StrategyDriven Expert Contributors’ Blog

Regardless of the organization, all managers share common job functions and responsibilities including defining and reinforcing performance standards, establishing organizational priorities, and authorizing and coordinating personnel activities and resource use. This work is distinctly different than that of the individual contributors reporting to the manager; setting the manager apart as one who possesses a broader scope of responsibility and commensurate authority.

In today’s organizations, however, the professional manager is often tasked with performing some amount of work typically assigned to his or her direct reports. While seemingly increasing productivity, this practice diminishes the manager’s effectiveness in his or her primary role. First, the time allotted to the manager to perform key management functions is reduced; potentially degrading product quality and diminishing efficient use of workgroup resources. Second, the manager’s credibility and authority is placed at risk because of the potential that the manager’s individual contributor work will not meet his or her set standards; a risk that is heightened because of the accompanying workforce scrutiny of the manager’s job performance. Third, the manager’s ability to establish high standards is placed at risk because of the natural human tendency to minimize his or her efforts may be translated into shortcuts and allowed quality gaffs within the organization’s performance standards. Fourth, lack of trust permeates the organization because individual contributors view the manager as not trusting them to do their jobs and instead as needing to do the job for them. Fifth, manager’s who take on the difficult tasks also rob individual contributors of a developmental opportunity. Sixth, managers performing contributor work tend to lose focus on the strategic long-term view of the business; instead focusing on the tactical tasks at hand and forfeiting opportunities to move the organization forward.

Ultimately, the only way to maintain high management effectiveness is to establish the manager’s independence from his or her direct reports’ work. Thus, the practice of the ‘working manager must be avoided in order to achieve top organizational performance.

Organizations evolve into the ‘working’ manager approach because of either a lack of preventive measures and/or errant behaviors. While not all inclusive, the four lists below, Process-Based Warning Flags, Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors, Potential, Observable Results, and Potential Causes, are designed to help organization leaders to recognize whether a ‘working’ manager approach exists within their organization. Only after a problem is recognized and its causes identified can the needed corrective action be taken to move the organization toward improved performance.

Process-Based Warning Flags

• Performance of individual contributor work activities are included in the manager’s performance goals
• Manager job descriptions including individual contributor work as a part of the manager’s responsibilities
• Initiative and project plans have managers assigned to individual contributor roles

Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors

• Managers seldom delegate work
• Managers make statements such as: “I could do the work better myself,” or “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”
• Executives and senior managers assign subordinate managers to perform individual contributor level work

Potential, Observable Results

• Low or no individual capabilities developed
• Overall corporate performance expectations/results not met
• Lack of trust within the organization
• Standards are unclear to workers
• Organizational responsiveness to changing market conditions and customer demands is slow
• individual contributors resist the imposition of performance standards because managers performing the same work do not do so consistent with the standards

Potential Causes

• Managers do individual contributor work because they are more comfortable performing this work than their managerial work
• Managers perform individual contributor work because they feel better able to accomplish these tasks than their direct reports
• Executives and senior managers deem that important work activities should be done by managers rather than individual contributors
• Managers are promoted based on their technical ability and not on managerial aptitude
• Organization leaders are seeking to do more with less and feel the ‘working’ manager is a way to achieve this end
• Executives and senior managers don’t understand and/or appreciate the role of the professional manager
• Lack of executive and senior manager oversight of lower level managers

Final Thought…

The ‘working’ manager’s ability to engage and push back on senior managers and executives regarding unreasonable product delivery expectations is diminished, if not eliminated, because as an individual contributor the manager appears to be complaining about his or her own workload rather than reasonably estimating the required resources and time necessary to perform a task.