Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

April/May 2019 // Canadian Government Executive / 43 ers need to be “fearlessly decisive,” he says, until they studied George W. Bush’s disastrous foray into Iraq. If everyone’s flaws come out sooner than later, he figures soon- er is better. He adds that there are only two ways to know a person’s flaws: marry them or work for them. Unfortunately, the people who select managers – hiring them, or promoting them –have never worked for them, let alone been married to them. “As a consequence, too many of their choices end up being ‘kiss up and kick down’ people, smooth-talking and overconfident, great at impressing ‘superiors’ but nasty at managing ‘subordi- nates,’” he says. “People who select managers have to hear from the people who know the candidates best. Now, they can’t exactly ask the candidates’ spouses because the current ones will be biased and the former ones will be more biased. But they can certainly get the opinions of the people who have been managed by these candidates.” In that PhD research, Mintzberg followed five CEOs for a week and found the pace unrelenting, the pressure intense. One said management is “one damn thing after another.” The job was largely oral, communicating laterally as much as hierarchically, inside and outside their unit. That was three decades before the Internet became commonplace – before we all started complain- ing about how intense and unrelenting our jobs are, and started communicating, increasingly, by emails. His thoughts on our era: • The capacity to communicate instantly with people every- where increases the pace and pressure of managing – and like- ly interruptions as well. But even before the Internet, there was evidence that managers chose to be interrupted. Now more do so by checking messages at every ping. But Mintzberg takes issue with a CEO who recently told an interviewer: “You can never escape. You can’t go anywhere to contemplate and think.” In fact, he insists you can go anywhere you please. • The internet has intensified managers’ orientation to action. Everything is expected to be fast, immediate. He finds it ironic that computer screens, which remove people from the actual action of mixing face-to-face with others has exacerbated the action orientation of managing. • There are only so many hours in a day and the more time you spend at a screen, the less you spend talking and listening to people face-to-face. • Email is limited to words, with no gestures or tone of voice. Yet managing depends on that information as well. “On the telephone, people laugh or grunt; in meetings, they nod in agreement or nod off in distraction. Astute managers pick up on these signals,” he says. web http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/author/harveys/ • Of course, email makes it easier to keep in touch with people from around the world. But what about the people down the hall, he asks? When you’re sitting at the screen, are you putting yourself out of touch with them? When hectic turns to frenetic, he says managers can lose control of their job and become a menace to the organization. “The In- ternet, by giving the illusion of control, may in fact be robbing many managers of control over their own work. Thus this digital age may be driving much management practice over the edge, making it too remote and superficial. So don’t let the new tech- nologies manage you. Don’t allow yourself to be mesmerized by them. Understand their dangers as well as their delights so that you can manage them. Turn them off,” he says. He adds that we have become myopically obsessed with all the changes occurring in society. But we are missing what doesn’t change. Most cars use technology that dates back to Henry Ford. We still button our buttons when we get dressed. He says we no- tice only what is changing while most things are not. And that’s important to recognize. “To manage change without managing continuity is anarchy,” he says. They may be bedtime stories, but in some cases, the ideas may keep you up at night. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards. The Leader’s Bookshelf “Successful managers are flawed – everyone is flawed – but their particular flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Reasonable human beings find ways to live with one another’s reasonable flaws.”