It is a common source of irritation, I suspect, to those of us who make lunchtime sandwiches for other members of our families to find them uneaten at the end of the day. For a sandwich making business, however, unsold sandwiches are an expensive waste of their inputs. They have been efficient enough to produce the required number of sandwiches, in the time given, to satisfy their consumers’ hunger. Unfortunately, the consumers themselves do not feel satisfied with what is being offered. In other words, while they have been efficient, they have not necessarily been effective in satisfying their consumer. Hence, for many businesses and organizations nowadays, it is important they gain an understanding of their customers’ or users’ needs when planning the production of their outputs. And even for employees, the needs of their managers and colleagues must be borne in mind as the internal customers of their work output. Their effectiveness can then be judged in terms of the satisfied needs of the customer or user, not just the end product.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Understanding management: I’m managing thank you! under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

If you are catering for a large group or running a lunchtime sandwich making business, you have to produce a large number of sandwiches, often in quite a short timescale. You may well employ your staff or volunteers in specialist roles: one person will butter the bread, another will grate the cheese, another will prepare the salad and another (if you have that many) will assemble the final sandwich, not forgetting to package and store them appropriately so they stay fresh until eaten. This specialization of job roles to deal with sub-processes, known as task specialization, should save you some time or at least make sure the required volume is delivered at the appropriate time. In other words, it should improve the efficiency of the process so that higher volumes of inputs can be transformed into higher levels of outputs in a relatively short time.

Certainly this is what F.W. Taylor (1856–1917) and his scientific management followers believed. However, there still remains a potential difficulty – this simplistic view takes no account of consumer needs.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Understanding management: I’m managing thank you! under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

Figure 1. The basic transformation model

Any job or task can be analyzed (or broken down into smaller parts) using the process approach, by first identifying its inputs and its final outputs, and then by examining the activities that cause the transformation from one to the other. These activities are known as sub-processes. Analysis in this way helps us to understand how we might improve the performance of the task in some way. Let us use the simple example of preparing a sandwich to illustrate analysis. Using the process approach we can analyze the job as having the inputs, sub-processes and outputs seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2. An example transformation model

In Figure 2, you can clearly see the main inputs of food ingredients, equipment (a knife), and human effort and expertise. These feed into the transformation process of making the sandwich which produces the desired output of … a cheese salad sandwich on brown bread (Figure 3)!

Figure 3. A cheese salad sandwich

We could go further with our analysis and examine the sub-processes involved in the transformation in more detail. For example, as you can see the making of the sandwich requires: the spreading of margarine, the slicing or grating of the cheese, the preparation of the salad, the assembly and slicing of the sandwich, and the presentation of the sandwich to the eater. Each of these activities we have analyzed can be broken down even further into its component parts involving transporting of the food products around the kitchen, movement of the knife in buttering and slicing, and so on.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Understanding management: I’m managing thank you! under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

Scientific management (sometimes known as ‘Taylorism’ after its key founding figure, F.W. Taylor, Figure 1) started out as a way of managing the operations of an organization, i.e. its main activities. F.W. Taylor (1856–1917) was a mechanical engineer who spent most of his working life in the US steel industry. He began his career as a laborer and rose to eventually become Chief Engineer for a large steel manufacturer, before finally becoming a freelance writer and consultant. Most of the companies he worked with were principally concerned with increasing production to meet the growing demands of the rapidly developing US economy.

Figure 1. F.W. Taylor

In his study of 1911, Taylor developed the view that all jobs could be broken down into a set of narrowly defined tasks and activities, each of which should be made clear to the person in the job. Each of these tasks and activities should then be observed and timed accurately, with a view to identifying any obstacles to speed and efficiency. From this a ‘most efficient method’ of performing each task could be developed for the job and all other jobs in turn. Taylor’s ideas, and in particular his focus on control and efficiency, took root in many developing manufacturing industries during the heyday of mass production in the first half of the twentieth century. The success of such business giants as the Ford Motor Company, an early convert to Taylor’s methods, owes much to scientific management. Indeed, there are still many signs of Taylorism in contemporary organizations such as fast food outlets, call centers and theme parks, where job roles are fairly tightly defined and employees actions are carefully controlled. Efficiency is also still a very important aspect of management and working life. Nevertheless, modern management thinking is that efficiency, which is related to the speed and volume of output a process produces, needs to be balanced against effectiveness, or the quality of that output.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Understanding management: I’m managing thank you! under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

• giving a higher priority to new email than is necessary
• accepting all telephone interruptions
• encouraging people to discuss their problems with you
• encouraging visitors
• holding meetings which are unnecessary, badly planned or badly conducted, or all of these
• reading slowly (much time spent reading documents)
• writing slowly (much time spent drafting)
• delaying starting important and urgent work, or procrastination (indecision)
• unnecessary or inefficient travelling

Try this

To identify time-wasters such as these, try keeping a log of your time – even if only for a few days. This can help you to identify where time is being wasted. At 15-minute intervals throughout a working week, note the main tasks on which you have been working. You can save time in keeping your log by preparing a pro forma sheet with columns headed with your most likely activities. Then you can insert ticks and an occasional comment. At the end of the recording period you should analyze the entries in the columns. This will reveal the proportions of time that you are spending on each aspect of your work, and it should highlight time-wasters and jobs that could be shed.

Eliminate interruptions

To manage effectively you need some time every day when you can give your undivided attention to your key tasks. Interruptions to this time will damage your concentration and your ability to think clearly. You could identify an hour each day when you are simply not ‘available’. If you want to keep face-to-face conversations short, don’t sit down. When you want to end a face-to-face discussion when you are sitting, sum up and stand up. Make appointments with visitors to talk to them at a more appropriate time. Better still, if the visitor is located nearby, visit them; that way you retain control over the length of your visit. Colleagues will soon start to respect your time and privacy. It becomes a status symbol – and like all status symbols it should be visible but not ostentatious.

Control meetings

Meetings are one of the most notorious wasters of time. If they are your meetings, first decide if they are necessary. If they are, then plan them carefully. Set an agenda, set a time limit, and keep discussion strictly to the point.

Speed up your reading and writing

If you are a slow reader, you can learn how to skim read. If you draft slowly, try a different method. For example, voice-recognition software can speed up your ‘writing’ because it enables you to speak your ideas rather than putting them down on paper.

Socializing or building networks?

Time spent socializing and on visits may be important to build networks and good relationships. If it is one of your key activities, do it. If not, limit it.

Don’t procrastinate

Procrastination is possibly the worst ‘thief’ of time for many managers. Difficult or disliked decisions and tasks are delayed in the hope, rather than the expectation, that they will resolve themselves or that new information will come to hand which will make things clearer. First, identify if there really is a difficulty with the decision or task – you could get help or advice. Second, try breaking a task into smaller, more easily achieved steps. Third, try allocating a time to the unwelcome task, preferably followed by something enjoyable, for example: ‘I will do this task between 10.30 am and 12.30 pm before lunch with Peter tomorrow’. But generally, procrastination is a habit and requires self-discipline to overcome it.

Is this journey necessary?

Travel is a serious waster of time if there are alternative ways of accomplishing a goal. There is little point in working evenings and weekends so that you can spend your days on the train or the motorway. However, when travel is essential, a long journey by train or plane or other form of public transport can provide uninterrupted time for you to discuss an important matter with a colleague, or to read or think. Technology can allow people to carry on with many normal activities while travelling. It can also be used to avoid unnecessary travel.

Summary

Like your other scarce and expensive resources, your time needs to be planned and budgeted to make effective use of it. Time planning is itself time-consuming and routine. But, like many routines, it can help to reduce pressure by reducing the uncertainty in your day, and thus lower the stress associated with uncertainty and lack of control.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

• stopping doing some tasks
• changing the task method to one taking less time
• reducing the quality of some work
• transferring tasks to other people

Getting rid of some of your work is an obvious solution. The problem for some managers is that they don’t know how to, or are unwilling to. They are perfectionists, worriers, interferers, individuals who cannot let go.

How to shed work

The techniques of shedding work are simple. You need to:

• concentrate effort on your key activities
• delegate

Concentrate on key activities

To concentrate on key activities requires you to identify carefully those tasks which must be done thoroughly. This does not mean that the others can be done to an unacceptable standard, but that you are better placed to allocate time and effort appropriately. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 law, should help you to sort out your priorities. It asserts, on quite strong evidence, that 80% of our results are generally produced by 20% of our effort – and that the remaining 80% of our effort is swallowed up in achieving that last 20% of our results. If this holds true for managers, then a lot of effort is devoted to jobs that don’t merit the effort. These jobs are candidates for shedding, or at least for receiving less attention. The trick, of course, is to identify the key 20% that means so much to your success.

Delegate

Delegation is the other main device for shedding work. Delegation means giving someone the authority (and the necessary resources, including time) to do something on your behalf. We mainly use the term when transferring work to the people who work for us. When you do this you retain the responsibility for it. Responsibility has been compared with influenza – you can pass it on but you cannot get rid of it. In exercising your responsibility you must strike an appropriate balance between trust and interference. When we transfer work to another department, or to a supplier or customer, we would usually call this transferring, rather than delegating work.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

There are three principles in improving time management:

• work shedding
• time saving
• time planning

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

Methods of reducing stress that work for the manager are also likely to be effective for the work team: less stress among direct reports will reduce demands on the manager. Possible actions include:

• Promoting collaborative working approaches. If you are careful to involve members of your team in making decisions about matters that affect them, they will be more likely to cooperate with you and with each other.
• Creating ‘stability zones’. These are areas of work over which you and members of your work group have some control, or a measure of control.
• Being alert to the actual demands being made on you and those in your work group.
• Ensuring that everyone knows their roles and the functions they are expected to fulfil.
• Setting yourself and others clear priorities and keeping an overview of everyone’s workload.

These actions will help you to monitor roles and workloads, to clarify expectations and help to provide staff with a sense of control and certainty, and to promote good relationships.

A final point is that it is common for managers to set themselves high standards in terms of both the quantity and the quality of their work. This is reinforced when the organizational culture creates an expectation of long working hours. If it is usual to hold breakfast meetings, this may create unreasonable pressures on staff who have school-age children. If these examples are familiar you should consider changing your own working practices and persuading other managers to change theirs.

We have considered mainly causes of stress which take place at work. There are many causes of stress in workers’ lives outside work. Some organizations make arrangements to help workers with their problems caused by issues outside work. Since this help can involve specialist knowledge, organizations may employ their own specialists for this. Managers need to know what the organization’s policies are on stress with causes outside work, and what they should and should not do.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

Symptoms of stress include:

• being too busy
• working longer hours
• insecurity
• an unwillingness to delegate
• loss of motivation
• indecision

Work performance may decline or become inconsistent. Other symptoms may include

• irritability
• short temper
• panic reactions
• heavy reliance on tobacco, alcohol or drugs such as tranquillizers

All can be signs of other problems, but their presence should make you suspect stress.

Once you are aware of the causes of unproductive pressure, you are in a position to address the problem.

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.

Demand

For the manager, demand will include responsibilities such as:

• responsibility for the work of others and having to reconcile overlapping or conflicting objectives – between group and organization, between individuals and group, and between one’s own objectives and those of other managers
• responsibility for innovative activities, especially in organizations where there is a cultural resistance to change.

When these demands are excessive, they can be regarded as role overload which occurs when a manager is expected to hold too many roles. In the recent past, many organizations in Europe and the USA have responded to demands for cost reduction by ‘delayering’. This involves reducing the number of managers, while the amount of work to be managed remains the same. Some organizations have implemented delayering by requiring that the remaining managers do all the work of managers now removed. They are also told to achieve the same quality as before. The managers affected may see this as an impossible task. Equally, role underload can be stressful if a person feels underused. Work overload and underload is different from role overload and underload. In work overload and underload, stress is created as a result of the quality and quantity of work demanded – either too much or too little.

Control

A manager’s role as coordinator can be stressful, especially where authority is unclear or resources are inadequate.

Role ambiguity, incompatibility and role conflicts

• Ambiguity about management roles is often inevitable: they invariably combine a number of overlapping roles. Indeed, it is precisely this overlap that makes management jobs interesting and offers scope for creativity.
• Role incompatibility occurs when a manager’s expectations of role are significantly different from those of his or her staff and colleagues. Pressure to do things that do not feel appropriate or right is stressful.
• Role conflict may occur when someone has to carry out several different roles. Although the manager may be comfortable about performing each role individually, there may be conflict when several roles are held at one time. This may include conflict between roles associated with home and family and roles associated with work.

Other major sources of stress that are not confined to managers but affect them include:

Relationship problems

People who have difficulties with their manager, their staff or their colleagues may exhibit symptoms of stress.

Support

All staff need adequate support from colleagues and superiors.

Career uncertainty

Uncertainty often occurs as a result of rapid changes in the economic situation inside and outside the organization, in technology, in markets and in organizational structures.

References

Acknowledgements

Adapted from The Open University’s OpenLearn (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk) material entitled Managing and managing people under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. As such, it is also made available under the same licence agreement.