Management methods, models + theories

If, like me, you find management methods, models + theories a lot more interesting than actually managing, you could do worse than look here. It's an index of such things.

Successful managers vs effective managers

Trying to think a bit more clearly about the difference between effective managers (i.e., ones who solve problems) and successful managers (i.e., ones who get promoted), I find myself reading a 1988 paper by Professor Fred Luthans, who was/is George Holmes Distinguished Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Professor Luthans 'found that communication and human resource management activities made by far the largest relative contribution to real managers' effectiveness and that traditional management and - especially - networking made by far the least relative contribution'.

By contrast, 'networking activity had by far the strongest relative relationship to success'.

And in summary, less than a tenth of managers made the top third of both 'successful' and 'effective' groups - which is what you would expect if there were no connection between the two.

Scary? Anyone have any ideas about how valid this finding is? Or how it is possible?

[Update - a quick email exchange with Professor Luthans confirms that, in his view, this is still the position.]

[Further update - I show this to various colleagues. They laugh. Basically, our bosses are blagging their way to the top (for non-London readers, that means getting to the top by less than legitimate means.) And no one is even faintly surprised.]

How many maturity models are there, dammit?

Looking through my files on maturity management this morning, I came across the following list - and I don't think it's even nearly complete!

• Agile Maturity Model
• Architecture Maturity Models
• Assessment Maturity Model
• Automated Software Testing Maturity Model
• Brand Maturity Model
• Business Archive Management (thanks to Cole Sandau)
• Business Continuity Maturity Model
• Business Intelligence Maturity Model
• Capability Assessment Tool (CAT)
• Capability Maturity Model for Software (retired)
• Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
• Change Management Maturity Model
• Change Proficiency Maturity Model
• Configuration Management Maturity Model
• Customer Experience Maturity Model
• Data Center Infrastructure Maturity Model
• Data Governance Maturity Model
• DITA Maturity Model
• Earned Value Management Maturity Model
• E-Government Maturity Model
• e-Learning Maturity Model
• Enterprise Architecture Maturity Model
• Extended Enterprise Architecture Maturity Model (E2AMM) v2.0
• Green Enterprise Maturity Model
• Information lifecycle management maturity model
• Information Maturity Model
• Information Process Maturity Model
• Information Security Management Maturity Model
• Gartners' Infrastructure Maturity Model
• Integrated Product Development Capability Maturity Model
• Internet Maturity Model
• IT Architecture Maturity Model
• IT Maturity Model
• IT Service Capability Maturity Model
• Knowledge Management Maturity Model
• Leadership Maturity Model (LMM)
• Learning Management Maturity Model
• Localization Maturity Model
• Managed Care Maturity Model
• Medicaid Information Technology Architecture
• Gartner's Network Maturity Model
• Open Source Maturity Model
• Operations Maturity Model
• Organisational Capability Maturity Assessment (CMA)
• Organizational Project Management Maturity Model
• Organisational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3)
• Outsourcing Maturity Model
• People Capability Maturity Model
• Performance Engineering Maturity Model
• PM2 Maturity Model
• Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model
• PRINCE2 Maturity Model (P2MM)
• Process Maturity Model (PMM)
• Product Development Capability Maturity Model
• Programme Management Maturity Model (PMMM)
• Project Management Maturity Model
• Property Asset Management Maturity Model
• R+D Maturity Model
• Resource-Oriented Architecture Maturity Model
• Reuse Maturity Model
• Risk Maturity Model
• SaaS Architecture Maturity Model
• SaaS Simple Maturity Model
• Security Maturity Model
• Service Desk aturity Model
• Service Integration Maturity Model
• Services Maturity Model, Self-Assessment Maturity Model
• SOA Maturity Model
• Software Acquisition Capability Maturity Model
• Software Engineering Capability Maturity Model
• Software Maintenance Maturity Model
• Software Reliability Engineering Maturity Model
• Stakeholder Relationship Management Maturity
• Systems Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model
• Talent Management Maturity Model
• Testing Maturity Model
• Threading Maturity Model (ThMM)
• Training Management Maturity Model
• Usability Maturity Model
• Web 2.0 Maturity Model
• Web Services Maturity Model
• Website Maturity Model

... and so on. And on. And on.

I also found a rather nice 'Maturity Maturity Model' and even a splendid Capability Im-Maturity Model!

Given that maturity models are basically a good idea - at least they get us away from the silly idea that radical change can be accomplished in a single step - it's a pity that so many of them are based on the chronically immature SEI CMM model. This, I have always thought, is more like a list of things the DoD finds it hard to do, in approximate order of difficulty.

I have had quite a few goes at maturity models (not to mention basing a complete book on the large-scale structure of human history on an analogous idea), including my 'Lattice Methodology', which is designed to direct strategic transformation programmes by maturity management methods, and a methodology maturity model. I may post either or both here, though I wouldn't get your hopes up just yet.

Anyone got any more? And if someone can find the URLs, I'd be happy to put them in.

Best Practice - yuk!

Am I alone in finding the phrase 'Best Practice' at best irritating and at worst deeply pretentious? How many companies have I worked in where the local Best Practice (and yes, it is always capitalised) would embarrass a mentally challenged nine-year old child? What is it about organisations that, although not yet capable even of good practice, makes them emblazon their half-baked bureaucratic nightmares with such an utterly inappropriate title?

The objectives of maturity management

The purpose of maturity management achieve the following major objectives:

• To define a strategy for creating revolutionary change by means of evolutionary steps.
• To free leaders from the limitations of corporate management systems by creating management systems that enable leadership rather than constraining it.
• To define a truly manageable management system capable of supporting fundamental, strategic change.

Surprisingly, these are not stated objectives of other management models such as the Software Engineering Institute’s well known Capability Maturity Model or the Project Management Institute’s standards. Nor are they made any easier to achieve by the approach those standards adopt, which is basically pragmatic, eclectic and bound by convention.

These objectives are described in more detail below.

Objective 1: Revolution by evolution

The primary objective of maturity management is to deliver radical, even revolutionary change. That means not merely re-invigorating moribund management systems and staunching the haemorrhages caused by poor management practice, but creating genuinely world-class organisations.

But how is that objective to be achieved? Most approaches to organisational change share at least one assumption: that radical results could be delivered in a single heroic step. Maturity management is based on a quite different assumption: that realistically, radical change can only take place in well-defined, incremental steps, quite probably extending over many years and certainly requiring many discrete developmental steps.

Hence its first objective: to define a sequence of discrete, manageable stages through which radical change can be brought about. Revolution by evolution, in fact.

Objective 2: Freeing leadership from management

One way of conceptualising how maturity management works is in terms of the distinction many authors have drawn between management and leadership. To quote Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Other commentators have expressed similar sentiments in different ways, but it is striking that they all insist on this difference and on the importance of leading organisations rather than merely managing them. Leaders bring vision, inspiration and direction, and without it an organisation loses its impetus, its cultural integrity and its ability to take decisive action.

Yet many organisations seem determined to encumber their leaders with unnecessary or subordinate management tasks, even actively disabling them by failing to provide the basic information and decisions real leadership demands.

Of course, no organisation could succeed by completely replacing management by leadership. Conversely, where leadership is not supported by robust management, the ‘leadership’ and ‘empowerment’ routinely degenerates into senior management abdicating responsibility for the actions, accomplishments and performance of their subordinates, backed up by the usual blame and recrimination when things go wrong.

So a balance must be struck – but only the right balance:

• The ability to manage is quite commonplace, whereas leadership is notoriously rare.
• The ability of leaders to delivery results depends on the presence of management systems (including competent and empowered managers) capable of implementing their vision.
• Unbridled, universal ‘leadership’, if not backed up with clear control of the whole, will soon degenerate into chaos, and the whole becomes a great deal less than the sum of its parts.
• Once they have been applied to a range of assignments, many leadership skills can be translated into reliable methods, tools and techniques that can be taught to less inspired individuals.

Hence another aspect of maturity management: by continually upgrading management systems, activities that previously required that rare combination of inspiration and perspiration that defines genius can be done almost as effectively by any modestly capable individual who has been trained to use the appropriate methods, tools and techniques and is supported by the necessary flow of information and decisions. Indeed, the whole history of management consists very largely of the creation of management systems to do things that were previously done only by great leaders. That is one of the main reasons why great organisations – nations, teams, businesses and so on – can exist at all.

On the other hand, where will future leaders acquire the vision on which leadership so crucially depends? Where will they get that spark of insight leavened by sound practical experience? Surely the answer is, yet again, from the management systems in and through which they work. If these systems are bad, then any manager’s experience will be less than illuminating. If, on the other hand, the management systems they use are well designed, effective and properly directed and maintained, their experience of their work, the organisation and its goals will be clear, well-structured and informative. Its purposes, methods and underlying philosophy will be clear and reinforced throughout. Conversely, the better structured the system, the easier it will be to spot any residual problems. But most importantly of all from the point of view of inculcating leadership, the values, purpose and opportunities it faces will be clear.

Hence the maturity management approach: wherever possible it replaces leadership by management. This is not because we should prefer management to leadership after all, but because we should reserve the special talents involved in leadership for tasks where they are really needed. If some leadership skills can be made so straightforward that they happen as a matter of course and the same results can be reliably achieved by the routine use of a management system, this can only strengthen an organisation, and release its true leaders to focus on areas that demand real leadership.

To summarise the whole above argument in terms of a contemporary management buzz phrase, the trick is not to rely on those who can ‘think outside the box’, but to learn from them, and so make the box the rest of us work in bigger. Much, much bigger.

Objective 3: A manageable management structure

If the purpose of maturity management is to achieve radical change by incremental steps, and its principle instrument is the conversion of leadership into management, it is clear that its next objective must be to define a management system that drives change. More precisely, maturity management must tell us:

• To define why the assignment exists, and so ensure that the assignment contributes to strategic goals.
• To define what the assignment will do, and so keep the assignment is kept on track to its goals.
• To define how the assignment will do this, and so ensure that an effective technical solution is delivered.
• To handle all the data and decisions needed to reach the above goals.

To achieve this, a maturity management methodology defines a complete, generic management system consisting of three core components:

• A generic management task model.
• A generic management system model.
• A generic management maturity programme model.

Defining generic management components makes it much easier to define management in terms of discrete units of management activity that are easily understood, easy to implement and use, and easy to revise or replace in the face of new problems and changing circumstances. It also provides the bedrock of the principles of recursion and iteration. Furthermore, by breaking the implementation process into short-, medium- and long-term changes and by embedding the components in a well defined hierarchy of maturity levels, systems and tasks, it is easy to adapt the generic components to local needs and the most appropriate methods, tools and techniques.

Two principles of management design

Although a great deal of effort goes into making many management systems intelligible to their users, many still suffer from a degree of opacity that follows from the way in which most systems are constructed: either by the ad hoc inclusion and generalisation of local practices or through the more or less mechanical incorporation of external ideas and structures such as public standards and guru-derived ‘concepts’. This makes for management systems that are not only hard to use but that would not work well even if they were used correctly.

To counter this a little, there are two general principles all management systems should implement: recursion and iteration.

Recursion

Recursion means that the same process is used at all levels of a given activity. For example:

• To ensure that we all mean the same thing when we speak of ‘management’, the same principles and generic process should govern management at every level of the organisation, from strategic direction to day-to-day operations.
• If a manager needs to define local processes in more detail, it should be possible to re-apply the main process recursively (ie, to its own components).

(If, like me, you like that sort of thing, the best definition of recursion of which I am aware was given by an early Smalltalk dictionary, whose entire entry for 'recursion' consisted of the words 'see "Recursion"'.)

Iteration

Iteration means that the same process is used across all parts of the organisation. For example:

• To ensure that the integrity of all processes and management activity is maintained, change-related processes such as change, issue or risk management should be designed so that they consist of the recursive application the standard generic process, not a special (and probably anomalous) processes of their own.
• However special they may feel that their work is, all specialist groups (such as legal departments and supplier management) should adhere to the same principles and generic processes as the groups responsible for the ‘main process’.

These principles are combined for managing individual assignments. To ensure that managers are empowered without increasing the risks inherent in allowing local groups to make critical decisions, the management system should consist of ‘black boxes’, within which the local managers can structure activity as they see fit, so long as the local management system adheres to the Lattice Methodology and they process the required inputs into the required outputs. This approach would also enhance local commitment to and involvement in system improvement.

The real challenge

The critical problem managers face has always been to extend the range and scope of their organisation’s performance and competence. This would either allow them to expand the kinds of work it can usefully do or do what they do right now more efficiently or effectively. In the current management environment, this problem has been intensified by the demand to improve management systems dynamically, to make them self-optimising and self-improving, and even to make them generate massive and qualitative improvements capable of raising organisations to the world class level.

The radical nature of this expectation stands in stark contrast to the real nature of management systems many contemporary managers are obliged to use. Some of the more common problems managers routinely face are:

• Being asked to achieve vague, unstable or conflicting business goals, often decided without adequate analysis or assessment.
• Translating disparate, fragmented and often obsolete management processes into efficient and effective assignments.
• Making do with less than optimal technical resources, including untrained personnel, unsupported tools and incompatible techniques.
• Being blinded by a combination of, on the one hand, inadequate management information-gathering and decision-making processes and, on the other, an unmanageable mass of irrelevant data and obstructive administrative controls.
• Complying with policies, standards and procedures that add little or no value to their assignments and are of debatable value to their organisations.

The causes of these problems are many and varied, and not all have to do with management systems as such. There is little a manager can do about fast-changing business environments and the regular irruption of massive new technical factors (the millennium, the Euro, electronic commerce, smart cards, identity management, electronic document, record and email management, and so on), and some of the less attractive features of the working environment such as a pervasive short-termism, disruptive cultural and political factors and the routine replacement of action and substance by glossy reports and corporate rhetoric.

Nevertheless, all organisations harbour a huge and largely untapped potential for improving their management systems, and not only managers but the organisations they work for would benefit immensely if only more attention was directed to these opportunities. For example, it is now well established that most organisations suffer from anything between 10% and 30% on waste and rework. Imagine what that means:

• Sometime between Thursday and Friday lunchtime every week, everyone stops doing anything useful and starts pouring money down the drain instead.
• If an averagely profitable company with 25% waste and rework could reduce that figure to 15%, the money they saved would double their profit – without doing anything else!
• Every year, a company with a billion dollar turnover spends between $100,0000,000 and $300,0000,000 on doing nothing.
• With $100,0000,000 extra to spend each year, your company could [enter preferred management fantasy here].

Again, this is not a solely managerial issue and managers cannot solve it on their own, but few managers would have any trouble identifying examples of poor practice and poor systems. For example, most managers could probably identify places where the following kinds of problems simply waste their time:

• Altogether too much time is spent fire-fighting problems that should never have arisen in the first place, or for which a routine solution should already be available.
• Many management systems are incapable of providing managers with the information and decisions they need to do their work properly. This often includes an effective gap between individual assignments and the organisation’s overall goals. So an inordinate amount of effort is wasted scrambling for hard data and taking ill-informed risks.
• Management systems commonly assume that all assignments are essentially the same, prescribing boiler-plate ‘solutions’ that force all work through a uniform mass production routine. Such systems actively disable managers from handling unique problems or business-critical opportunities effectively. Elementary control structures designed to adapt generic systems to individual assignments such as ‘quality plans’ are a start, but managers still find themselves bending the rules in order to get the results they need.
• Few systems provide the methods, tools and techniques needed to effectively coordinate multiple assignments into a viable programme of interconnected assignments – and increasingly important demand on contemporary management.
• Although most organisations have a nominal strategy, even the most sophisticated, for whom multi-year, multi-functional, multi-national programmes are the norm, are often incapable of industry leadership, be it at the level of values, products, processes, technology or systems. As a result their strategies are prone to vagueness, instability and even flat self-contradiction

I should emphasise that I do not take a utopian view of management: there really are times when sacrificing a manager’s time and abilities is the least evil. But all too often even perfectly routine activities are brought to a halt by an arbitrary decision, false information, the lack of the right tool, an untrained staff member or bureaucratic ossification.

What is a management system?

A ‘management system’ consists of the totality of structures, functions, processes and mechanisms provided by the organisation as a whole, that enables managers to carry out their work successfully. Depending on its overall maturity, a typical management system will:

Identify the strategic purpose of individual assignments:

• Translate corporate purposes, goals and objectives into assignment purposes, goals and objectives.
• Provide strategic, process, technical and work environment planning.
• Assignment definition and validation processes.
• Define the relationship between the manager’s work and the company strategies, including an organisational structure, communications networks, shared information and decision-making processes, and so on.

Define the processes needed to carry out an individual assignment:

• Define management’s authority and responsibilities.
• Define a range of generic methodologies for executing processes of different kinds.
• Define the detailed functions and tasks needed to carry out a process.
• Provide a range of options and alternatives within any single process, and supply the methods and tools you need to choose between them.

Provide the technical resources and materials needed to carry out any assignment:

• Skilled people.
• Tools and systems (production lines, computer-assisted development tools, test tools).
• ‘Delivery vehicles’ (such as templates) for common technical activities.
• Technical support (R&D, configuration management, standards, tools development, etc.).

Create a working environment that actively supports the assignment:

• Support services (recruitment, training, repositories, tools development, coaching and mentoring, etc.).
• Administrative services (clerical support, data management, record management, standards, analysis and reporting tools, etc.).
• Work facilities and infrastructure (space, hygiene, communications, clerical materials, etc.).
• Storage for interim products (filing, configuration management, etc.).
• Processes and mechanisms for reassigning the assignment’s facilities once the assignment is complete.

Create and manage generic standards and procedures:

• Establish and maintain management methods, tools and techniques.
• Reference metrics.
• Create common and generic work facilities.
• Create support organisations.
• Define the manager’s relationship to stakeholders and regulatory authorities.
• Define the manager’s relationship to third parties such as contractors, suppliers and consultants.

Looks like a checklist to me...

Another way of defining the ideal management system is to take the shortcomings of many existing systems, as described above, and see what would have to be done to remedy them Here is an initial list:

Unnecessary fire-fighting would be eliminated if each management task or function was defined and effectively implemented. Among these tasks would be that of constructing new tasks as circumstances require. The definition of any given task might include (amongst other things):

• Task-specific objectives.
• The steps that are needed to carry it out.
• Defined inputs and outputs.
• Parameters for adapting it to different types of assignment.
• Supporting standards and procedures.
• The methods, tools, techniques, skilled resources needed to execute it efficiently.

These management tasks would be integrated into single whole, thus creating a management system properly so called.

• That system would incorporate (again, amongst other things) clear task interfaces and a fully mapped flow of information and decisions connecting the start and end points of any given assignment.
• Such a system would not only translate organisational goals into assignment requirements, management processes, technical resources and administrative functions …
• …but also provide early warning systems that trigger realistic and appropriate action, before adverse trends and risks turn into crises.

An ideal management system would also be adaptable to the demands of individual assignments. Very many current management practice already include quality plans to deal with this situation, but a more sophisticated system would be truly systematic:

• It would define parameters and tools managers would need to configure the system to meet each assignment’s unique objectives.
• It would be based on business objectives, the assignment’s critical success factors and its intended business purpose (product/service quality, operating costs, time-to-market, etc).
• It would match system components dynamically, to each assignment’s functional needs, not statically and according to the formal management system’s structure.

The performance and outcomes of individual assignments would be recorded in reusable formats, from which other assignments could benefit.

• This would require global repositories for organising and distributing key timely and reliable information and decisions, accredited subject matter experts and information mining tools.
• Such an approach would also allow multiple assignments to be integrated into completely work programmes.
• And of course, you would have to structure assignments in appropriately flexible and multi-dimensional terms in the first place – otherwise dismantling them for reuse would become a major project in its own right.

Out of such a system and the experience that it generates is abstracted and systematised a comprehensive model of all the factors and forces affecting the organisation, and a system for their management and further development. Such a structure would allow management to be as precise as it needs to be (with any degree of precision being attainable), would look forward and backwards over any strategically meaningful timescale, would structure any degree of internal and external complexity and change into simple, manageable terms, and could deal with any meaningful and credible future scenario. Thus, it would enable the organisation to exercise genuine industry leadership, capable not only of ensuring the organisation’s attainment of its current strategic goals but also of achieving the ultimate strategic objective, namely control over the environment in which the organisation operates.

Of course, even the most sophisticated a management system alone cannot create the vision needed to see where an organisation should be going, but the kind of system that is described above would surely be able to integrate complexly interacting strategies, goals, processes, systems, and so turn any rational vision into reality.

Few organisations really provide such a system, so managers as seldom as efficient or effective as they could be. On the other hand, the lack of such a system means that both individual managers and entire organisations operate in a half-light of inefficiently, assumption, politics, ad hoc adjustment and barely concealed crisis management. Internal propaganda levels are high, but real expectations are low.