Management Competencies

[From Fred Nickols (980708.1810 EDT)]

I posted the following to the Management Education and Development
(MG-ED-DV) list operated by Charlie Wankel at St Johns University. I'd be
interested in CSG list members' comments. (By the way, I sent the letter
to the editor at HBR and I'll let you know what happens.)

Regarding the management competencies thread...

I've taken some time to examine the matter and I'm not convinced that
there's anything substantial behind the "management competencies" facade.
First off, there's no widespread agreement as to what constitutes a
competency. Second, I find it hard to separate skill, attribute, quality,
characteristic, proficiency level, and competency. The classification
scheme is a little shaky. Third, it has all the earmarks of a would-be fad
(lots of people talking it up and making grandiose claims about its value).
So, I've adopted a wait-and-see attitude (i.e., if it turns out to be
solid, I'll buy in; if not, I'll stay out of it).

That said, I do have an idea or two about competent managers and what sets
them apart from their less capable colleagues.

Most people are capable of achieving the same or similar outcomes in
different settings and under different circumstances. I can successfully
drive to and arrive at work whether it's clear, cloudy, raining, or snowing
like the dickens, and whether it's in Suffield, Connecticut or Princeton,
New Jersey. I can get my message across with clerks on the processing
floor and executives in the boardroom. I can elicit interest in certain
possibilities from young computer "jocks" and seasoned systems analysts.

What makes this all possible is that people are what has been termed
"living control systems." As plainly as I can put it, people vary their
actions so as to keep their perceptions of what's going on around them more
or less aligned with a set of internally-held reference conditions. (For
those interested, this is all spelled out in William Powers' 1973 book,
Behavior: The Control of Perception.)

Those people we call managers are no different from the rest of us, that is,
they also act to control their perceptions and to keep those perceptions
aligned with their reference conditions.

Let's assume for the moment that we can somehow distinguish between
competent and not so competent managers. The next issue is to account for
the difference.

To my way of thinking, it isn't the actions of a manager that define him or
her as competent. Instead, it is the ability of a manager to engage in
those actions that are appropriate to the situation at hand. I am not
talking here about a broader or narrower repertoire of routines that are
invoked and executed in a command and control sense. I am suggesting that
a manager's actions are varied in a continuous, ongoing way, so as to keep
his or her perceptions of what's going on lined up with his or her
reference conditions. In a word, I am talking about configured actions,
not executable, preprogrammed routines.

If we assume that people and thus managers are indeed living control
systems, then the difference between a competent and a less competent
manager wouldn't be attributable to observed differences in their
observable behaviors but, rather, to the reference conditions against which
they are attempting to maintain control.

I'll close with a simple example. Manager A is controlling for a
perception of power and control over people. This person will act in ways
intended to attain and then maintain this reference condition. Observing
this person's behavior, we might label it at various times as "autocratic,"
"haughty," "lording it over others," "bossy" and so on. Manager B is
controlling for a perception of ensuring that people get credit for their
ideas. Observing this person's behavior might lead us to identify it at
times as "caring," "protective," "supportive" and other such labels.
Manager B, if he or she chose to, could probably behave similarly to
Manager A. The same is true of Manager A, that is,
he or she could behave similarly to Manager B. The difference between the
two isn't their behavioral repertoires, it's the reference conditions
against which they are controlling. The two managers have very different
reference conditions.

Tying back now to the purpose of the MG-ED-DV list, all this suggests to me
that management training, education, and development is more a matter of
focusing on identifying, communicating, and getting managers to adopt
appropriate reference conditions, than it is one of teaching them to behave
differently. In short, it's a matter of developing values, beliefs, and
standards as much or more than it is a matter of developing skills or
"competencies" (whatever they are).

Regards...

Fred Nickols, Executive Director
Strategic Planning & Management Services
Educational Testing Service [09-C]
Princeton, NJ 08541
Tel = 609.734.5077 Fax = 609.734.5590
e-mail = fnickols@ets.org

Views expressed are the author's, not ETS's.

Regards,

Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
nickols@worldnet.att.net
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm

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