in Chapter 5),
is how to put back together that which has been taken apart. And this is
where the frame comes in: if clear enough, it can function as a magnet
to draw the distinct chunks into a coherent whole. As Whitley put it,
managing is “not so much focused on ‘solving’ discreet, well bounded
individual problems as in dealing with a continuing series of internally
related and fl uid tasks” (1989:216).
Despite the attention that has long been given to decision making,
managerial agendas seem to be built around ongoing issues more than
specifi c decisions—in the words of Farson (1996:43), “predicaments”
more than “problems” (see also Pondy and Huff 1985). Just look at the
agendas of a typical management meeting, or else ask a manager what is
on his or her “plate.”10
MANAGING THROUGH INFORMATION
We turn now to the three planes on which managing is manifested, beginning with that of information. To manage through information
means to sit two steps removed from the ultimate purpose of
managing: information is processed by the manager to encourage other people to take the necessary actions. In other words, on
this plane the manager focuses neither on people nor on actions directly,
but on information as an indirect way to make things happen.
Ironically, while this was the classic view of managing, which dominated perceptions of its practice for most of the last century, it has again
become prevalent, thanks to current obsessions with the “bottom line”
and “shareholder value”: both encourage a detached, essentially
information-driven practice of managing.
Two main roles describe managing on the information plane, one
labeled communicating, to promote the fl ow of information all around the
manager, and the other labeled controlling, to use information to drive
behavior mainly within the managed unit.
Communicating All Around
Watch any manager and one thing readily becomes apparent: the
amount of time that is spent simply communicating—namely,
collecting and disseminating information for its own sake, without necessarily processing it. Barnard, himself a chief executive (of
New Jersey Telephone), identifi ed the “fi rst executive function” as “to
develop and maintain a system of communication
In my 1973 study, I estimated that the fi ve chief executives spent
about 40 percent of their time simply communicating in one way or
another. In his study of Swedish corporate chief executives, Tengblad
(2000) put 23 percent of their time at “getting information”—“the single
most frequently recorded activity”—plus another 16 percent “informing
and advising” (p. 15).
I did not tabulate the time spent on various activities by the twentynine managers of my later study, but communicating was no less evident: Norm Inkster, head of the RCMP, going over press clippings of
the past twenty-four hours; someone dropping in on RCMP Division
Commander Burchill “to tell you what’s going on”; John Cleghorn briefing institutional investors on happenings at the bank; Stephen Omollo in
the refugee camp inspecting the reconstruction of a fence that had been
blown over in a recent storm; and much more.
The communicating role exists in the model as a kind of membrane
all around the manager, through which all managerial activity passes.
“Communicating is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time
doing but the medium through which managerial work is constituted”
(Hales 1986:101). Managers take in information through what Sayles
(1964) has called monitoring activities, which enable them to be the nerve
centers of their units, and they send their information out through what
can be called disseminating activities inside the unit and spokesperson activities outside it.
Monitoring As monitors, managers reach out for every scrap of useful
information they can get—about internal operations and external events,
trends and analyses, everything imaginable. They are also bombarded
with such information, significantly as a consequence of the networks
they build up for themselves. Thus, Morris et al. wrote about high school
principals spending “a good deal of time ‘on the go’”: touring the halls,
visiting the cafeteria, quick checks in the classrooms and libraries, etc.—a
“constant bobbing” in and out, in order to “gauge the school climate”
and “anticipate and quell potential trouble”
Nerve Center Everyone reporting to a manager is a specialist, relatively
speaking, charged with some particular aspect of the unit’s work. The
manager, in contrast, is the relative generalist among them, overseeing
it all. He or she may not know as much about any particular specialty
as the person charged with it, but usually more than any of them about
the whole set of specialties together. And so the manager develops the
broadest base of information within the unit. As a consequence of the
monitoring activities, the manager becomes the nerve center of the
unit—its best-informed member, at least if he or she is doing
the job well (Barnard 1938:218).
This can apply to the president of the United States compared with
the cabinet secretaries and the CEO of a company compared with the
vice presidents no less than to a fi rst-line manager compared with the
workers. As Morris et al. put it about those school principals: “Inside the
building, the principal is the key exchange point, the information switchboard through which all important messages pass” (1982:690).
• At a lunchtime briefing of investors of the Royal Bank, John
Cleghorn drew on anecdotes from his morning in the branches.
The rest of the day likewise saw a great deal of communicating in
and out. Mostly John was learning, picking up all sorts of scraps
of detail, and in some cases more aggregated figures. But he also
spent time telling people about broader issues of the bank—a pending acquisition, for example—and imbibing a sense of its values.
(The full day is described in the Appendix.)
The same holds true for external information. By virtue of his or her
status, the manager has access to outside managers who are themselves
nerve centers of their own units. The president of the United States can
call the prime minister of Great Britain, much as one factory foreman can
call another factory foreman. Consider the following descriptions, the
fi rst about leaders of street gangs in America, the second about a president of the United States of America:
Since interaction fl owed toward [the leaders], they were better
informed about the problems and desires of group members than
were any of the followers and therefore better able to decide on an
appropriate course of action. Since they were in close touch with
other gang leaders, they were also better informed than their followers about conditions in [thetown] at large. (Homans 1950:187).
The essence of Roosevelt’s technique for information-gathering was
competition. “He would call you in,” one of his aides once told me,
“and he’d ask you to get the story on some complicated business,
and you’d come back after a couple of days of hard labor and
present the juicy morsel you’d uncovered under a stone somewhere,
and then you’d fi nd out he knew all about it, along with something else you didn’t know. Where he got his information from he
wouldn’t mention, usually, but after he had done this to you once
or twice you got damn careful about your information.” (Neustadt
1960:157)
Disseminating What do managers do with their extensive and privileged information? A great deal, as we shall see in the other roles. But still
on this one, they simply disseminate much of it to other people in their
unit: they share it. Like bees, managers cross-pollinate. As Commanding Officer Allen Burchill of the RCMP reported on his way to a
management meeting with his reports: “I’m informed. But this is a goaround to make sure they’re informed.”
Spokesperson The manager also passes information externally, from
people in the unit to outsiders, or from one outsider to another—for
example, between customers, suppliers, and government officials. More
formally, as spokesperson for the unit, the manager represents
it to the outside world, speaking to various publics on its behalf, lobbying for its causes, representing its expertise in public forums, and keeping outside stakeholders up-to-date on its
progress.
• Charlie Zinkan, as Superintendent of the Banff National Park, met
with the owner of a campground concerned about Indian land claims.
Patiently Charlie described the government’s position. The man
was grateful: finally someone had explained the situation to him.
At N’gara, Stephen Omollo of the Red Cross met the representative
of a major donor organization who was there to audit the use of its
money in the refugee camps. Stephen’s knowledge of the operations,
illustrated in his detailed replies to many of the questions, was
impressive—informed, articulate, and straightforward.
The Verbal, the Visual, and the Visceral It should be evident from our
discussion of Chapter 2 that the manager’s advantage lies not in documented information, which can be made available to anyone, but in the
current, not (yet) documented information transmitted largely by word
of mouth—for example, the gossip, hearsay, and opinion discussed in
that chapter. Indeed, much of an informed manager’s information is not
even verbal so much as visual and visceral—in other words, seen and felt
more than heard, representing the art and craft of managing more than
its science. Effective managers pick up tone of voice, facial expression,
body language, mood, atmosphere.
• I observed this especially in the day I spent with Stephen Omollo as
he walked through the refugee camps, using every means possible
to sense what was going on. Stephen greeted everyone he passed,
smiling and laughing—in front of their homes, on the streets, in
the markets and the fields. No few came up to shake his hand and
chat. “My job is to assist and train the local staff,” Stephen said,
“but there is a need to tour on foot. You need to laugh with the
people.”
To conclude this discussion of the role of communicating, the job
of managing is signifi cantly one of information processing, especially through a great deal of listening, seeing, and feeling, as
well as a good deal of talking. But that can damn a manager to a job of
overwork or one of frustration. On one side of the managerial coin, there
is the temptation to get in there and fi nd out personally what is going
on—to “avoid the sterility so often found in those who isolate themselves
from operations” (Wrapp 1967:92). The danger, of course, is that this
can encourage micromanaging: meddling in the work of others. But on
the other side of that coin is “macroleading”: simply not knowing what
is going on. We shall return to this under our conundrums of Chapter 5.
Controlling Inside the Unit
One direct use of the managers’ information is to “control”—that is, to
direct the behavior of their “subordinates.” As noted earlier, for the better
part of the last century, managing was considered almost synonymous
with controlling. This view began with Henri Fayol’s book of 1916, based
on his experience of managing French mines in the previous century,
but it really fl ourished in the conventional manufacturing of products,
such as automobiles, and then in government, as expressed in Gulick and
Urwick’s (1937) popular acronym POSDCORB: planning, organizing,
staffi ng, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. Four of these