The Hindu Business Line : When reality bites!

Research has indeed proved that the immediate superior is the cause for the majority of separations in business organisations. He is usually someone who sees the professionally trained young manager as a challenge to his hitherto smooth flowing career.

S. Ramachander

This is the season for the business school graduates to launch into the world of managing, which they do with stars in their eyes. And it is not just about the salaries and perquisites of an executive life but some expectation of being able to offer their freshly minted wisdom and make a difference. The most familiar experience, however, is a sudden reversal and disappointment, when the first job goes sour. The pain is almost as hard to take, albeit for a brief while, as t hat which goes with breaking with one’s first serious relationship.

The setback could be due to any of a number of reasons but it most often comes from a difficult boss. Research has indeed proved that the immediate superior is the cause for the majority of separations in business organisations. He is usually someone who sees the professionally trained young manager as a challenge to his hitherto smooth flowing career; or to his unquestioned authority, or both.

Meanwhile the young trainee wonders why there is so much resistance to what are obviously helpful suggestions. So much of what he recommends is based on the sound principles recalled from case studies and concepts taught in business schools, and yet they are ridiculed out of hand.

For example, it might be about evaluating an investment decision, or sometimes ignoring sunk costs, looking only at relevant costs for make-or-buy-decisions.

All sensible advice from teachers inside campuses, but it seems to fade in the light of common day.

In the field of managing people, the enthusiastic tyro would recommend a participative style, taking everyone’s opinion into account and carrying the team together, which the old fashioned manager might see as a sign of weakness or a lack of decisiveness.

Above all, one could be in for a rude shock if one runs into a manager known for searing sarcasm.

He relishes putting down junior colleagues in public, whereas all the text books have taught us to ‘praise in public and upbraid in private’. Alas, such managers do exist, and are by no means a small minority in the world of work. Every one of the wise words is flouted, you find, in practice; some are laughed at as just plain nonsense.

When you look around other organisations in which your friends are placed, sometimes the grass is a shade greener and some are lucky.

They happen to be posted to places where the top management considers the grooming of future leaders of the business their personal responsibility.

To my mind, this in itself tells a good leader apart. Such a CEO keeps a careful eye on what is going on and one’s work gets noticed easily. Thus the immediate boss, a middle manager, can not spoil one’s chances by his own efforts if he turns out to be a grumpy and unenthusiastic person.

In fact, access to the eyes and ears of the top management are easily the best perk you can get – bar none, I should say, given the majority of owner-led and family managed organisations in the country.

It is a little ironic that whereas the movement towards making management as a discipline and a profession begat the business schools, it is often the entrepreneurial management which ensures their survival.

The eyes of the CEO are after all a protection against the whimsicality of some supervisors.

One of the ideal positions created for this purpose is the staff assistant or executive assistant to the top manager which is a superb training ground and an early transition to middle management or unit head positions.

The only caveat is that this kind of exposure to the CEO or a director can be a two-edged sword. A major goof-up can be exaggerated and bring down the wrath of the Gods on the hapless junior manager.

A summary word of criticism from on-high will circulate and can gather momentum, branding you as ineffective or error-prone, long afterwards. Above all, one could be identified with one or the other of camps and cliques that unfortunately do form within many companies – and indeed any organisation.

My own experience is that the young persons of the 21st century are unusually much better tuned into political realities than we were some three decades ago or more.

Perhaps the world has become a darker and murkier place and one therefore expects distortions of good intentions and miscarriages of purpose everywhere; so the somewhat case-hardened 25-year-old of today might be both more cynical and realistic — depending on one’s point of view.

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