and intuitive, judgemental activities. It is therefore both science
and art.
Managers carry out their work on a day-to-day basis in condi-
tions of variety, turbulence and unpredictability. A single word to
describe all these features would be chaos. Tom Peters (1988),
how ever, has suggested that it is possible for managers to thrive
on chaos.
Managers also have to be specialists in ambiguity, with the
ability to cope with conflicting and unclear requirements, as
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1984) has demonstrated.
MANAGERIAL ROLES
During the course of a typical day a chief executive may well
meet the marketing director to discuss the programme for
launching a new product, the HR director to decide how best to
reorganize the distribution department, the production director
to ask him why costs per unit of output are going up and what he
is going to do about it, and the finance director to review the
latest set of management accounts before the next board meeting.
He or she may have had to meet a journalist to be interviewed
about how the company is going to deliver better results next
year. Lunch may have been taken with a major customer, and the
evening spent at a business dinner. Some of these activities could
be categorized under the headings of planning, organizing,
directing and controlling, but chief executives would not have
attached these labels when deciding how to spend their time (in
so far as there was any choice). The fact that these processes took
place was imposed by the situation and the need to take on one
or more of the roles inherent in the manager’s job. These roles are
fundamentally concerned with:
■ getting things done – planning ahead, maintaining
momentum and making things happen;
■ finding out what is going on;
■ reacting to new situations and problems;
■ responding to demands and requests.
They involve a great deal of interpersonal relations, communi-
cating, information processing and decision making.
6 How to be an Even Better Manager