‘All management practitioners not professional managers’ - Dr. Uditha Liyanage

‘The Professional Manager attempts to provide useful knowledge that has immediate relevance to the way you ought to see that which is around you, and in fact within you,” Director PIM Dr. Uditha Liyanage said launching the first issue of The Professional Manager.

Its ambitious, yet compelling intent is to disseminate cutting-edge know-what and importantly, do-how knowledge on best management-thinking and practices.

It attempts to do so, because PIM believes that its central mission is to transform management practitioners into thoroughbred management professionals.

Clearly, all practitioners of management are not professional managers. One does not inevitably lead to the other,” he said.

“The behaviour of a hard-nosed practitioner and that of a mature professional, in the wake of decision-making, is markedly different. The practitioner depends almost entirely on his experience; that which has happened to him.

The professional, on the other hand takes the learnings of his past encounters into reckoning, but goes beyond mere experience.

He would expertly fuse his past experience with his learning of concepts and frameworks and his robust theoretical foundations, which then becomes the basis for his informed decision-making.

This procedural, indeed ordered and disciplined thinking process, is by no means straight-jacketed. It brings to bear a non-conventional, creative approach to calling the shots and making vital decisions that are well founded and rooted in knowledge, he said.

The professional sees the world-of-work with a pair of eyes that is beyond the vision of the practitioner. His seeing is again shaped by knowledge, which includes, but transcends personal experience. Because he sees the world differently, he does different things, and consequently gets results that are vastly different to those of the practitioner, who can only boast of his years of experience, and provide anecdotal accounts of his accomplishments.

Let me illustrate the point that the world’s great managers do different things and do things differently because they see things differently.

An extensive study done by the Gallup organization, among others, asked simple but in depth questions from great managers and mediocre managers. Interestingly, the former did not fashion their perceptions simply on their experience, but on deliberate reflections of their experiences. Such reflections based on knowledge, transmuted their experience,” into the experienced, “Dr. Liyanage said.

Q: As a manager, which would you rather have; an independent, aggressive person who produced $ 1.2 million in sales or a congenial team player who produced about half as much? Please explain your choice?

A: Great managers replied that they would prefer an independent, aggressive person rather than the half-as-productive team player.

They reasoned that the independent, aggressive person was probably more talented but harder to manage. The team player was probably less talented for the role but much easier to manage. Great managers are not looking for people who are easy to manage

They are looking for people who have the talent needed to be world-class. Therefore, they prefer the challenge of taking a talented person and focusing him or her toward productivity rather than the challenge of trying to make a less productive person talented.

Q:You have two managers. One has the best talent for management you have ever seen. The other is mediocre. There are two openings available: the first is a high-performing territory, the second is a territory that is struggling. Neither territory has yet reached its potential. Where would you recommend the excellent manager be placed? Why?

A: Great managers would always place the most talented manager in the higher-performing territory. The key phrase in the question is neither territory has yet reached its potential. Great managers use excellence as their measure.

They know that only the talented manager working in the higher-performing territory has a chance to help that territory reach its true potential. Taking that territory to excellence is just as much of a challenge for the talented manager as is moving the struggling territory up above average.

Furthermore, the former is much more fun and much more productive. With the talented manager positioned in the higher-performing territory, great managers say they would then remove the poor manager and select a talented turnaround expert to fix the lower-performing territory.

To those who would do the opposite, great managers offer this cautionary word: Your less talented manager will never make the most of the higher-performing territory, and the lower-performing territory may well defeat your talented manager. In this case, with the best of intentions, you have set up two people to fail and halved your productivity. (Marcus Buckingham, 2005).

If you see the world only through the filters of your past experience, without letting your world view be shaped by knowledge, then the parochial practitioner in you will manifest. Dr. Liyanage said.