I recur fairly often to the topics of management
and leadership, mostly because they’re the
hardest game in town. (And yes, we
could have a Talmudic debate about how "management"
is and is not "leadership," but since my
goal is to finish this piece during one lunar
cycle, we shan’t.)
Jonathan Byrnes, a senior lecturer at MIT,
with a Ph.D. from Harvard Business School,
has a
few thoughts on what it takes to become
a "master" manager, coincident with the commencement
season at HBS and
MIT.
Properly, he starts with the historic understanding
of a "master." The progression,
you’ll recall, is apprentice –> journeyman
–> "master." Apprentices
are, well, apprenticed to masters to learn
the basics of their trade; when they have
advanced sufficiently in skill and expertise,
they can leave the master’s workshop to journey,
plying their trade. Finally, as they
become truly accomplished, they can aspire
to produce one or more "masterpieces," an
object of superb refinement, which, if the
guild deems it worthy, entitles him to open
his own house and begin to take in apprentices.
One of the finer points of this system—and
a testament to its solid wisdom—is
that masters have not only the privilege
but the obligation of taking in
apprentices, in order to perpetuate and refine
the craft. A closely related privilege,
and obligation, is to continually seek to
produce yet more "masterpieces," advancing
the art of the trade. Byrnes observes
that, touring the great museums of the world
today, all we see are these masterpieces,
and not the countless hours of toil and training
behind them, nor the intrinsic soundness
of the system that both enabled and cultivated
their creation.
So what has this to do with managing in
your firm?
The analogy is, to my mind, spot-on direct.
Managers have two fundamental privileges,
and obligations:
- to train, develop, nurture, and coach,
the next generation of managers for the
firm, who will eventually succeed them;
and - to create managerial "masterpieces,"
exercises in combining astute competitive
and business intelligence with a nuanced
appreciation of where client needs intersect
with the firm’s capabilities, to produce
tactical and strategic initiatives that
move the firm forward.
An indispensable prerequisite to growth
as a manager (or as an apprentice, or a journeyman)
is the chance to fail. (And
if failure is bad enough in corporate America,
it’s positively horrifying in law-land, where
we’re all perfectionists and all stupendously
above average.) If it’s the case, as
Byrnes relates of one of his clients, that “It’s
OK to experiment, but you better not be wrong,"
how much growth and learning would you expect
to find?
Contrast that with the fertile environment
wherein the best idea truly does win:
"Every week, I receive e-mails
from former students and readers seeking
advice about business problems. These almost
always concern difficulties in implementation.
The correspondent has figured out a better
way to do things, but can’t get his or her
counterparts and colleagues to accept it."Masterly managers, and those trained by
them, are experts in implementation because
they are oriented toward working through
others and are receptive to others’ ideas.
An organization characterized by master managers
is very receptive to change because the managers
are conditioned to be open-minded and inquisitive.
They are used to trying out ideas on others,
and have been taught to view management as
a process of give and take, a marketplace
of ideas in which real value wins."
The goal, then, is for the "master" manager
to be able to work so well through others that
he or she can truly focus on the broad challenges
and opportunities facing the firm, analyze
and discuss them with candor in an atmosphere
of trust, and drive the firm farther and farther
ahead of its peers.
But first, you need to issue "permission
to fail" cards far and wide.
