Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

The Master Manager: “Re-visioning”

Broadly speaking, managers can be classified into three categories: (a) the innocent manager, (b) the learned manager, and (c) the master manager (see figure 3.6).

1 Prior to the development of management as a profession and as a distinct educational discipline, most executives managed their business organizations through their common-sense and personal insights. If you operate at this level, you are an “innocent manager.”

2 However, as the functions of business and the processes of management became more complex, it was found that intelligence alone was not enough: specialized expertise was now considered essential for effective management. With professional management training, in acquiring further knowledge and skills of business functions as well as management processes, you become a “learned” manager. However, as management becomes even more complex, and you become involved in multiple roles and responsibilities, there are concomitant conflicts. As you face up to these, a growing feeling of apprehension and stress often occurs. At this point the learned manager experiences, on the one hand, an escalating achievement orientation and, on the other, a growing dependence on external factors. At this stage, you experience maximum stress, in that while you are managing your organization you are also in a sense being “managed” by it.

Figure 3.6 ...