Is management a role in organizations? Actually, not by definition. It could benefit from an upgrade.
Management acquired a bad name in the late seventies for being bureaucratic, stifling innovation and focusing only on costs and targets, not people. This backlash was caused by the Japanese success in selling better quality, lower cost electronics and cars in the sixties and seventies. A crisis mentality arose in the West that led to the replacement of management with leadership. This was a sad emotional reaction. We still need management but it must be reconfigured to fully serve its purpose.
The best place to start is to see management as a process or tool that anyone can apply. Everyone has something to manage: themselves, their time, talent, career, personal finances, relationships with people, everything that is important in your life. Management is like investment, an aim to get the best return on the investment of all your resources to help you reach whatever goals are important to you.
Self-employed people working from home with no people to manage, need to apply management disciplines to make the most of their time and other resources. The key management discipline is being organized. This includes setting goals with timeframes, prioritizing, following up on projects and reviewing how you are using your resources to maximize efficiency.
Compare managing to cooking; both are processes or tools aimed at achieving a certain goal. Anyone can cook, just as anyone can manage. Some use these processes well, others not so well. Some self-employed people who manage their time and talent well, achieve a lot. Others drift along with inconsistent focus and achieve little. There are professional cooks just as there are professional managers. Both are paid for their service because they are skilled at applying these processes.
The bottom line here is that management is not bureaucratic by definition. It’s not a role in an organization by definition either. This is easier to see today when work has become so unstructured, distributed, remote and informal. Up through the seventies, organizations were much more highly structured, rigid hierarchies.
Professional managers are asked to assume positions of responsibility in organizations. Because they are paid for their work, they are expected to manage well. Being an effective manager means carrying out the tasks that lead to success in a particular organization which means getting the best possible return on all resources at the manager's disposal. This can vary widely from banks, manufacturing companies to charities and arts organizations. In all cases, management operates much like investment although it is much more involved in maximizing that return.
In an organization that needs innovation to succeed, a good manager must set up processes to encourage innovation and help it flourish. Accounting or compliance managers may need to be more rule-bound and may not need to foster innovation. What counts as good management is relative to the purpose it is expected to serve.
Management vs Leadership
People can be appointed to roles in organizations where their job title is Manager. There are no leadership roles. Leadership can only be SHOWN. Think of MLK Jr. He showed leadership by promoting fair treatment of African Americans, not by leading a team. His leadership was therefore occasional, not a role. Similarly, everyone can show leadership by example. Even whole countries can lead by example, say by adopting novel green practices that other countries strive to emulate. Managers can also occasionally show leadership but leadership is an act of influence not an ongoing role. People like to be called leaders as it’s more glamorous but this says more about such people’s needs than it does about the function of leadership or management. Recognizing that you are a manager who may, or may not, occasionally show leadership is humbling but at least honest.
Managing People
Good managers know that you can’t get the best out of people by treating them as commodities. Getting the best out of people requires motivation, empowerment, engagement, inspiration and the creation of team spirit. There is nothing bureaucratic about the way a good manager gets the best out of people.
Managing Change
If an organization needs to undergo significant change, it may take a good deal of inspiring leadership to influence people to change their ways but the hard work of getting to the destination is a management task with a few occasional leadership injections along the way to keep people inspired. You might say that leadership sells the tickets to a new destination and management drives the bus that gets us there.
Managing Relationships
All managers have strategic relationships to manage, people who are essential to help them achieve their goal of maximizing the return on their investment efforts. Management differs from financial investment by virtue of being much more actively involved in massaging those investments. With important relationships, it's critical to understand stakeholder needs and to be able to build a friendly enough relationship that a good degree of trust is built. These criteria require a good dose of emotional intelligence and relationship building skills. Keeping key stakeholders informed and delivering on promises to them are also important factors. So, management requires a complex set of skills, not at all the robotic actions portrayed by it's critics of the late seventies.