How Effective Managers Harness Their Power - Essay Example

 In their article A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Power, Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal deals with the “pervasive corporate knowing-doing gap” (Bruch and Goshal 2005), plaguing managers, which consequently affect their effectiveness and efficiency in the context of “getting things done” in companies. According to the authors, one problem that prevents managers from dealing with the more important organizational issues within a company is the seeming unproductive ‘busyness’ managers are constantly caught up in. In this sense, the authors provide their own prescriptive measures on how managers can overcome this problem. The article makes three main points. First, referring to researchers who have dealt with the problem, the authors identify ‘active nonaction’ as a pervasive managerial hazard that limits efficient and effective performance. In this sense, they agree with Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, in the need to cultivate ‘purposeful action’, which they defined as the “[c]onsistent, conscious, and energetic behavior that shows ‘a bias for action’” (cited in Bruch and Goshal 2005). Second, however, they critique Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s prescription of “ready, fire, aim”, which focuses on experimentation and flexibility, arguing that the aforementioned prescription relies on an outward orientation, which ignores the real problem at the core of which is the individual (cited in Bruch and Goshal 2005). Instead, they suggest their own prescription that focuses two factors: “energy” and “focused behavior”, providing a typology of managers based on these factors. In this sense, they argue that the crucial 10 percent of managers that exhibit purposeful action are those that possess both energy and focused behavior. Last, the authors argue that willpower, distinguished from the superficiality of sheer motivation, is what allows purposeful managers to maintain energy and focused behavior. Hence, they provide three action steps to help achieve such: (1) creating a space for autonomous action; (2) instilling organizational processes that provides professional, social, and emotional support; and (3) developing a culture of purposeful action (Bruch and Goshal 2005). The article therefore makes an important reference to corporate behavior, and consequently corporate culture. By focusing on the individual, rather on the external factors that affect behavior, however, the authors provide managers with ambitious goals that, as they themselves acknowledged is neither easy nor intuitive. In this sense, while the first two steps provided – creating space for autonomous action and instilling organizational process – can be readily achieved, the last step, which is crucial in maintaining purposeful action, will be met with difficulties and require a more massive change in the organization, which affects not only managers and their subordinates, but their superiors as well. Nonetheless, the article’s claims cannot be ignored because despite the difficulties it will impose on managers with regard to implementation, the authors make logical arguments with regard to purposeful action. Thus, this should provide managers, as well as their superiors, with crucial insights both in the manner that managers should go about their daily tasks to ensure that they conduct purposeful action and encourage their subordinates to do the same; as well as the manner that senior executives and hiring managers should choose managers that exhibit purposeful action, as illustrated by the typology provided by the article, as opposed to the frenzied manager. Work Cited: Bruch, Heike and Sumantra Ghoshal. “A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Power”. Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario Spring/Summer 2005. 27 November 2005. . In the article People Power: How to Measure It, Felix Barber and Rainer Strack provides a critique of the conventional view of regarding employees as human capital. The authors argue that employees, unlike capital assets, cannot be properly ‘owned’ by the companies they work for and as a result, cannot be measured and treated as such. Hence, the authors provide an alternative way both to measure and manage employees, especially appropriate for people-oriented businesses, based on an approach of managing “employees as employees”, as opposed to human capital (Felix and Strack 2005). First, the article makes the important claim that the current shift of businesses from capital-intensive towards more people-intensive set-ups requires a parallel shift in the manner that company managers measure and manage these assets respectively. As the authors argue, employees are by-nature different from capital assets, and thus, require to be treated differently (Felix and Strack 2005). The reasons cited for this is the fact that unlike capital assets whose productivity can be easily determined through traditional models, employees’ productivity requires a revision of these models given the variation in their performance, independent of current assets, as well as the fact that they are both cost drivers and value creators. Thus, making their second point, they provide a people oriented approach that deals both with people management and performance measure. With regard to performance measures, the authors argue that companies must choose indicators of performance that satisfies three criteria: (1) indicators must highlight the major business drivers of an organization; (2) they must be able to identify problems, with regard to employee performance; and (3) that these indicators must also provide hints as to what caused these problems (Felix and Strack 2005). In this sense, they provide a measure that relates productivity and performance to employees as opposed to capital assets. It is an approach, which for the authors are more useful because it is based on empirical financial data, which are more realistic and provides more relevant information. Last, the authors argue that with regard to management, since employees affect both the costs and value of a company, such that changes in employee productivity can greatly affect these indicators. Hence, they prescribe the need to develop human management as a core company process as opposed to being a support function; ensuring that employee interests are in line with company objectives; and that employees’ relative performance information is used to make management decisions (Felix and Strack 2005). The article therefore, provides important insights into the changing nature of businesses and the growing importance of employees in business organizations. Most of the aspects of the paper, however, are not new. In this respect, the article’s importance lies in its practical prescription of providing performance measures specific to employees and the need to elevate employee management as a core business function, as opposed to being a support mechanism. By doing so, employee relations issues can be more appropriately dealt with. These prescriptions, however, may not be readily accepted by human resource managers and organizations, as whole because it requires large-scale changes within the organization. Nonetheless, managers and organizations must still consider the points in this article given that employees and the role they play in an organization are growing in significance today. Work Cited: Barber, Felix and Rainer Strack. “People Power: How to Measure It”. From "The Surprising Economics of a 'People Business'", Harvard Business Review, 83.6 (2005). 27 November 2005. . Read More