Adaptability
I have been serving for far longer than I expected as interim manager for a local government the governing body of which has been unable to identify a candidate who is a good fit for a permanent position. This has led some community members express their opinions about how to fill the vacancy. Some other residents have offered their services in the role.
One of the latter opinions was expressed in a conversation that occurred a few days ago between a village department head and an individual who serves as warehouse manager for an area company. The perspective he shared was that management is management. The skills he employs in his current position would enable him to succeed in the village manager role.
At the beginning of my career, most who sought local government administrator roles pursued master degrees in public administration and served as interns and assistants in cities and villages. Some others found their way to executive roles by first working as department heads. A few came from the private sector or military leadership.
There has been an increasing tendency in recent years for governing bodies to look well beyond the pool of those who followed the traditional path of public administration graduate programs leading to management positions. This has been driven by a steep decline in the number of individuals who fit that model. Local government executive roles are not as attractive as they once were, it seems. Elected officials deciding whom to place in those roles have been forced to hope that management is management.
The degree program I entered in 1977 was ideally suited to provide me a solid base of knowledge in topics directly related to my intended goal of becoming a city manager. I took courses in urban planning, solid waste disposal, labor relations, public budgeting, capital budgeting, administrative law, and others. I also learned the fundamentals of management and public administration theory and practice. I do not know if today's public administration programs provide a similar introduction to the diverse areas of knowledge the a city manager will encounter. On the other hand, I believe that those who are teachable and have a basic grounding in management can acquire the skills and knowledge they lack through on-the-job training.
The basic grounding in management focuses on four key areas: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Does capability in these areas obtained as a municipal department head or in private industry guarantee success as a local government executive? The ability to adapt a management background from one setting to another depends on two factors.
The first of these factors is transferability. What is known about management in one arena should not be so specialized that it cannot easily be applied in a new setting. This characteristic is in line with the generalist nature of American public administration. It is expected that those capable of running local governments should be able to work equally well in a management role in state or federal government or in a nonprofit organization. In some instances, city managers have left the public sector entirely and built successful careers in business.
The second factor affecting adaptability -- in my opinion, the more significant -- is generalizability. One finds this term used most often when evaluating research findings. It addresses the question of whether results from a sample can be applied to a broader population or whether data obtained in one context is applicable to a different context. For the purpose of this essay, my interest is in using the term in a similar way to refer to the depth of understanding possessed by the management practitioner so that he or she is capable of success across a wide range of disciplines.
The importance of generalizability, in my opinion, is the direction it offers to those who wish to excel in management. It is possible to be successful in a city management role but fail in a management role in the private sector. This might be a problem of transferability, although this is less likely due to the generalist nature of the profession. It is more probable, in my opinion, that the individual simply lacks the knowledge necessary to effectively adapt management practice to the new setting.
What is required to generalize management knowledge and skills an understanding what works and why. It is a search beyond practices to principles.
One illustration of a failure of generalization can be found in the area of planning. There seems to be a fondness among those who facilitate group strategic planning initiatives at the level of an organization or a community to engage participants in SWOT analyses. These exercises have become so commonplace that participants expect them to occur. The original design of such exercises was at the product level, however, where a narrow focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats made sense. It is far less useful when applied to entire enterprises. As a consequence, some useful qualitative data is sure to be missed and the analysis of data obtained is not as thoroughgoing as it could be. Understanding the context of strategic planning at the organization or community level is an example of the necessity for generalizing that management function. The context is the "why" of the exercises that managers need when planning.
The pursuit of generalization in essential in all four of the management functions and the practices that comprise them. It is an antidote to management fads.
Fads get legs because someone promotes them as the basis of success when conducting organization case studies. Throughout my management career there have been countless instances in which some practice or other was promoted as the next big thing. A look back at organizations that attributed their success to this or that innovation finds that the success was not sustainable. In many cases, I suspect, what appeared as success was another example of the Hawthorne Effect.
Generalization, then, begins with a simple question -- Why does this work? - or its reverse -- Why didn't this work? To begin to answer these questions one must understand that what managers manage is people. The principles that undergird effective leadership can only be gathered by an intentional approach to motivating employees, superiors, and stakeholders. Effective interpersonal relations are essential to the generalization of all four management functions.
Adaptability, then, is a search for deep understanding of the principles of human relations. One of these principles is that managing is much more than directing. It is coordinating and collaborating. All else is built on this foundation.