A manager's job should be rooted in a sense of mission that the business must achieve. The job should be a real job and, if possible, a tangible, measurable contribution to the success of the business. The scope and authority of the manager's duties should be as broad as possible, never narrow. Managers should accept the guidance and control of performance goals, not the control of the boss. The needs of a manager's job should be determined by the activities that must be performed and the contributions that must be made to achieve the company's goals. The job of manager exists because the tasks facing the business require it and for no other reason.
While no "formula" can be found to ensure the correct design of managerial jobs, there are some common mistakes that can undermine the effectiveness of organizational management and should be avoided.
01
The scope of job design is too narrow,
Make talent no room for development
Any managerial role may be one's final role, ie one will often remain in one role until retirement. Even in a fast-growing organization, this is the rule, not the exception.
The number of jobs at the top is inevitably much smaller than the number of jobs at the bottom. At a given organizational level, no more than two out of every ten people have the opportunity to advance, and the rest may stay put. Typically, those promoted get bigger titles and higher salaries, but what they do is unlikely to change much.
If managerial jobs are designed too narrowly, incumbents will acquire all the skills in a few short years; most managers will be frustrated, bored, or even no longer take their work seriously. Their status is like "working retirement". They reject any form of change, any innovation, and any new idea, because for them, any change may jeopardize their existing comfort. The more they realize that they are no longer contributing to the business, the more insecure they feel, and they know it.
Therefore, the design of management positions should take into account the promotion of a person's long-term growth, learning and development. Oftentimes, there is no harm in being lenient in the design of management positions, and problems can be easily corrected in a timely manner if they arise. However, the design of management positions is too narrow is a hidden danger, like a slow poison, which paralyzes managers and even the entire organization.
02
Deriving Satisfaction from Promotions, Not Performance
All management positions should be designed to provide satisfaction through performance. The role itself should be challenging and rewarding in nature. If the main satisfaction of a position comes from promotion, then the position itself has lost its importance and positive meaning. Because the vast majority of people in management positions cannot realize their desire for promotion-this is not the result of organizational politics, but the judgment of numerical probability-so whether it is in salary structure, performance recognition, or the cultivation of management talents, It's not wise to fixate on promotion.
In fact, there is nothing more dangerous than an organization that sees quick promotions as an accepted reward for their hard work. Any boom will end sooner or later, and the promotion boom is no exception. And by the end, the whole organization will be disgruntled. Someone who got promoted quickly but didn't make it to the top felt that the people ahead of him, around their age, were promoted to the top because they got into the company early. It is better for a fast-growing company to reserve some important positions for some experienced and experienced outsiders, lest the young and middle-aged managers of the company expect too much promotion, and thus be frustrated when they fail to achieve their wishes after a few years.
Focusing on rapid promotion in job and job structure can lead to an imbalance in the age structure of the company's employees, so it must be avoided. An imbalance in the age structure of employees, whether employees are too young or too old, can lead to serious upheaval in a business.
Management structures need continuity and self-renewal. The need for continuity means that organizations don't have to suddenly replace experienced "old guys" with inexperienced "new guys." Organizations need to have a healthy enough “metabolism” for new people and ideas to emerge. If the management team is made up of peers, then the team will be in crisis. However, if the older management team is compared with the younger management team, the former may be better than the latter, at least the crisis will be encountered earlier and the crisis will be resolved sooner.
03
Vacancy Assistant
Worse than a too narrow job design is that "the job you set up is false and unreal", which is just a typical "assistant job". Managerial roles must have specific objectives and unique purposes and functions. A manager must be able to make an identifiable contribution, and he must be accountable for it. However, it is difficult to define "contribution" in a typical "assistant job" position. It is also difficult to define his functions, goals, and goals, and he does not need to be responsible.
He is just an "assistant", he only needs to carry out the tasks assigned by the boss, or occasionally remind the boss what to do. Such work corrupts. People in this assistant job can easily become the manipulators behind the important executives, and they can also become the flattering sycophants. As a rule, other managers would fawn over him, take advantage of him, and profit from his insecurities.
For young managers, a unique, specific and subtle work arrangement is a very good experience. But there should be an appropriate time frame, after completing specific work tasks, the person should return to his normal job and management duties.
04
Management is work, but management itself is not a full-time job
The correct way to design management jobs is to combine "management" and "work", that is, to be responsible for specific functions and respective jobs. In general, a manager should be both a "manager" and an "independent professional."
A manager should have enough work to do, otherwise he may take jobs from his subordinates. It's common to hear complaints that a manager doesn't "delegate," and it usually means that the manager doesn't have enough to do, so he's taking jobs that should belong to subordinates. Especially for those who are used to working, having nothing to do can be frustrating. It is also not ideal for a person to not have a job of their own. He may soon lose his work spirit and respect for hard work, which will undoubtedly do more harm than good to the manager. A manager should be a "boss of the job" not a "coordinator".
05
Constant meeting, constant "collaboration" and constant "coordination"
The manager's job design should ensure as much as possible that he and other subordinates in his unit can complete the job. In job design, especially in the design of management jobs, there is no need to arrange most of the "interpersonal relationships". By its very nature, the managerial role already includes "people relationships" far beyond the capabilities of most people. Moreover, a person sometimes "has a meeting" and sometimes "works", he cannot "work" and "has a meeting" at the same time.
Another common mistake, and often a completely avoidable one, is adding a lot of business travel to the design of a managerial job. Just as one cannot "meet" and "work" at the same time, one cannot "travel" and "work" at the same time. "Private meetings" and "meetings" with colleagues, assistants, subordinates, clients, and superiors are absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. But if you can arrange a substantial meeting every two years to deal with the relationship between the subsidiary and the main customer, the effect is much better than shuttling between different cities, such as leaving New York on Tuesday, Paris on Wednesday, and returning to the company on Thursday. New York etc. That meant he did nothing at all for four days: three days in the air, plus one day to make up for the wasted effort spent trying to be in two places at once.
06
title instead of function
"Title" should never be regarded as a "reward", let alone use "title" to cover up the ills of lack of function. "Title instead of raise" is worse and more common than "title instead of job".
Take, for example, the large commercial banks in the United States and Germany. In a commercial bank in the United States, the title of every executive is "vice president", and in a German bank, every executive is a "divisional director". The reason for this situation is that the bank's customers are the heads of some small and medium-sized enterprises, and they emphasize that they are only willing to interview financial business with bank executives.
But the situation makes the title monstrous. This has led to great resentment among those without titles, such as those whose jobs prevent them from building client relationships. At the same time, those who earned the senior title of vice president early in their careers and were locked into a monotonous routine later in their careers were also very disaffected by it.
One reason for the misuse of such titles is that businesses (and government agencies) have traditionally used functional identifiers (such as market research manager) as indicators of rank. Another, more common reason is that in many wage and salary plans, the range of wages at each level is relatively narrow. If an employee's salary is increased according to performance, then he must be promoted to a different position and a higher position.
Finally, traditional companies have limited opportunities for employees to advance to management positions. This limitation often leads companies to invent some management false titles for some professionals with extensive experience and high performance, such as assigning a senior buyer Called "Materials Program Coordinator" etc.; of course, he just continued to do his old job.
The rationale for aligning titles should be this: We pay the best for top-notch work. Only when an employee's duties, positions, and responsibilities change, does his title change accordingly. If titles are used for pose, that is, as a substitute for rank and responsibility, you are asking for trouble.
07
"Widowmaker" job title
Finally, we should reflect on and adjust those so-called "widowmakers" positions. It was about 1850 in the Age of Discovery, just before the advent of the steam engine era, every shipping company had a "widow maker" disaster ship.
For unknown reasons, such ships often go out of control and kill people. After a few catastrophic events, the savvy owner of the boat no longer takes the boat out to sea and dismantles it, regardless of the amount of money he has invested in that boat, even though the boat may cost a lot of money. Otherwise, the ship owner will never find the captain and sailors again.
There are certain roles in many companies that keep good people frustrated one after another for no apparent reason. These roles seemed logical, well-constructed, and a place for people to use their talents, but instead of doing so, no one was able to fill them. If two or more people in a row who have done well in other jobs fail in the same job, the job should be adjusted.
It's a pity that the problems in the initial design of this kind of job are often only seen after the accident. A more typical "widow maker" position is the international vice president of a large American company. No one can know the real reason why the office is not working, but in most cases, the person who took it has repeatedly failed. The practical reason is that usually, when a company has grown to a certain size, the "international" side of the business needs cannot be underestimated, however, such awareness can only be gained retrospectively, that is, after the position has been adjusted and After finding the right candidate, people suddenly realized.
Titles like the "widowmaker" are often created by accident. A person will create a job according to his own personality characteristics-and often a variety of characteristics that are rarely concentrated in one person-and he will be like a fish in water. In other words, what appears to be a logical job title is often the result of a coincidence of character traits rather than a true function. However, human personality cannot be replaced .