The Hindu Business Line : Most managers are afraid of action

MARCH 2004 issue of Harvard Business Review says, "Ghoshal can be reached at sghosal@london.edu." Only, you can't, because Sumantra Ghoshal died on March 3. His article titled "Reclaim your job", written along with Heike Bruch, could well be the last in HBR from the Kolkata-born academic turned European management guru.

Dubbed `Euroguru' by The Economist, he was the professor of strategic leadership at the London Business School.

For Ghoshal, "academics and journalists were observers", noted The Guardian in the obit. "You look at the phenomena with authenticity, respect, curiosity, speculation, the occasional journalistic privileges." And for him, today's management theory "was under-socialised and one-dimensional, a parody of the human condition more appropriate to a prison or a madhouse than an institution which should be a force for good."

The HBR article is on a common predicament that everybody faces: lack of time and resources. Not a problem, but an excuse, if you were to ask Ghoshal. Contrary to popular misconception, it is not as if lack of opportunity stands between a manager and success, but it is the manager himself. The problem is `personal' avers the article: managers are uncertain about "acting according to their own best judgment". Thus, instead of advancing the company's fortunes and their own careers, "they spin their wheels doing what they presume everyone else wants them to do."

Too bitter to swallow, but a statistic that HBR carried two years ago, in a previous article by the authors, was that "90 per cent of managers wasted their time and frittered away their productivity, despite having well-defined projects, goals, and the knowledge necessary to get their jobs done".

The "pervasive reality of corporate life" is this: Managers complain of lack of freedom, and their bosses fret about "managers' failure to grasp opportunities". Thus, the most essential quality of "truly successful manager" is "the ability to seize initiative".

So, how to get out of the `box'? Three strategies, advice the professors: Manage demands, generate resources, and recognise and exploit alternatives.

Beat the busy habit, exhort the authors. "Overcome the psychological desire to be indispensable." That is important because otherwise fire-fighting would become more important than strategic goals.

Don't get boxed in, is the next diktat. Here is where the jugad technology that Arun Shourie mentioned comes in handy. "Develop inventive strategies for circumventing real or imagined limitations. Map out ways around constraints... making trade-offs, and occasionally breaking rules." Thirdly, enlarge your context. Don't surrender your options, but widen your perspective, advise the authors.

Sadly, mangers who miss these essential lessons would end up getting "disoriented and paralysed", foregoing the chance to "relish their roles". But it is possible to reclaim your job, before you get thrown off by a job that grows larger than you.

Pity, we can't reclaim Sumantra.

SayCheek@thehindu.co.in

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Most managers are afraid of action