What is the manager’s Job? It is to direct the resources and efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds trite – and it is. But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to “problems” rather than to opportunities, and secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimum impact on results. ((Drucker, Peter, June 12, 2006. “Peter Drucker on Managerial Courage.” HBS Working Knowledge. Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu on June 21, 2006.))
Why is this important and what does it have to do with HR? The parallels are obvious. In non-strategic HR organizations, huge amounts of time are spent on ER issues that are clearly reactionary. Very little time is spent on forward thinking and proactive planning activities. Even in strategic HR organizations, there is difficulty for HR practitioners to make the connection between the strategic goals and the tactical plans – and these tactical plans again often turn into reactionary activities. It’s actually a rare manager or HR practitioner who is able to direct resources and time to active management of talent, rewards, and other manifestations of strategy.
Again I’ll harp on the recruiting function. Except for the best organizations, reactionary filling of un-vetted job requisitions is pervasive. While some organizations do have some controls in place to manage staffing requests, other organizations hide behind the concept that “the business needs us to react quickly.”
Drucker stresses that the function must “direct the resources and efforts of the business toward opportuntities for economically significant results. I’d argue that for HR, these resources should be directed toward opportunities for advancing the strategy. (these might be one and the same as the strategy should have the end result of advancing the bottom line).
Tomorrow – I’ll talk about how Drucker defines the core problem causing managers to incorrectly aim their managerial focus.
3 responses to “Peter Drucker on the Manager’s Job”
Peter Drucker on the Manager’s Job July 26, 2006 on 2:00 am | by Systematic HR What is the manager’s Job? It is to direct the resources and efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds trite – and it is. But every analysis of actual
Nice post. I’ll also add the focus on training hours/butts in seats/etc vs. a focus on learning outcomes to your points. BTW, I wasn’t able to find the reference–probably user error, but could you double check? I’d be interested in reading the rest.
DB – Took me a while to relocate this thing as well. Here’s a new link:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5377.html