Great Managers Fail

I recur fairly often to the topics of management and leadership, mostly because they're the hardest game in town.  (And yes, we could have a Talmudic debate about how "management" is and is not "leadership," but since my goal is to finish this piece during one lunar cycle, we shan't.)

Jonathan Byrnes, a senior lecturer at MIT, with a Ph.D. from Harvard Business School, has a few thoughts on what it takes to become a "master" manager, coincident with the commencement season at HBS and MIT.

Properly, he starts with the historic understanding of a "master."  The progression, you'll recall, is apprentice --> journeyman --> "master."   Apprentices are, well, apprenticed to masters to learn the basics of their trade; when they have advanced sufficiently in skill and expertise, they can leave the master's workshop to journey, plying their trade.  Finally, as they become truly accomplished, they can aspire to produce one or more "masterpieces," an object of superb refinement, which, if the guild deems it worthy, entitles him to open his own house and begin to take in apprentices.

One of the finer points of this system—and a testament to its solid wisdom—is that masters have not only the privilege but the obligation of taking in apprentices, in order to perpetuate and refine the craft.  A closely related privilege, and obligation, is to continually seek to produce yet more "masterpieces," advancing the art of the trade.  Byrnes observes that, touring the great museums of the world today, all we see are these masterpieces, and not the countless hours of toil and training behind them, nor the intrinsic soundness of the system that both enabled and cultivated their creation.

So what has this to do with managing in your firm?

The analogy is, to my mind, spot-on direct.

Managers have two fundamental privileges, and obligations:

• to train, develop, nurture, and coach, the next generation of managers for the firm, who will eventually succeed them; and
• to create managerial "masterpieces," exercises in combining astute competitive and business intelligence with a nuanced appreciation of where client needs intersect with the firm's capabilities, to produce tactical and strategic initiatives that move the firm forward.

An indispensable prerequisite to growth as a manager (or as an apprentice, or a journeyman) is the chance to fail.  (And if failure is bad enough in corporate America, it's positively horrifying in law-land, where we're all perfectionists and all stupendously above average.)  If it's the case, as Byrnes relates of one of his clients, that "It's OK to experiment, but you better not be wrong," how much growth and learning would you expect to find? 

Contrast that with the fertile environment wherein the best idea truly does win:

"Every week, I receive e-mails from former students and readers seeking advice about business problems. These almost always concern difficulties in implementation. The correspondent has figured out a better way to do things, but can't get his or her counterparts and colleagues to accept it.

"Masterly managers, and those trained by them, are experts in implementation because they are oriented toward working through others and are receptive to others' ideas. An organization characterized by master managers is very receptive to change because the managers are conditioned to be open-minded and inquisitive. They are used to trying out ideas on others, and have been taught to view management as a process of give and take, a marketplace of ideas in which real value wins."

The goal, then, is for the "master" manager to be able to work so well through others that he or she can truly focus on the broad challenges and opportunities facing the firm, analyze and discuss them with candor in an atmosphere of trust, and drive the firm farther and farther ahead of its peers.

But first, you need to issue "permission to fail" cards far and wide.