So what is a Manager?

Operational vs Managerial

This is a question I asked myself several years ago, when I was a Product Line Manager. Before having that specific job I had the misconception that a manager needed to have staff reporting to him. Which was not my case. Then by pushing the thought process a bit, we get to the other end of the spectrum… everybody is a manager… we manage our lives, our grocery lists, our kid’s agenda, we make managerial decisions all the time. So this was not a helpful realisation in the context of the workspace.

I looked at it then from a Job Function perspective. This has led me to my own definition of what is a Manager, and I’ll share that with you later down this post. Simply put, it goes like this. If the activity, the job, the output is binary, so it is either done or not, then it is in the Operational domain. Am I writing this Post? Yes. Then it is operational. To go beyond the Operational domain, into the Managerial domain, this binary perspective is not enough. Did I delegate this task? Yes. Is this management? Not really in my humble opinion. It is the operational task of delegating.

To go from the Operational domain to the Managerial domain, we need to add non-binary dimensions. Questions like, but certainly not limited to:

• What was the added value of the action?
• Was it done in the most efficient way, limiting the resources, time, effort, energy spent on it?
• What was achieved beyond the obvious (new connections, new data, new partners and allies)?
• Is there a thread to follow for feedback loops, for improvements, for deeper learnings and accomplishments?
• And so on…

To be in the Managerial domain, it means going beyond the simple list of ToDos, and its binary Done/NotDone answers. It is a continuum… one can always improve, do better, faster, smarter, more efficiently. Or even better, one can make sure things get done naturally, by circumstances evolving for example. This I believe is what brings us into the Managerial domain.

This I believe is what a Manager should be doing. Not going down lists of ToDos, not delegating for the sake of delegating. Not saying ?I asked him to do it, I did my job?.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle of 20-80 teaches us for example that 20% of our actions bring us 80% of the results. Of course in a complete binary world, this is totally debatable. If my job is to paint chairs, and I paint 4 chairs per day, 20 chairs per week, 20% of my time accomplished 20% of my work. But in the anMagerial domain, well things get interesting.

Let’s take a 40-hour work week. Let’s assume that 10 hours are spend on mandatory operational tasks (filling reports, attending this or that corpo meeting, etc.). That leaves us with 30 hours. Using the Pareto Principle, 6 of those hours (20% of 30) bring us 80% of the accomplishments. Which means 24 hours do no not much relevant work (it may SEEM relevant, especially if we are going down a list of ToDos or want to lower the Inbox, but in reality…? The true added value?)

Let’s play the game one step further and redo the Pareto Principle for the remaining 24 hours: 20% of that time is spent doing the 80% more efficient and result-oriented work that is left. That is an extra 4.8 hours in your work week. Putting it all together, 6 + 4.8 is 10.8 hours, this accomplished 80%, plus 80% of the rest, so a massive 96% of our true value was done in a mere 10.8 hours (out of the 30)!

This is Management. How can this 10.8 hour be optimized? How to know which activities, which tasks bring that added value, and how to extract the most of those tasks, to really optimize them? And how to extract value out of the remaining almost 20 hours that lead, under normal circumstances, to less than 4% of the outcome and the results?

When I realized this, I started seeing my job quite differently, doing and thinking differently, accomplishing more by focusing on the added value, and often having some time to spare (not always wasting 20 hours on low-value or useless tasks). And instead, taking that time to think, ask myself questions such as How and What can I do to optimize even more, and to be as efficient during this ?leftover? time, so that much more than 10.8 hour a week bring valuable, powerful results.

My definition of a Manager

Efficiency became my obsession. Management became my passion. Management as it is defined above. And seeing other around me going down lists of tasks, doing huge hours, and accomplishing very little became my calling.

• My obsession made me study a book called The Art of War… which defines, in competitive landscape, how to Win with Ease, with less losses, less waste and spending of resources.
• My passion made me try to apply these efficiency concepts to the managerial world.
• My calling made me put that on paper and publish a book, and is now at the source of this new blog.

This has led me to my very own definition of a Manager. You may like it or not, but I try to live by it and when I do/can, it leads to great outcomes.

A manager is someone that strategically activates resources to achieve his finality with effectiveness and efficiency.

In other words, not delegating, not doing millions of things just because they are on a list or thought of as De Facto, but smartly using available resources (people, situations, money, time) so that what needs to happen happens, with the less use of those resources so there are plenty left for other things to happen. And this I believe is true and applicable regardless of your title: one does not need to be a Manager to Manage.

Let me know your thoughts, or your own definition of a Manager. Thanks and looking forward to your inputs and comments.

This post first appeared on https://theefficientmanager.net/ where I invite you to subscribe for future posts.