Book Review: Managing in a Time of Great Change
For those of you that know Peter F. Drucker’s history, you know he’s had an opinion or a prediction about nearly every aspect of doing business. His collection of essays–compiled meaningfully in Managing in a Time of Great Change–is no exception. For myself, I took most heed to his notes on management in a knowledge society, his advice about personal brand, and his insight on emergent business structures.
The Financial Understanding of an Agency
I manage at an agency where every ounce of business we get is entirely dependent on the individuals doing the work. Creative agencies are the epitomy of the knowledge industry; we have nothing to distribute or stockpile and our entire product is in the transfer of expertise from our employees to our clients. In many ways, our product is similar to a financial instrument; it has the same intangibility, measurable history, susceptibility to perception, and risk.
So for each type of “investor” you have a different style agency. Those interested in a stable return on their investment usually seek out agencies that can both predict (in the form of market research) and then measure return. These activities take additional resources and so your return is diminished by the overhead of the agency. On the flip side, you have agencies that cater to market speculators. They exercise great latitude in their interpretation of client need, but engender substantial risk in the process.
So I kinda left Drucker’s book to start rambling on my own, but I think the point of the previous two paragraphs is that it may take a different type of mind and a different approach to capture the essence of the new knowledge society and that, is something Drucker was quite clear about.
Networks and the Outhouse
Drucker spends a good deal of time talking about flat organizations, teamwork and organizational networks. What he’s seen is the emergence of knowledge professionals along career paths that have nothing to do with imposed authority and everything to do with one’s depth of knowledge and talent. In many ways, we’ve all become the new trade worker… in the same way that a doctor or a blacksmith becomes ever more valuable with practice and specialization, so to does the worker in today’s knowledge economy. So much so in fact, that it is no longer possible to “promote” them to management. In other words, the skills they’ve developed are too valuable to waste time having them manage others. Instead, knowledge workers continue to hone their skills and their career has more to do with the nature and complexity of the problem, then it does an artificial hierarchy.
So then, who are the new managers (and are they even necessary)? Drucker suggests that like anything else, management is a knowledge skill practiced and honed by those with the talent and desire to learn how to do it; however, this has some interesting implications. One, is that many new managers will be “managing” individuals much older than they are. I’ve had to do this and it’s a tricky proposition in the best of circumstances. I think we are all still living the transition more than a decade after these concepts first entered the collective business consciousness.
Another implication of this flattening is the emergence of small networked clusters of in-kind business. In my industry (loosely interpreted) we’ve got copywriting, graphic design, media buying, internet marketing, programming, public relations, etc… and the history has been to consolidate much of this under one roof. Even now I’m witnessing one of my main competitors (Xylem CCI) attempt to create an in-house SEO department… this, right after a large merger. Texture Media tried something similar and–to the best of my knowledge–had quite a bit of trouble getting anything to work. In my opinion it is risky to diversify one’s offering so thoroughly with the understanding that you’ll never be as good as the new breed of specialist… The Booyah Agency is one of the nation’s best SEO firms; they’ve got the best local talent and can help my clients achieve returns on marketing dollars faster than we ever could… which, ultimately means more business for our core competencies in design and interactive.
So I think managing in the knowledge economy means three things: disciplined focus on core competency, the development of resource networks outside one’s core competencies and the recruitment and retention of knowledge workers. It is this last, which I believe to be the hardest of all.
My employees are your employees
Employees no longer spend an entire career at one company… and in the interactive world, turnover seems to be even more prevalent. Retention can come at a significant financial cost–I’ve seen companies like Walls Street on Demand slap on the golden handcuffs pretty successfully–but I don’t think this is sustainable in the slightly less fortified interactive / advertising industry. Drucker suggests that managers of the knowledge worker will need to focus on “meaning” in addition to compensation. Now, meaning can stand for different things at different companies, but the underlying theme (in my interpretation) is that life, work and purpose are becoming ever more intertwined as we all become more digitally connected; my computer travels with me, my online social and business networks are the same, my code is both open source and making money… I’m not sure what meaning is for every company and indeed it may vary by employee; however, I suspect that this concern will be one of the defining characteristics of the new manager.
Jameson is more memorable than Jamie
Drucker touched briefly on the idea of personal brand, but enough that it stood out to me as an important factor for success in the new economy. One of the problems we knowledge workers have, is the variety of jobs currently, or likely to show up on our resume. This dispersion of focus makes it difficult for potential employers to evaluate one’s ability to succeed at a new post. What Drucker suggests (and I agree strongly with), is that the responsibilty has shifted to the individual to shepard the cohesion of one’s past. In other words, everyone needs to become a marketer.
To do this, we need a personal value proposition (or more likely a set of arguments stored in our head) such that the jump from Medical IT Manager to Creative agency Interactive Director is not just accepted, but seen as a logical and natural transition. I think the perception may be changing naturally as hiring managers see ever more colorful applications, however, it is my belief that those who actively focus on their personal brand will excel faster than those who don’t.
