|8|The Ideal Manager – the Wrong Question

There is hardly a discussion on management that does not mention the requirements of managers. If we get to the root of the matter, a particular concept almost always seems to dominate, sometimes expressed but more often tacit in nature, and that is the image of the ideal manager. As soon as the word “management” is heard, most people instinctively focus on this aspect by asking the question: Who is an ideal manager? This question also dominates the literature on management. The training of management staff is based on this concept, and it is wrong.

The Universal Genius

After decades of empirical research in this field, it is easy to answer this question today, and this makes it the focus of interest to the exclusion of everything else. Everything that could be researched in this field has been researched. In 40 years of empirical social research, every possible questionnaire has been answered, every interview taken, and every test conducted. As a result, we know the profile of an ideal manager in great detail.

It is for this reason that personnel managers, who think that they have attained some level of competence, have a list of some size in their “toolbox” which they consult for personnel-related matters such as staffing decisions, creating profiles of requirements, establishing criteria for performance appraisals, writing job advertisements, and also devising training programs and presenting papers.

|9|This list enumerates all the qualities which, according to common opinion, are expected from a person being considered for a management level position: the skills, the knowledge, the personality and character traits, the experience, qualities, and qualifications. It all sounds so plausible that we hardly think of questioning it. After all, it is also supported by countless research projects. How can it be doubted?

Let us take a few examples. In a recent study, 600 of the largest companies in Germany were questioned on the management qualities they look for. The result was striking: team-builder, visionary, communicative, charismatic, committed to the company, with an international perspective, ecological and social focus, integrity, multicultural skills, and intuitive decision-making. Typically, the characteristic customerfocused came last with the least number of votes.

In the bulletin of a large Swiss bank that operates globally, there was an article by one of its top managers on the “Twelve I’s of the Ideal Profile”. It told us that, apart from possessing other qualities, the manager of the future must be interrogative-integral, an integrating intermediary as well as intercommunicative-instructive – perhaps not quite what we learn in school.

In a recent issue of the most widely distributed management magazine in a German-speaking country “The ABC of New Requirements” was published which listed a total of 45 “key qualities for the future manager”. These were divided into “personal qualities, management qualities and organizational factors” – a compendium of desirable skills. To impart some practical utility the piece was presented in the form of a test which could be taken and evaluated immediately. The fact that certain terms in the test lists, such as communicative competence, empathy, and future-orientation or system integration, are open to widely differing interpretations is magnanimously overlooked. Ifa score of between 1.0 and 2.5 is achieved, it can be assumed that “you or the person taking the test meets all the requirements in the new profile of a business virtuoso”. Aha…

These examples are not exceptions, nor are they compiled out of an obsessive desire to support my outlandish opinion. They are typical and representative of a universal way of thinking that has gained |10|ground not only in business but also in other social spheres. 90 percent of all job advertisements mention these kinds of peculiar requirements. Furthermore, many common management tools are based on these things: performance appraisal systems, potential analyses, personnel selection procedures, salary fixing systems, etc.

I too learnt all of this in my studies and I accepted it for the reasons stated previously. However, as time went by, the more I came into contact with real people in the course of my work, and the more experience I gained, the more I began to have my doubts. Plausibility, or the fact that it is taught in universities or is the prevalent opinion, is no guarantee for the correctness of a concept. In our history many things were taught – even in universities – and believed, even by experts, which were nevertheless absolutely wrong. Plausibility has often also proved to be misleading, as we can learn from theories advanced through the ages from Copernicus to Darwin.

What type of idea is spread by these lists and catalogues of requirements? What is the basic type of manager that emerges here? It would not be unfair to say that the list of requirements essentially portraysa universal genius. In some strange way, the idea has taken root thata manager, especially a top manager, should be a cross between a general from a bygone era, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, and a TV show host.

Although this ideal type can be described and descriptions indeed abound, we cannot find such people in the real world. In my opinion it is this that constitutes one of the most significant problems encountered today in management education as well as management practice.

My comments so far are not meant as a criticism of the science. It renders what is demanded and expected of it: It answers the question by providing the characteristics and skills of the ideal manager. And the answers are right. The ideal managers could well be as they are presented in the studies. It is not the answers that are wrong; it is the question.

|11|The Effective Person

My suggestion, therefore, is to drop the question. Although it can be answered, neither the question nor the answers have much practical relevance. Even if we were to temporarily accept, for the sake of argument, that universal geniuses do exist, we would be forced to conclude – on the basis of statistics alone – that they are rare. Too rare to allow any hope that their numbers could occupy even a fraction of the management positions available in a modern society. I will explain this in more detail in one of the following chapters.

I suggest another question. Instead of: Who is an ideal manager?, the question should be: Who is an effective manager? The formulation of this latter question is very different from the former. Its starting point is not geniuses but ordinary people, because there are no others, even though there may be some who find it difficult to concede this point.

Based on this alternative question, the basic problem of management is not: How can geniuses give a brilliant performance? That requires no explanation. The basic problem is: How do we enable ordinary people – because we have no others – to turn in extraordinary performances?

In this case, I am not talking about the oft-quoted excellent performance which is routinely mentioned in any discussion ever since the book by Peters and Waterman1 hit the stands. No one, not even the “topmost” top manager, can consistently turn in star performances. Even the thought is absurd. To base our requirements on such a premise is not only theory in the worst sense of the word. I consider it to be, above all, inhuman.

Neither, however, is standard performance any longer adequate today. We need more than that. This is at the core of the paradox of management today or, to formulate it in a less pompous manner, this is the reason why management is required at all. Only ordinary people are available in sufficiently large numbers. However, what is demanded by customers, and by the pressure of competition, is extraordinary performance.