FAME OUTLINE

FAME

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The complex operations of an organization center on the effective and efficient use of money, manpower, and equipment in achieving the organization’s purpose.  Preparing management staff to meet the challenges of these complex operations continues to be an elusive goal of management training programs.  Most training programs fail to integrate the concepts of organizational strategy, structure, and process, the nature of managerial work, and human cognition and temperament requirements for the management function.  The solution to this shortcoming is Awareness.

UNDERSTANDING A MANAGER’S NEEDS

As in virtually all endeavors, success often depends on identifying and solving problems before they cause loss of control.  There are not any broad-scoped problem-solving methodologies that can address the complex problems caused by organizational strategy, structure, and process dysfunction.  This is the biggest problem-solving need a manager has, and it is not addressed in management training on the practical or academic fronts.

This problem-solving need highlights the importance of the manager’s level of self awareness, job awareness, and organizational awareness.  Such awareness promotes defining and understanding problems, and this is the largest contributor to the solution.  Awareness is the manager’s key to understanding and controlling his milieu.  Naturally, the manager’s awareness will dictate what skills he needs to develop or improve, what resources he needs on his management team, what the barriers are to good communication, and what the bounds of his achievements will be in terms of resource and time constraints.

There are three aspects to the manager’s awareness as indicated above.  Each of these aspects propels the manager to the forefront of his milieu and enhances his ability to manage.

The self awareness aspect deals with the manager’s cognitive abilities and decision-making processes.  The Manager needs to be aware of biases and how to control them and what randomness looks like in his or her essential data and information sets.  One needs to learn how to use assessment and selection methodologies by accounting for personal cognitive processes in the application of the methodologies.  Learning such methodologies without self-awareness is counterproductive.

The job awareness aspect confuses many managers who do not realize that their job is one of much diversified work at an unrelenting pace.  A manager laments, “I did not get anything done today because I had constant interruptions.”  He in fact got a lot of managerial work done, i.e., he was just doing his job but did not realize it!  Awareness! A manager needs to understand the nature of his work.  It is not the planning, organizing, staffing, measuring and so on that is important in the manager’s job.  These are responsibilities that can and should be delegated and certainly do not require the full time and attention of the manager.  What does require the full time and attention of the manager is managing, and he needs to be aware of the major roles in his job and the specific activities he must perform in those roles.

The organizational awareness aspect helps the manager understand his company’s performance in terms of its organizational strategy, structure, process, and company management philosophy.  As such, organizational principles are the lynchpin of the management function.  Specifically, one must understand organization before one can understand management!  These items are intimately related and create considerable problems in organizational change processes if not understood.

Managers have many more needs than the three awareness needs cited above, but those are the basis for satisfying all other needs through commonly available training based on organizational behavior and management skills training.

HOW FAME ADDRESSES PROBLEMS AND NEEDS

FAME is a management improvement course based on the premise that personnel designated to lead and control activities need to become smarter about themselves, their jobs, and their organization before their skills can be improved.  FAME deals with improving the effectiveness of individuals and prepares them to become more efficient through skill development as commonly provided by organizational behavior and organizational development training.  Such training programs assume the manager understands human cognitive and decision-making processes, the true nature of managerial work, and why organizational change occurs.  These assumptions cannot be justified even for senior managers because there has been no practical, integrated presentation on the FAME awareness principles as related to improving managerial effectiveness.  To clarify FAME, the major parts are outlined below showing the basic awareness elements in some detail.

SELF AWARENESS MODULE

HUMAN COGNITION AND TEMPERAMENT IN MANAGERIAL WORK

  • Cognition and information processing (the communication gap begins)

Information processing and memory

Learning and judgment

Thinking and bias control

  • The Jungian structure-Psychological types (The communication gap widens)

Introvert/extravert reality differences

Intuitive/thinking response and perception differences

  • Temperament

Managing the communication gap

Team building

Operationalizing management team talent

JOB AWARENESS MODULE-THE NATURE OF MANAGERIAL WORK

Reference: Mintzberg, H.-The Nature of Managerial Work-Harper and Row, New York, 1973

  • The interpersonal function (Formal power, authority, and responsibility)

Figurehead role

Liaison role

Leader role

  • The informational function (Operating infrastructure-Information flow network)

Disseminator role

Monitor role

Spokesman role

  • The decisional function (Change control process)

Entrepreneur

Disturbance handler

Resource allocator

Negotiator

THE ORGANIZATIONAL AWARENESS MODULE-STRATEGY, STRUCTURE, AND PROCESS

Reference: Miles, RE, Snow, CC. Meyer, AD, and Coleman, HJ Jr., Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1978.

  • Organizational types (Operationalizing strategies for the business environment)

Implicit

Prospector

Analyzer

Defender

Reactor

  • The organizational adaptive cycle (Management process and the operating infrastructure)

The business problem

The technical problem

The management problem