| Do active managers outperform traditional managers? You bet they do. Let me tell you why.
Traditional managers are reactive. They wait for problems to occur and then try to put out the fires. In the meantime, they take care of “business as usual”—scheduling, assigning tasks, checking on employee activity, and writing reports. Their vision is also short-term. They focus on immediate results. In the worst of practices, they simply arrange to get rid of those employees that aren’t cutting the mustard. Needless to say, these kinds of managers are becoming expendable when organizations need to downsize or embrace flatter, more teambased structures.
Nontraditional managers are active. They don’t wait for problems, they anticipate them. They don’t sit around merely watching what the troops are doing. Instead, they take care of “business as unusual”—developing their employees, both to do their current jobs as effectively as possible and to be in a position to do new jobs when change inevitably occurs. Active managers are indispensable to already great organizations and those that want to be.
Active managers are indeed “active,” doing many things that the traditional managers gives scant attention to. They understand that inspiring and managing top performance is a continual process, not something left to the occasional event such as a performance review. They seek opportunities to empower their direct reports and encourage personal responsibility and self-initiative rather than simply telling people what to do and monitoring the outcome |
