Simply Managing

2 Managing Relentlessly

The pressures of managerial work

Have a look at the popular images of managing—that conductor on the podium, those executives sitting at desks in New Yorker cartoons—and you get one impression of the job: well ordered, carefully controlled. Watch some managers at work and you will likely find something quite different: a hectic pace, lots of interruptions, more responding than initiating.

This chapter describes these and other dynamic characteristics of managing: how managers work, with whom, at what pace, and so on. Much of this evidence comes from the earlier studies, but more recent research suggests it is fully up-to-date (e.g., Hales 2001 and Tengblad 2006).

I first described these dynamics in my 1973 book. None of ...