My job is to disturb the system. I give people new ways to think. It’s more a matter of offering people different perspectives and influencing their thinking than trying to drive them.
– Chris Turner, Xerox Business Systems
Years ago, I was running a project. The project was over budget and over schedule. Not good! I did a lessons learned on the project, when it was done. A lessons learned is a post mortem – what went right, what went wrong, and what could be improved.
One of the folks compared me to one of those Dilbert clueless managers. I’d thought I’d done a pretty good job. So, I wondered what made a good manager and where did management come from. A few years ago, I did a little research to understand the background of management.
The root of the word ‘management’ comes from the Latin manus, meaning ‘hand,’ ‘power,’ or ‘jurisdiction. Interesting! It fits. So if you’re a hired hand such as an itinerant professional, you’re the manager of your destiny. It fits the derivation of the word ‘management’. Other popular parallels seemed to emerge. A popular sustainability concept today is to call managers the stewards of a company’s resources. In the medieval English contract, property stewards administered large landed estates and were required to deliver receipts or revenues ‘by hand’ to the property owner. The stewards were required to know every element of the business under their control. In England, the term ‘manager’ was adopted widely around the 16th Century and is even referenced in Shakespeare’s plays. In the next 300 years, management became a part of every business activity.
Life Lesson Earned: Who are the managers in your organization? What makes them successful? Do you know the rules of management in your company? If you’re a supervisor/manager, do you know what’s expected of you in this new business environment? If you’re an individual contributor, do you want to be a supervisor or manager? Why or why not?