David B. Brown
Professor and Head
Department of Computer Science
The University of Alabama
Last Update -- February 16, 1995
The Instructors Manual containing answers to all questions and discussion of cases is available to authorized individuals. This is restricted to those who adopt TECHNIMANAGEMENT for classroom use. Please request this directly from the author on company or university letterhead at the following address:
David B. Brown Department of Computer Science The University of Alabama Box 870290 Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0290The diskette will contain the ASCII and WordPerfect 5.1 files of both the Student Guide and this Instructor's Manual. Email inquiries are invited at brown@cs.ua.edu.
TECHNIMANAGEMENT [the book] was not intended to be a textbook. Not that this was not considered. However, the book was designed to be dogmatic, and the insertion of case studies, questions, chapter summaries and similar didactic aids would have been inconsistent with its basic character.
The purpose of this manual is to supplement TECHNIMANAGEMENT by furnishing those components which are typically integrated into textbooks. While this will not make it a textbook, it will facilitate the efforts of those who wish to use it for such.
This guide consists of a series of three types of student challenges:
Written questions assure that the thought processes take place that create a proper understanding of the principles presented. The discussion questions have a similar goal. However, they differ in that they are more challenging and require more synthesis of the material, and their open-ended nature does not lend itself to easy documentation. Finally, discussion scenarios are much more involved, and their use is intended to challenge you to synthesize the principles into definitive applications.
Given this overall preface, the next 24 sections (one for each chapter of the book) will be formatted as follows:
The basic objective of this chapter is to establish the need for:
The emphasis is upon the root causes of these needs, which are highly interrelated. The time limitations and basic orientation of the technical education tends to leave little time for management subjects. Even if such were available, it could not solve the basic problem if it is oriented toward traditional management practices. Similarly, experience can do more harm than good if it is obtained in a traditional organization which is not improving. However, the greatest of deterrents toward improvement resides within those technically-trained individuals who believe that they are exceptions to the general rule.
The questions which should be applied to all of the discussion scenarios given in this manual are:
You are on your first job assignment and have been assigned to a small group. After about six months you have gotten oriented to the people and personalities involved. When you joined the firm your immediate superior seemed like a very reasonable person. However, about three months ago he assigned you to a group leader and essentially gave him complete authority over your every activity. The group leader has great technical ability, but it is clear that you are not getting the type of guidance that you need. You get sporadic assignments which are outside of your area of expertise. Often these are thrown away and reassignments are made before you can complete anything meaningful. Your group leader does not seem to have an appreciation for your particular special- ization, and he will not allow you the flexibility to apply some original ideas that you have to the project. When you have attempted to reason with him in what you considered to be a reasonable and normal way, he got real defensive and seemed totally closed to any suggestions. While you cannot be sure because you have only been aboard for a short while, it seems to you that the entire group's project is floundering.
You are on your second job assignment within a large company. Your first assignment was on a small group, and you did so well that when a project came up that was in your area of specialization three months ago, they made you the group leader over five other professionals. Four of these are veterans who were aware of your abilities and recommended you for group leader on this project. However, your manager assigned a young person to your team whose skills were not at all consistent with the project. You have tried to give this person meaningful assignments, and you discussed possible reassignment with your manager. However, he told you that they were bidding on several contracts which would need this person's skill in the near future. However, because these transactions were company confidential, and because he did not want to get this person's hopes up if they did not come through, he requested that you keep this confidential, and just do your best to give him a meaningful assignment. While you could probably work him into the project more effectively if you had more time, the requirements of this job have you working nights and weekends as it is. In addition, your manager has been extremely preoccupied with these new proposals and is rarely in town. He recently came in with some proposals which, while they showed some promise, would disrupt the other members of the team at this point. So effective- ly you made the decision to minimize the disruption and do whatever you can to get the new person oriented to the new environment. However, you do not know how long you will be able to keep everyone satisfied in this regard.
The first objective of this chapter is to present the elements of control: goals, measurements and corrections. A second objective is to demonstrate how they apply to human organizations, and specifically -- organizations of professionals. In this regard, all organizational problems can be analyzed to determine the element(s) of control which are deficient. This provides a starting point for addressing organizational problems. However, the key difference between technimanagement and traditional management practice is also introduced. Traditional management practice attempts to control the individual worker, which leads to manipulative practices. Technimanagement counters this by recognizing that professional do not need to be controlled externally. However, their organizations still need control. This comes from totally integrating everyone into the process of establishing the control systems. The managers' role becomes one of meta-control, i.e., assuring that these control systems are being established effectively.
You have been working for a large company for about three years and have received your first management assignment as a group leader. However, you inherited a project that has a number of problems. There are five other persons on the project, and they have all come to you with complaints about the methods employed in the project management. They have brought conflicting ideas as to what the project is all about, to the point that you are confused. In fact, the charge that you got from your manager seemed quite confused to the point that you question whether she really understands it. You understand that it is your task to get the project done; but how do you start when you do not (and apparently no one else) understands just what the project is?
You have been working for a large company for about five years and received your first management assignment (as a group leader) about two years ago. You took a group which had been groping for control of its efforts and organized it by getting everyone involved in establishing the control system. Morale within the group increased dramatically, and their productivity soured. One reason you were given this chance was because of your discussions of the quality movement with upper management. While they dismissed much of this as annoying theory, they were familiar enough with "quality" approaches being practiced in other companies that they decided to give you a chance to sort out a rather difficult situation. Now they cannot ignore your success. During your two years as group leader you mentored a member of the group who demonstrated the capability to assume the responsibility of the group leader. Thus they are going to turn the group leader position over to her and promote you to a staff position to the executive vice president. Your job is to advise the EVP on extending these principles throughout the company. How do you go about generating a plan to implement technimanagement company-wide?
This is, of necessity, a very long chapter. The theory of rewards is both simple and intuitive. However, its simplicity tends to make its qualifications and methods for application quite complex. We start by stating the principle itself, which, since it contains the word "tends" allows for exceptions. These are introduced as we discuss the difference between rewards and motives. The next step is to introduce the hierarchy of needs, which essentially alters the nature and effectiveness of rewards. This is further qualified by what we define as the "spiritual needs" of humans which are excluded from Maslow's hierarchy. Finally, the defense mechanism are introduced which demonstrate that human reactions are not always rational. At that point we turn our attention to some classic management principles which address these issues. These include the concepts of goal integra- tion, motivational maintenance theory and a consideration of the human factor. To round out the chapter, some concepts are presented which we feel to be essential to the understanding the sociology of the workplace. These include the Hawthorne effect, industrial humanism, and the general complexity of human emotions. Finally, the way that rewards impact the meta-control system are discussed in order to link these concepts back to Chapter 2.
You have been managing a small group for about one year and were required by company policy to participate in an annual review of the individuals in your group. A number of metrics were suggested by company policy by which you were to perform your assessment, including technical competence, contribution to the group, general attitude, promotion of team harmony, etc. After making the assessments, and before the raise recommendation went forward, you are required to discuss the ratings with your subordinates individually. Since you believe that all of your subordinates are above average, your rated them accordingly, and your discussions with them were quite positive. However, when the actual raise figures came out one of your subordinates compared his raise with that of a co-worker and found that both as an absolute amount and a percentage, he received a lower amount. He has just come into your office asking the reason for what he considers to be an unfair adjustment. How do you respond?
After participating in the company's annual review and raise recommendations, a number of questions arose in the group which you were recently assigned to manage. Your management has given you general guidelines and required specific information at a given point each year for this information, but they have not mandated how you derive that information. While you were able to handle the problems which arose in your group, a number of suggestions were made which surfaced the fact that the current system is probably deficient. You have discussed this with your supervisor, and he told you that this is determined by personnel, and it cannot be changed at your level. What action should you take to evolve an improved reward structure?
McGregor's Theory Y provides the basic underlying support for much of technimanagement. Essentially, Theory X and Theory Y are extreme positions on the continuum which exists between centralized authoritative and distributed management. The Theory X manager distrusts subordinates to think and act in the best interests of the organization, while the Theory Y manager has much more faith in subordinates. While major movements toward Theory Y may not be supportable in all management applications, technimanagement espouses the establishment of proactive approaches to implement it for organizations of professionals. However, this cannot be attained by mandate; it must evolve out of management structures which encourage its growth.
You have been managing a small group for several years and it has grown to the point where most of the individuals who report to you have several small groups of their own. Increased competition has put additional pressure upon your organizational component over the past year. The organization has all of the traditional Theory- X characteristics, and you adopted this philosophical mix until about two years ago. At that time you began moving toward Theory Y, and you have noticed that this has resulted in greater involve- ment and more enthusiasm from your immediate subordinates. However, your Theory-Y orientation has not been reflected in their management approaches. Your philosophy is not a secret to their subordinates, and they have come directly to you on several occasions challenging their supervisors. In discussions with your subordinates, they continually tell you that your expectations of their employees "just won't work." They state (anecdotally) that they have tried to allow them greater latitude, but this has led to them taking advantage of the situation. They are fairly unified in this. What approach do you take to keep the organization moving in the right direction?
This chapter begins to give substance to Theory Y by demon- strating that ultimately all personal decisions are choices between two (or more) less-that-ideal alternatives. Since there is no such thing as total authority of one person over another, the authority must be given from below. The understanding of this is essential to forming the proper perception of reality with regard to what has traditionally been called "delegated" authority and responsibility. This chapter also begins to introduce the concept of personal power, and the initial definition is in terms of stable and unstable authority. There might be a very strong perception that authority exists, but some of the strongest perceived authority is not effective because it is consumptive of power. This, in turn, leads to the correspondence between stable authority and effective leadership. Finally, the concept of the meta-decisions is introduced, which is the organizational mechanisms for resolving who should make the decision.
You have been managing a small group for several years and have been relatively successful in producing a transformation to Theory Y which has generally produced higher morale and greater productivity. However, an individual transferred to your group about six months ago seems to be taking issue with every decision which the group makes. He has accused you of not exercising effective leadership. You are convinced that he will oppose whatever you or the group proposes, since you have seen him reverse his ground on several occasions for apparently no other reason than to oppose anything which will be successful. For example, you have had several meetings with him in which he has come up with good ideas, but when you have tried to implement them, he has picked apart their weaknesses. However, these things have occurred in such a subtle way, that they have not been at all obvious to your subordinates. By appealing to certain philosophical issues, he has influenced some within your group. There has not been a definitive incident of insubordination which you believe justifies his termination. In discussing this with your boss (who is quite Theory-X oriented), he believes that this individual should be fired immediately, but you have put off that decision seeking a better alternative. The major problem is that you have been trying to stimulate criticism in order to produce the highest quality product and to maintain a high level of morale. According to your philosophy, constructive criticism should be rewarded. The firing of this individual will cause sympathy toward him and, at best, the cessation of a critical approach to product improvement for the near and intermediate term. Your product is at a critical point in its development, and this individual is quite important to this effort; you do not need a crisis at this point. However, reasoning with your boss has not been very productive, since he feels that the only way that you can effectively establish your authority is to fire this individual. So you have two problems on your hand: an "immature" subordinate (who seems beyond hope) and a boss who can think of nothing other than a Theory-X solution. What do you do?
This is the first of two chapters which present techniques which have been applied by traditional management for attempting to bring control to the workplace. As with the previous chapter, this one is an attempt to provide substance to the abstract concepts of Theory Y. Management by Exception (MBE) has had a tremendous intuitive appeal to the traditional Theory X manager, where clear definitions of responsibilities were made by management. This structure can be useful under technimanagement provided that it is modified by the principles of distributed decision-making expressed in the former chapters. Thus MBE becomes Management by Negotiated Exception (MBNE), where a process of negotiation must take place to resolve each subordinate's responsibilities. (This should be recognized as an example of a meta-decision.) The final section touches once again upon leadership as opposed to manipulation, this time in terms of the use of fear in administering the reward system.
You have been managing a small group for about a year and have been relatively successful in producing a transformation to Theory Y which has generally produced higher morale and greater productiv- ity. As part of this, you have attempted to work with each of your subordinates and establish their assignments by MBNE. However, at a very critical point in your project one of your subordinates has informed you that a key individual on your team is considering employment elsewhere. When you question her further you find that several of them believe that some of the decisions which you have made over the past few months are arbitrary. This comes as a total surprise to you, since you have been holding group meetings at which everyone seemed to be quite satisfied with the decisions. In fact, you can think of very few decisions which you made -- most of them evolved out of group (at least as you see it). How do you approach this problem?
Being the second of two chapters on control techniques which have been applied by traditional management, the purpose of this chapter is to further reinforce knowledge of:
As with MBE, Management by Objectives (MBO) has an intuitive appeal to the Theory X manager. Its potential for misapplication is also quite similar, and Deming presents a convincing case against the raw application of MBO. However, Figure 7.1 clearly shows how this same technique can get around all of Deming's objections. The key is to modify the approach to distribute the objective-setting, measurement and reward processes. This cannot be done instantaneously or by management edict, which introduces the principle of transition, which is a key tenet of technimanagement.
This chapter is inserted to provide an understanding of the reasons that managers make so many bad decisions. Since even technical managers come from the general population pool, they are subject to all of the influences that provoke the general populace to make their decisions. This chapter is primarily concerned with the environment which creates certain approaches to decision-making in general. While these are illustrated with an extreme example taken from the media, this does not prove that they always hold, or that these are the predominant paradigms. However, the author clearly believes that many management shortcomings are caused by logical flaws, a sports mentality, the lack of optimization considerations, a stampede to extremes and a lack of a systems view. While this might not be the universal case, these should all be understood, since when they do appear, they are extremely counterproductive to effective organizational behavior.
You have been managing a small group for about a year. As a result of being part of the management structure, you are required to attend a formal weekly meeting which is designed to coordinate your activities with those of your peer managers. Recently you have noticed that there is a tremendous impatience with the resolution with what you consider to be major issues of organiza- tional direction. Instead, they have seemed to become obsessed with making rules. (Example: the latest one was to limit individu- al diskspace on the file server to a certain amount unless permission is first obtained from the network administrator.) You recognize that all but one or two of your peers are not acquainted with concepts of optimization, equifinality or a systems view, and proof by anecdote is the rule rather than the exception. You have approached your boss, who chairs these meetings, on two previous occasions when decisions made were particularly Theory-X based, but he does not seem to perceive that there is a problem since the majority rule prevailed. How do you approach this problem?
Parkinson's Law has been readily accepted in the popular management literature since its publication (copyright 1957). It is the substance of which management lore consists, and regardless of its assumptions or limited applications, it tends to have some effect upon anyone exposed to it. While it should be taken somewhat lightly, its effects upon driving management in a Theory-X direction should not minimized. Its review here serve to reinforce some important concepts with regard to our definition of a bureaucracy -- how it operated and the conclusions that some have documented regarding its operation. Surfaced are some important concepts of time management: should we set time limits or shouldn't we? If so, who should do the setting? Parkinson's Law is set up as a strawman and appropriately shot down. However, we invent the Compression Corollary and challenge you to see for yourselves the difference between work expansion and work compression. The difference is one symptom of whether your organization is heading in the direction of bureaucracy or technimanagement.
The Peter Principle is so simple and obvious that the greatest wonder is why no one documented it before Peter did. There are a number of factors which make it true under the conditions of traditional management and these should be thoroughly understood. However, it is also quite important to understand how the princi- ples of technimanagement apply to countering its seemingly inevitable nature. In particular, continuous job enrichment is a major goal of the distributed management approaches of techniman- agement. As we continue, we will see that involvement on teams provides additional training which prevents the culture shock associated with promotion. In addition, the organization itself should align the reward system to minimize the impact of the Peter Problem. While the technical organization should move in this direction, it will never be totally exempt from the Peter Problem.
You have been managing a small group for several years with significant success in moving your organizational component in a Theory-Y direction. Part of this has been your emphasis upon continuous job enrichment for your subordinates. This has been extremely successful, and several of them have gone on to manage- ment positions. Recently, however, one of your subordinates has taken a number of items upon herself which you feel are well beyond her ability, and certainly outside of the authority of her formal position. For example, she took it upon herself to negotiate a modification of a design with another department without your knowledge. She seems to be a natural leader and to this point no damage has resulted from her actions, but you are convinced that she is going to cause your organizational component some real problems if this continues. This is particularly vexing to you because your upper management is putting pressure on you to generate proposals to contacts that only you have, so you do not have time to be riding herd on her all the time. What actions should you take to get the situation under control.
It is very important that you internalize the extent to which the paradigm problem applies to you as an individual. Most people easily recognize how others are hampered by the paradigm problem, and this is, itself, part of the paradigm problem. We have not been conditioned toward self criticism. Yet, if we cannot arrive at a clear perception of ourselves in this regard, it is difficult to hope to have a realistic understanding of others. Recognize the word tends within the paradigm problem allows for exceptions. Indeed, it is the exceptions that have enabled us to make progress along a broad scientific and engineering front. In tending to emphasize the exceptions, the text may well have minimized the huge potential problems which the paradigm problem can bring to an organization, including an exacerbation of the Peter Problem. Given that we agree that we are all susceptible to it, there should be real motivation for enlarging upon the remedies suggested by Section 11.3. Finally, there must be a realization that change does not necessarily improve, and that most major paradigm shifts require considerable time to evolve (e.g., the telephone system, internal combustion engines, electrical system, etc.). Techniman- agement is also a major paradigm shift, and it has been our experience that about half of our students tend to reject its feasibility.
Your group has just developed a computerized support tool for a client which was a raving success. As you look around in your own company you recognize that this tool, with some minor modifica- tions has tremendous applicability to several of the divisions of your own company. Not imagining that it could be opposed, you set up a presentation to several middle managers, demonstrating to them the increases in productivity obtained by your client company. However, every time that you presented a finding, almost all of these managers countered with the "differences" between your organization and the client's. In addition, they claimed that the current approach works quite well. It soon became obvious that even if you were proposing a machine that would turn lead into gold, they would complain about its not being able to work its magic on raw sewage. Wisely, you brought the meeting to a graceful conclusion, returned to your office and defaced a picture of Hugo Moran, the 12th century patron saint of paradigm changes. Where do you go from here?
Ignorance and/or misunderstanding of the informal organiza- tions cause management to entertain many misperceptions of reality. The major premise of the chapter is that, since informal organiza- tions are inevitable, the manager needs to learn how to live with them. Further, since they are an essential ingredient to the creation of synergism, they should be viewed as an asset as opposed to a liability. The chapter presents methods to identify and establish a relationship with the informal organizations without jeopardizing their existence by formal recognition. The chapter ends with a discussion of shared power and mutual empowerment.
One of your subordinates has come to you and reported that the company network administrator has prevented your group from getting access to software that they need for design purposes. This seems to be the last symptom of a continuing set of problems which your people believe to be caused by preference that the company seems to be giving to several other departments. Some of your people have worked with the network administrator for quite a while and they appreciate her technical competence; however, this has not seemed to provide for the type of support that you need to fulfill your group's objectives. How do you resolve this problem?
The goal of this chapter is to establish the fact that organizations do not maintain themselves. Like all physical devices, they obey the second law of thermodynamics, and unless significant quantities of organizational "power" are pumped into them, the result is a gradual decay which feeds upon itself, ultimately resulting in an organizational meltdown. The basic concept of organizational entropy is that, left to themselves, organizations tend to move in a direction of decay. It is the reversal of this direction which is so important, and the primary purpose of the meta-control system is to establish, measure and provide correction to the organization with regard to maintaining a positive organizational direction. Principles for doing this are given in this chapter and continue into the next.
Your boss just came down and has informed you of a new upper- management intention to transform all of their computers to an entirely new operating system company-wide. He realizes that this will come as a tremendous shock to many employees (including all of yours), but upper management has been sold by the central systems group that the diversity of systems has played havoc with their ability to maintain user applications. At this point, he has asked for your help to get your people to buy in. He has suggested that you contribute the time of two of your most influential individuals to serve on a committee to evaluate this issue. What is your response?
The previous two chapters established many of the aspects of the informal organizations and their effects on the formal organization. This one applies those concepts as we turn our attention toward the formal organization at the lowest levels. This begins with the definition of traditional and proposed group structures. Traditional groups (especially the project group) will continue to function in some form as the organization is trans- formed toward technimanagement. However, the work team and task force structures will become considerably stronger and more flexible as decision-making units. The underlying principle motivating these new structures is the creation and maintenance of an environment in which the informal organizations will contribute most effectively toward formal organizational goals. The main theme of the chapter is the establishment and maintenance of synergism, and all aspects of group creation, sizing, selection and management have this as their goal under technimanagement. The final section on consensus building is probably as methods-oriented as any in the book. While this is quite useful, we have found that one of the most detrimental aspects of the quality movement is to mistake these or any other methods for the transition of organiza- tional philosophy toward Theory Y and distributed management.
You have been monitoring quite closely one of the groups for which you have been assigned responsibility. A number of individu- als have come to you from this group complaining about the group leader which you assigned to the project about two months ago. While you feel that this individual has tremendous management potential, her experience level in management is limited, although her knowledge of the project is considerably higher than anyone else. You are used to minor complaints of this type, but these seem to be valid. You have already discussed these problems in general with the group leader, but you did not want to get specific at this time for fear of destroying the relationship between you, the group leader, and those who have contacted you. It is clear to you that this group is not headed in a direction of increased synergism. What steps do you take to redirect it?
TQM is the most popular buzz-acronym of what we have been calling the "quality movement." We expect all but the most naive students to wonder -- what has technimanagement to do with TQM? This chapter is intended to answer this question by providing a review of our impression of Deming's 14 points, which is as close as we can come to pinning TQM down. This is accomplished by presenting a general overview of TQM followed by a brief review of Deming's 14 "obligations of management." This is further followed by another perspective, which involves more of the methodological aspects of TQM. Finally, a comparison between TQM and technimanagement is given which surfaces that fact that:
Thus rather than merely presenting a set of "obligations," technimanagement presents the human nature and sociological principles by which these can be implemented and extended.
(Update of Scenario 2.4.2.) You have been working for a large company for about five years and received your first management assignment (as a group leader) about two years ago. You took a group which had been groping for control of its efforts and organized it by getting everyone involved in establishing the control system. Morale within the group increased dramatically, and their productivity soared. One reason you were given this chance was because of your discussions of the quality movement with upper management. While they dismissed much of this as annoying theory, they were familiar enough with "quality" approaches being practiced in other companies that they decided to give you a chance to sort out a rather difficult situation. Now they cannot ignore your success. During your two years as group leader you mentored a member of the group who demonstrated the capability to assume the responsibility of the group leader. Thus they are going to turn the group leader position over to him and promote you to a staff position to the executive vice president. Your job is to advise the EVP on extending these principles throughout the company. How do you go about generating a plan to implement technimanagement company-wide?
Now that technimanagement has been both summarized by and contrasted with TQM (in Chapter 15), the groundwork for the most difficult aspects of technimanagement can be revealed. This chapter initiates the study of the "hard" concepts -- hard only because they require a personal reorientation away from denial of responsibility (i.e., blame) and toward an objective perception of reality. In particular, the clinical approach recognizes the analogy between managerial and medical practice, especially with the essentiality of maintaining an objective and critical attitude toward one's own decisions. This chapter will introduce these concepts by defining the clinical approach and then demonstrating that an accurate perception of current reality can only be effective if it can be translated into an accurate perception of future reality. The deterrents to this translation are discussed concurrently with this presentation: differences in opinion, what is said and what is meant, the informal organizations, ego growth and ego protection. Finally, the approach toward solving these problems by integrating the clinical approach into the control system is described.
One of your subordinates is not noted for her tact. This person is extremely bright and knows more about the project than anyone else (and she knows it). However, she has continuously resisted the general approach toward designing a new product for a particular customer, and has taken it upon herself to use some techniques which are not part of your company standard. At a recent meeting when you told her that your upper management would not accept the approach, she essentially implied that you were an idiot not to do it her way. You know that if you keep up the pressure she has a very high chance of quitting, and you cannot afford to lose her to the competition. On the other hand, the project cannot continue to progress with such insubordination since it is causing real morale problems with the other team members, most of whom just want to "get on with it." How do you address this problem?
All conflict is not bad. When two individuals both set on doing their jobs collide over resources, this is not symptomatic of increasing entropy. In fact the absence of such conflict brought about by complacency is a far more serious problem. This chapter defines the principles of functional conflict and demonstrates how to resolve them in the best interests of both the organization and the involved individuals. It also demonstrates that the proactive approach toward their future elimination lies with a healthy attitude toward the capabilities of the informal organizations.
The development team which you manage is required to use a new type of workstation in order to support its assignment. At the beginning of the design phase, new equipment was ordered, and it should have arrived by now. However, the supplier suddenly went bankrupt, and while you have identified a second supplier, there will be a three-month delay before it arrives. Leasing such specialized equipment is infeasible. Upper management has indicated that there is excess capacity in some of the equipment which is being used by a peer department. What is your approach to this problem?
Personal conflicts are much more difficult to resolve than are functional conflicts, and they are universally destructive. They also cause considerably more harm than do functional conflicts due to the irrational nature of their causes. This chapter is significantly longer than the previous one for these reasons. It starts out by presenting some approaches toward preventing personal conflicts, which is the ideal. However, recognizing that this will often fail, it goes on to address the resolution of conflicts. To promote objectivity, the resolution of conflicts in which the manager is not involved is considered first. Once this is established, essentially the same pattern is applied to conflicts which affect the manager personally. It is essential that you understand the reason for the prevention and resolution approaches and not just memorize the steps.
This chapter contains some of the most counterintuitive principles within the book. We begin by extending the second law of thermodynamics to individual power. The inefficiency of personal power dissipation follows the mechanical power analogy. This is followed by a review of the sources of personal power, which includes consideration of the time value of power and the influence spectrum. Finally, the problems associated with power are discussed, most especially the Icarus Paradox. Although not specifically addressed, power has been an underlying theme since the very first chapter. However, the vocabulary and underlying principles of technimanagement which have now been presented enable these to be readily understood.
Your manager has weekly meetings with his group leaders, who are your peer managers. However, his travel schedule has led to a situation in which he has left one of his staff people to chair the meeting. Clearly, this individual does not have the clout of your boss, and because he has no project responsibility, his power is less than any of your peers. You sympathize with him; however, the meetings seem to be wandering aimlessly without any type of leadership. There are some major issues that have to be resolved in order for several of the groups' projects to merge together into one unified project. However, the personality of the mangers seem to be much more a determinant of these issues than the technical aspects. Despite this fact, the majority of the managers are quite dissatisfied with the conduct of these meetings and they are looking to initiate some sort of a change. What role do you play in it?
Your manager has weekly meetings with his department heads, who are your peer managers. However, his management style is quite free-reign, believing that top-down solutions only complicate the process. Further, he recognizes that with all of his administra- tive chores over the past five years, it has been impossible for him to keep pace with all of the technological details upon which your decisions must be based. While this is great from a philo- sophical point of view, it has led to an almost impossible situation within these meetings. There are two of the largest department heads who have accumulated an excessive amount of power over time due to their departments' critical roles and their past successes. However, they hate each other's guts, and they are using the weekly meetings as a battlefield. While this weekly diversion is great fun for you and your other peer department heads of the "lessor" departments, the effect upon the organization shows every sign of being devastating, since there is a major decision which has to be made within the next few weeks which will alter the course of the company. You guessed it: these two yahoos have take opposite sides of the issue. What do you do as a relatively weak bystander as this carnage continues?
From the point of view of personal behavioral modification, the negative feedback principle is the most important one in the book. The most important part of this principle is that it be internalized. (E.g.: "it does not apply to others, it only applies to me.") Indeed, the very fact that most people do not fully appreciate it keeps them enslaved to their own ignorance, and the rest of the world is a willing accomplice. After presenting the principle itself, we initiate a justification of it with a very intuitive argument -- the illogic of killing the messenger. The next sections present the proper reactions to criticism which are highly dependent upon the circumstances. Next, we take the handling of criticism to a higher degree by showing that the totally secure individual will not only accept it by inspire it in others. Finally, this provides the basis for leadership as we demonstrate how this sets the basis for inspiring others to do the same.
You, as well as several of your peer managers have made suggestions to your boss on general issues which they did not feel were at all threatening to past policy. However, a pattern has emerged of a knee-jerk defensive reaction to anything that even remotely resembles criticism. While this is not yet having a negative impact upon you personally, it is difficult to see how you can improve your overall department if she cannot acquire an open mind. As one of about ten subordinates, what do you do?
You have been exceedingly successful in providing leadership with regard to the negative feedback principle and have been able to assemble a very realistic perception of reality as a result. The early warnings which you have gotten of problems have enabled you to be proactive in addressing many issues long before they became problems. In addition, your subordinates have generally picked up on your leadership and they are quite receptive to advice and criticism as a result. However, there is one of your subordi- nates who cannot seem to handle even the slightest suggestion. Whether it comes from you or her peer workers, the reaction is universally defensive. She is an excellent and productive individual and you do not want to take a chance on losing her. However, her inconsistency with the direction of the rest of the group is quite disconcerting. As a manager of about ten subordi- nates, what do you do?
Probably no concept is as misunderstood as that of leadership. However, the problem is more of semantics than that of concept. Most people have come to understand that leaders are not just born. However, the environment which shapes the personality of a leader is heavily dependent upon peer expectations. We begin with a basic definition of leadership by Lao-Tsu in order to complement notions which were given in the earlier chapters. Much of the remainder of the chapter is dedicated to the elaboration of these basic statements. The relationship between leadership and ego is examined. Then management and leadership are compared by examining the traits of successful managers and leaders. This provides a comparison which enables us to differentiate between these two words which all too often are mistakenly used interchangeably. A final section on leadership styles rounds out our review of these concepts.
About one year after joining a new company as a department chief, you (unilaterally) initiated some major changes to turn it in the direction of technimanagement. Your department responded to all of these changes in a very favorable way. In particular, they have greatly altered their work assignments and work hours, which they now arrange among themselves. The morale has increased tremendously, and this has been impossible to hide. The downside has been that your sister departments have not done the same thing. In fact, being a traditional organization, you have not been very optimistic about the possibility of getting too many of your peer managers or upper management to join you since you are still in the process of getting oriented. Several of your peer managers have complained that your people are causing problems in their depart- ments, since their people now want to do the same thing. They do not seem to understand that this is not just a job assignment and work-hour issue -- there are a whole host of changes that you have initiated, many of which have not yet come to fruition; and there are many other changes in the direction of distributed management which will evolve as time goes by. Because of their failure to understand, your boss and upper management are considering making some consistent rules to assure that the morale in other depart- ments is not damaged by actions such as those which you have taken. In summary, you are in trouble. What do you do?
Assume that the case given immediately above plays itself out. You keep your people informed and obtain their advice. They totally support you and you collectively resolve to deal directly with your boss and present the case to him, and then you will go from there. You have a meeting with your boss and while he is very sympathetic to your cause, he feels that such a radical departure from previous company policy (and what your other peer managers prefer) would not be wise at this time. You can tell that he is somewhat interested in your department as a test case, since there has been a definite reduction in the types of morale problems which existed prior to your arrival. However, this has not had enough time to prove itself to the degree that he is willing to make a total commitment. Thus he will attempt to defer any overt restatement of company policy. However, current policy already covers these issues and they infer that fixed hours are in effect and spell out managerial responsibility with regard to work assignments. (For the sake of argumentation, let us assume that there is not a sympathetic ear at a higher level, although we feel that this should probably not affect the decision in any event.)
No one can be everywhere. The more time we put into disci- pline A the less can be dedicated to B. The very essence of organizations of people is to bring together diverse individuals and add their strengths so that their weaknesses no longer matter. The purpose of this chapter is twofold:
After about two years as a group leader you have been quite successful in moving your group in the direction of distributed management. Most of your subordinates have responded quite well to the transition, and morale is at an all-time high. The problem seems to be with one particular individual who is the key to the success of the project and she knows it. She has accumulated a tremendous amount of information which is essential to the design project which your group has been assigned, and she has developed an excellent relationship with the customer. While she has the highest of respect from her peers, they are getting a bit edgy with her behavior. Unless she gets her way in every aspect of decision making (even in areas outside of her area of expertise), she pitches a fuss. You have maneuvered around this behavior a couple of times in the past, but you now feel that a confrontation is inevitable. How do you handle this problem?
Let us remain with the scenario given in 24.4.1. Assume that you have had further intensive discussions with the erring individual and have found that she has been extremely resistant and defensive to your every suggestion. Further, the other members of the group have gotten increasingly impatient with her, despite the fact that she is usually right.
Communication, like leadership, has been implicitly covered throughout the book. Also, like leadership, it is of sufficient importance to merit summary and closure. This chapter starts by making this point and defining and stating the objective of successful communication. This is done by the use of the model which is given in Figure 23.1. Once this is established we turn our attention to deterrents to communication, including stereotyp- ing, poor symbology, selective perception, breakdown in the informal communication systems and a failure to modularize. While this chapter provides some valuable hints on improving communica- tion, the only way that you can improve your communication abilities is by taking every opportunity to communicate, either orally or in writing.
You have learned through some reliable sources who have communicated with two of your (very dependable) subordinates that there is considerable discontent with some actions that your boss has taken in a sister department. A major problem that you perceive is that he is totally ignorant of this problem. You wish to assist him in improving his perception of reality in this regard; however, you also recognize that this is none of your business. In previous situations similar to this, he has gotten quite defensive and demanded to know that sources of these "rumors." Further, you have been developing a good relationship with your counterpart in the subject department, and you do not want to jeopardize this relationship. What do you do?
This final chapter is very important in that it provides some examples which demonstrate that technimanagement is not just theory and principles -- it is a philosophy based on principles which can and should be implemented in all technical organizations. It is essential that you view this chapter as examples only. The principles of technimanagement can stand on their own, and managers who thoroughly understand them can derive their own implementation approaches. This chapter is intended to exemplify one set of approaches which might provide ideas for many managers. It begins with the principle of transition which sets the general stage for the examples to follow. The evolution must first begin by setting in motion another evolution toward a customer orientation. This is covered in Section 24.2. Once this is established, we get into the meat of the transition, which is discussed in terms of three approaches: top down, bottom up, and middle out, respectively. The middle out is saved for last because it is the preferred compromise between upper management mandates and lowest-level impotency. Both the top-down and the bottom-up procedures funnel into the middle-out.
An example methodology is presented for each of these approaches. No methodology can capture the essence of the principles of technimanagement, however. This is the reason that we stress that these are mere examples. We believe that they will greatly aid in getting the managers and the organization off dead center and headed in the right direction. However, they should be liberally adapted to the task at hand.
After about one year as a group leader you have gotten oriented within your new job assignment. Your boss has stated that she is very supportive of your "implementing TQM." However, it now appears clear to you that she does not understand the full implications of the cultural changes that have to take place if the transition is to get underway. The rest of the organization is also seen to be somewhat familiar with TQM terminology but have been quite defensive when concepts of empowerment are discussed. However, you have not been in the organization long enough to determine exactly how the managers in other department perceive a move toward Theory Y. How do you handle this problem?
You have been working within a large organization for about ten years. As a successful first-line manager you were recognized by middle management early on and promoted to the staff of a division manager (who is over twelve other managers who collective- ly have about 200 subordinates). You have worked in this capacity for about five years and have totally mastered your boss' organiza- tional component's intricacies. For the last three years you have initiated a number of training and motivational initiatives to promote a transition toward continuous improvement. Your boss has seen the benefits of these actions and has taken a hands-off approach since it was known that she was just a couple of years from retirement. It was generally understood when you took the staff job that you were in line for a promotion when she retired. This would have worked out fine had you not been so aggressive in pushing the transition. This has alienated some traditional managers who have been dragging their feet in the transition process. Upper management has gotten this message, and they are bringing in someone who has extensive experience in another unrelated part of the company. You do not know a whole lot about this person other than that she knows very little about the operation to replace your boss. It is clear to you that she will need to lean very heavily upon your expertise. On the other hand, you are totally frustrated and about ready to quit. You have been offered some very attractive positions both within and outside of your company, but they are not major advancements. What do you do?