The dilemma of appointing senior managers

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3 October, 2011

Sir David Nicholson’s admission to the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry that in retrospect the previous chief executive was the wrong appointment highlights a common dilemma when appointing people at this level.

It is frequently a wrong assumption that senior managers are good at both operations and strategy but just like doctors tend be better at either medicine or surgery so it is with managerial skills. We don’t expect doctors to be good at everything so why expect senior leaders to be any different? Fortunately, most doctors who are not so good during their specialty training receive plenty of feedback to help them decide their future but managers don’t. Having said that, in both medicine and management there are always exceptions who break through to be inappropriately appointed from time to time.

In reality managers tend to fall into one of three groups. The vast majority are biased towards operational management and consequently, they can struggle with strategy. Then there are the strategists who you wouldn’t let near an operational challenge if your life (or perhaps your career) depended on it. Then there’s the much smaller group, less than 10 percent, who are good at both operations and strategy. You can tell these people because they have the rare ability to both discuss the big picture and focus in on the detail.

This categorisation of managers doesn’t mean that they can’t operate across the full spectrum of managerial and leadership requirements; but rather like personality profiles they have a preference for the way they work and tend to be better, and more comfortable, at one end of the spectrum than the other.

What we want of course are managers who have sufficient self-awareness to know which way they are inclined and to have the nous to know they need others around them who can complement their own skills and experience. Unfortunately, nous, wisdom and maturity tend to be correlated with experience and age so it’s the rare younger manager who will understand that he or she can’t do everything. In these situations the need for formal mentoring during career development becomes paramount.

Finally, the recruitment of senior managers who think they’re being appointed for one thing whilst the board thinks they’re appointing them for another begs questions about the quality of board recruitment practices. Senior managerial recruitment is an inexact science at the best of times but we can, and should be doing it much better.

Readers' comments (6)

Blair Mcpherson | 4-Oct-2011 2:57 pm
A top management recruitment consultant famously said I don't seek to recruit the best candidate for the post but the one the board will most like. So perhaps the board didn't get the most suitable person for the post but the most suitable for the board.
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Derek Mowbray | 6-Oct-2011 5:16 pm
I agree with Neil completely on this. Too often top people are bottom people in top positions rather than being top people in top positions - strategists and mosaic interpreters as opposed to operationally switched on and methodical. I'm not wholly convinced the differences are preference based. I know, from my own experience, I'm a strategist who loathes the operational aspects of running businesses, but have learnt how to do that., avoid doing it like the plague, and, when I have to, my concentration on the tasks is hopeless. But I can spot operational problems a mile away. I'm not convinced it works the other way round, that operational and methodical people, excellent at operational management, are able to acquire strategic thinking skills, and the pattern analysis skills that this involves.
I remember being appointed by a Board after I presented what I was going to do; did it and seven months later the same Board people announced they didn't like it, and waved me goodbye. If Boards don't have strategists and operational mix then there will be problems ahead.
Of course there is the imperative to earn more, and by moving into a different kind of role the earning capacity increases. It's very tempting to go where the money is and where people suggest a career should go - upwards.
There's also the issue of preferred leadership style. Here, I think, there is massive confusion over what style produces the most effective performance, which to me, is pretty obviously Adaptive Leadership style. To do this successfully, you do need to be a strategist, and have the inner capacity to appreciate that everyone else knows much more about what to do than you do, and the driven desire to find out from them, quiz them and challenge their knowledge and what they do.
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Anonymous | 6-Oct-2011 6:01 pm
Oh God! All of the leadership fallacy on one side of a page.

Comparing generic managers to doctors is insulting. Doctors (as with several other professions) do a long and formal postgraduate programme of education, mentorship and tacit development under supervision to the equivalent of a PhD. Bound by decades of scientific evidence, when the light bulb goes on, they're allowed to do something complicated.

That is not the route of management. Do a random degree in something you happen to have a memory for, read a couple of vocationless self help books, get a low level job doing some generic nothingness and use your higher than average eagerness to work the system.

Apply to a standardised job description, for a standardised interview, full of standardised questions, to get a job that you can't do but is sufficiently obscure to prevent detection. Work the system ... go on some leadership development ... so you can look and talk like the people at the top ("strategists").

Knowing the right words to the right tune you dance (kareoke style) through equally irrelevant jobs until there's some power. Then you can choose to appoint some people beneath, who make you feel comfortable (by talking the same nonsense you learnt). They are appointed to sit between you and the people who can actually do a good job. You may have heard of it, something specific to serve an ordinary person in need.

Generalised management is a joke, leadership is worse and together they construe a self fulfilling prophecy to make smashing (but essentially useless people) fell better about themselves. No strategy ever delivered anything, the best occasionally describe the work that's already there. Down Derek there's a good boy!

Long live Robert Trivers.
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jonathan.booth@journey-group.com | 10-Oct-2011 2:05 pm
The above comment from Anonymous may well be true but is is cynical in the extreme. As ever, the critique suggests that the system is broken - always was and always will be. When will those who care about the future of the NHS choose to move on from rubbishing 'what is' and start to think constructively about 'what could be?'

My sense is that Anonymous is probably a clinician who hides behind the strange notion that 'being a medic' is the only proper job in the NHS. This is sadly misplaced. Always was and always will be. Unfortunately, 'management' is a highly qualified and demanding role that is wholly dependent on informed decision-making. That NHS management is ill-informed and resists making decisions at every opportunity, is as much a product of the clinical culture of the NHS as it is any inherent weakness in the current round of NHS managers. Improvement in the quality of NHS management will only come about when the NHS leadership can see the benefit of effective management, rather the regime of self-protecting careerists currently in charge.

When will that happen? When the advent of an effective, innovative and accountable management function is deemed to have a value. And, in my opinion, that shift in perspective inevitably starts with clinicians themselves. Just get over yourselves, please!

Robert Trivers, indeed....
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Mark Newbold | 10-Oct-2011 9:19 pm
Thanks Neil, Interesting that 'the vast majority (of managers) are biased towards operational management'. I think you are correct, but in my experience the majority, particularly of senior managers, tend to say they see themselves as 'strategic'. It is almost used as a mark of seniority which is interesting, particularly as you observe that the most effective managers need to be able to do both. In reality, I think truly effective strategists are pretty unusual in the NHS.

As to our anonymous medical colleague above, it is tempting to suggest that if more of his or her colleagues subscribed actively to the theory of reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971) in respect of their working relationships with managers, then our patients would benefit greatly!
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Anonymous | 11-Oct-2011 8:43 am
If this very interesting debate has achieved anything it has made me look at the work of Robert Trivers and I thank you all for that!!!!
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