BackExtract | Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra
Differences in approach can keep managers from developing societies away from decision making, leaving them to bear the brunt of execution
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The leadership challenge
“Managers are professionals under pressure," writes Amit Chatterjee in Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra. There’s the pressure to perform and delegate, to stay updated with the latest technologies and ideas, as well as to try and maintain some sort of work-life balance.
Chatterjee, managing director of Sartorius India, a unit of the Sartorius AG German technology company, recommends a “long-term, purpose-driven leadership grounded in volitional engagement" approach. In a chapter titled “Growth Management", he outlines the “imperatives" growth managers balance on an everyday basis, and the challenges they face. Edited excerpts:
u Managing the Specialism vs Strategic Paradox
Managements in the western world as well as academics came up with the much practiced and maligned functional and matrix structures. The functional structures did answer the need for specialism and efficiency. Under proper leadership, it did succeed in creativity, innovation, and development, but were limited to the narrow alleys of one function. Matrix structures evolved over the last few decades to counter the limitations of functional structures. Ironically, what suffers is the strategic or the larger picture management. The larger picture is what constitutes the enterprise’s vision, mission, or sustainability objectives leading to growth. In the short term, the larger picture or strategic is also about what the enterprise delivers across the entire business process. The business process is a result of the matriced contribution from the specialist or functional silos. While functional structures gave rise to silo working and mindset, the matrix structures or enterprise objectives were not enough to matrix the minds of the functional contributors.
Some managements draw consolation by adding enterprise KPIs (key performance indicators) expecting silo managers to be driven by the overall results, not realizing that hazy objectives can work only for the volitionally driven not those who have been relegated to their motivational prisons. When a tsunami strikes or malfunctioning mutterings surface in such organizations, the top management has to swoop in and douse fires. Functional matrix structures are anti-growth. Then why do matrix structures prevail even after decades of decadent results? The reason appears to be hesitation on part of the top management from delegating decision making powers for enterprise objectives or matriced results to lower levels and expect only execution of their decisions from others.
u Globalization and Socio-economic Disparity
Most companies before venturing out of their native markets have tasted success in their countries. The mother company and its subsidiary in another country may run the same business, but in different contexts. The differences lie not only in cost per effort or language, but more importantly in the material quality of life, infrastructure, social security, and relationships. All these lead to a markedly different attitude to work and life in general. Managers from countries with wide gaps owing to their socio-economic differences are prone to making judgments about the other side and end up in serious unspoken conflicts. Most enterprises that hit the globalization stage face these conflicts. They run ‘inter-cultural trainings’ to bridge the self-perceived gap instead of accepting the gaps arising out of socio-economic disparities or from expectations not fulfilled due to non-alignment in purpose identification.
Developing economies is where the rate of growth is the highest and participants in this growth are mostly knowledge workers and managers. Aspirational intents run much higher in developing societies due to the growth potential of the individual, both socio-economically and professionally. The yearning for a better quality of life makes people hungry for learning more as they know that is the best way to improve their quality of life. This possibly makes managers from developing societies more likely to dream of remarkable achievements, be risk friendly, and ready to jump into their relative complexities—great potential for growth management. Managers from developed societies on the other hand are more inclined to be looking for perfection, effectiveness and efficiency. When such disparate mindsets have to work together, there is a natural divide and conflict. The managers from the developing societies need and therefore believe in faster progress and find their developed counterparts slow, deliberate, and bureaucratic. The mother company managers as the functional managers or seniors find their developing counterparts error prone, non trustworthy and withdraw more. On the other hand, managers in a developing society fail to empathize or to understand the delay in decision making and investments. As a result, the managers from developing societies get farther and farther from decision making, fail to find the rationale for decisions taken and bear the brunt of execution tasks only.
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