TITLE : TECHNICAL MANAGER'S SURVIVAL BOOK, THE.

PREFACE

People make choices during their lives. They make choices about the kind of work they do, the companies they will do it in, and how long they will stay at it. Sometimes these choices appear to be limited and at other times lost unlimited; but in all cases, there are always choices. Often, the ehoiee t is made depends upon the normative or predictive expectaney of the son(s) making it. This means that there is an expectation that the alternative chosen (from those alternatives perceived to be possible at the time the choosing) will result in the best future situation. Therefore, the choosing process depends upon the personal theory of the chooser, and that personal theory in turn is based to a great extent upon the chooser's past (education, experience, etc.) and how that past is coupled with a subjective evaluation of the future. It's not a completely logical process; emotion is inolved. There is no such thing as complete objectivity where people are involved; personal values and assumptions determine which "facts" that one sees.

Much of our edueation and training as teehnieal managers, engineers and scientists attempts to minimize this subjectivity by proposing a relatively value-free, objective view of the world. Those attempts can be only partially sucessful, since it is obvious that this education process too has a hidden value: value-free data and deeisions are best. That "best" approach ean work y if no humans are involved. Values, ethies, and prejudiees are vital ributes of each individual's personality. These attributes are often prime tributors to our suceess or failure as managers, yet they are often overlooked in management books.

That is not the case here. This book is the result of many choices that I have made over the years in dealing with human attributes in technical organizations. These choices were based partly on extensive management experienee in industry and aeademia and partly on the same kind of "value-free" training that all engineers are supposed to receive. Therefore, they included partially biased selections of various theoretical points of view, literature reviewed, analyses made and recommendations offered. The major bias behind these choices is my belief, based on experience, that managers of technical operations are potentially among the more influential managers in any organization. Another bias is that these technical managers are often poorly equipped to handle that influence because their training provides insufficient background about the complex (and less-than-objective) human interactions within all organizations. Technical success is usually based on observation and implementation of the relatively fixed, logical relationships found in nature. Management success requires this and the more elusive ability to respond to and use the relatively flexible human relationships of people. This book, therefore, results from my choices about these ideas. As you read it, compare your own choices and theories with those that I suggest, and be aware of the similarities and differences between them.

Before we begin I would like to stress one important point: this book is intended to benefit you. It is intended to help you improve the choices that all managers must make. You and I have a common goal here: to help you survive as a technical manager and to optimize your position now and in the future. This survive and optimize approach is almost unprecedented in industrial organizations. Technical people now can choose the quality and quantity of work to be done and can therefore directly affect the future of their organization. This kind of individual power or influence at work is relatively new.

WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?

In our modern, complex organizations producing technical products and services, I believe that the decision makers (managers, technical staff, etc.) determine the direction of the company through the decisions that they make. This decision making is often decentralized. It is the technical workers who design and develop innovative products who keep the company alive and growing. Typically, these workers operate in small groups or teams that actually do the work. The groups may be organized by project or by funetion (e.g., by Blue Turbine projeet or Hydropack project or by engineering design, new products development, or quality assurance). However organized, the outputs of these groups are vital to the company. They are managed by highly skilled, independent, technically qualified leaders, and it is really these leader-managers who direct the productive and growth capacity of the company, and who are responsible for technical achievements and continued organizational good health.

This book is about the power of managers to make decisions, the power that they (and you, as one of them) inherently possess because of their technical competency, and the control over company growth that this power gains for managers. This book is intended to help managers optimize this wer. First we will review recently developed management techniques to strengthen often underemphasized management areas. These areas include psychology, sociology, anthropology, information science, economics, and finance, topics that often seem to be missing in technical manager's backgrounds. We deal with these areas and more in order to develop and prove the quality of your decision making as a technical manager. This development and improvement should result in at least an equivalent improvement for the company. Being better equipped to deal with uncertainties in decision making in both technical and human problems can only result a general improvement for everyone concerned. There are many ways, however, to improve. Since we all have different strengths and ways of learning, I have tried to make the approach eclectic. We will review appropriate management readings, compare them with applicable practice and thoery, and prescribe some uses for them. Your responsibility is to select the prescriptions that you think will best fit your situation. You will be making the final choices; you will develop your own management methods.

It is necessary to develop your own methods because technical managers different organizations are involved in different problems that are situationally dependent. These managers rarely have the luxury of solving probblems in uniform ways from organization to organization or even within diffirent departments of the same organization. They are required to be as creative and flexible as the people they manage, and different amounts of creativity and flexibility are required in different situations. When nonrepetitive problems must be solved, creativity and flexibility are strengths. Conversely, in repetitive situations, they could be weaknesses. A problem that is solved once should not be handled again if it reappears. That would be a waste of your own invaluable thinking assets. Solved problems are placed in books or in organizational policy manuals. Then, if the problem mpens again, the solution is at hand.

Another reason managerial responses or choices should be unique is that technical groups occasionally must respond to unusual crosscurrents in directions received from others: e.g., "We need some new creative ideas around here; but be sure that everyone adheres to company dress codes and working-hour standards in addition to keeping time sheets. That's company policy and everyone has to do it." Responding to that kind of direetion requires the adroitness of a management Houdini, and certainly requires a unique management theory. However, even unique theories do not preclude sistent personal guidelines. New situations generally have some old, familiar parts that have been faced before. Without some consistent personal management guidelines, decisions might just as well be made at random.

This book consequently addresses the problem of developing a consistent personal theory of technical operations management (e.g. treating people as individuals) It begins by showing you, the technical manager, the inherent advantages you have in your organization. It describes some of the better methods you can use in improving your personal management techniques and assists you in optimizing your position. Your decisions as a technical manager affect the growth of your organization, and when your decisions improve, both you and the organization gain. But first and foremost, this book is for you, to help you improve your knowledge and abilities. The organization will automatically profit if you do.

FOR WHOM IS THIS BOOK MEANT?

This book is intended for the manager or would-be manager who makes the decisions in the technical departments of the company-those decisions that eventually determine the company's future viability. Although I have tried to make this book easy to read, I have also tried to avoid simplification of the material to the point where it becomes just another "management cook-book." I believe that you, as the reader, want more than that. Therefore, I have tried to keep my simplifications and interpretations of the materials to the minimum needed to coordinate and explain them.

These materials are among the most complex that we have; they involve human beings and their behaviors. The book, therefore, might be a bit difficult to read and absorb in one sitting. I suggest a more reflective pace. Read one part or chapter at a time, and integrate it thoroughly in your mind before moving on to the next part. Examine it well and ask yourself as you go along, "How can I use this in my job?." In my opinion, management in general, and technical management in particular, is not learned in "ten easy lesons." The process involves understanding difficult situations and people, learning about what others have done in similar settings, setting up the theories that are intended to work in your own situation, and then testing them on the job. The process never ends, since management improvement never stops.

As a technical manager, you are among the more influential managers of the modern technical organization. When you started your professional life as an engineer, technician, or scientist, the variables you considered in problem solving and decision making were relatively limited, since the laws of physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and similar fields seemed to be quite stable. They were very predictable and in general, applicable to all the technical situations you encountered. However, as a manager you find that some rules no longer hold uniformly and the number of variables has increased geometrically. The complex psychological, social, and economic relationships are not as predictable as relationships in physical laws, and applicability across different situations is quite limited. For example, you can consider the politics that affect the use of your company's products and service There are many more political variables in the product user's environment than the relatively few variables of pressure, temperature, and so on in the product designer's environment. You, as the technical manager, must now consider more sets of variables when new products are on the drawing board Additionally, the situations that involve human variables are not always predictable; therefore, the more structured thinking of technicians, engineers, or scientists-who used to be concerned primarily with the product's function and cost-now is forced to deal with social variables that might have been irrelevant not-too-many years ago. These new management situations require new understanding, different modes of analysis, and the development of unique management responses. They must be unique since you (a unique creature) are not only responsible for managing the situation but are also part of it!

Your success in technical management therefore depends upon a multi-variable, very involved process. That process of management includes both the variables of the technical background that you learned in the past and a new, more flexible, set of variables. When these new variables (and their changing relationships) are mastered, your personal opportunities are greatly increased. If you can survive (and then optimize) in your own situation, your organization will gain by being able to respond successfully to the changing demands of its environment. And when it does, some of that success should redound to you and your further advantage.

WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK DIFFERENT?

In the past, many texts dealt with management as if it were a static activity and the recommendations in the texts seemed to apply to a generalized "one best way" to plan, to organize, and to control. These "best ways" have followed styles in management just like the styles in manners or clothing. For example, earlier in this century scientific management theory was popular. This theory relied on a triangular, classically hierarchical, organization structure in which the manager was to have a limited span of control (six to eight people), report to one boss, and send information up, with directions coming down the organizational structure. I've worked in that kind of an organization and I know that sometimes it works. On the other hand, sometimes it doesn't.

But styles change. There was a period during which decentralization was a popular recommendation for organization design, and the model of the large multidivisional corporation was used to show how well this particular concept worked. For quite a while that also seemed to work. However, times changed. More recently, foreign auto builders have used quite different management models and seem to be doing very well, thank you.

Obviously, other factors, even in the limited area of organizational design, helped determine organizational growth, and these were still not defined. Within very recent times, the development of a relatively new branch of management theory and practice that is situationally determined seems to have produced ideas and practices that include many of the positive aspects of prior theories and yet is able to overcome many of their deficiencies. This relatively new set of theories provides the flexibility to organize and manage differently to meet the different needs of complex technical organizations. As an example, it seems to be able to explain why and when both rigid, centralized structures and flexible, decentralized structures are appropriate. It can also handle both functional and project-matrix management structures. It can even resolve why all these structures might be necessary within the same company-because different situations may give rise to different problems at different times and places. We will explore those alternatives. Since few, if any, books apply these relatively new and powerful set of theories to the unique problems and opportunities of technical managers (from their own viewpoints), this book could be a very practical tool for managers in technical organizations who wish to optimize their situations.

HOW IS THIS BOOK ORGANIZED?

This book is organized into three parts, each of which is intended to follow a familiar sequence of explanation, analysis, and synthesis. Part One is concerned with developing backgrounds, explanations, and a general model or operating hypothesis for the organization against which you can test your perceptions of your own organization. It deals with applicable theory in two general ways: first by description of applicable concepts and then by synthesis or prescriptions for the use of these concepts in your own situation. Part Two disassembles the general model into its major components of people, structures, and technology and shows how you can modify and use these components in building your best management "style." Part Three deals with the special problems of communications systems and leadership in technical organizations and shows how to develop systems that provide you with the data that you need and how to respond to the changing leadership needs. It also summarizes some current data on developing change processes needed to implement your theories.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY?

For many years, first as an operating technical manager and then as an educator and consultant, I have felt that there was a need for a flexible and yet effective set of management concepts that could be adapted to fit most situations in technical management. Existing texts and systems seemed to be oriented either top-down, with some mythical "top management" making ~or decisions that everyone else was supposed to implement, or bottom-with the "all-knowing" lower managers sending up their needs and quirements to be satisfied by a cooperative company. Neither of these tremes reflected the typically varied behaviors of successful managers in fast-changing economic environments associated with technical products and services. There might be an occasional similarity, but situations changed and successful behaviors, systems, and products always seemed to be in a state of response to this change.

This did not match the static approach many management texts seemed recommend. An example is the often-found recommendation for constant leadership behavior (which is usually to be both supportive and participative). If one followed this advice, the successful supportive, nondirective theory Y" leader of a technical group would invariably fail when external economic conditions became difficult. A different and more flexible leadship style would then be needed. Conversely, the successful directive sults-oriented "theory X" leader of a similar technical group would fail if changed economic conditions require advancement in the state of the art. Leadership needs change with changed situations, and the technical manager who is aware of these changed needs may be able to respond better if he or she is also aware of some of the various responses that can be used. The manager may not be able to respond completely (it's very difflcult, if not possible, to change our personalities), but he or she will be able to recognize the changes in the situation and will therefore have an increased ability to modify some situationally dysfunctional behaviors.

In addition to leadership needs, there are other management needs and sponses that are similarly variable. These also depend in part upon the tuation. If we can make an obvious assumption that managers, as individuals, are unique, it should follow that the manager-situation interaction is also unique. The ideas in this book attempt to assist you in handling these ique situations. Many of the ideas have been developed over many years and have been tested against the perceptions of hundreds of successful technical managers in the diverse organizations with which I have worked. These ideas do work, but they also require cooperation on the part of the user. This is a different kind of "how-to" book; it requires you to take the components and concepts offered here and build your own management framework, a framework that can be modified as the situation changes.

Melvin Silverman