TOP OF THE TRIANGLE?

This misleading picture of management has become a universal creed since it first emerged in the 1960s. Whatever the intentions of its original author, it has been presented as a prescriptive model of what management consists of, what managers do and what information they use to do it. The story goes something like this:

• Managers at the top of an organization, like directors and CEOs, are concerned with 'strategy'; or the long term view. What concerns them is not what is happening today, but what they want to happen in the future. So, for example, the CEO of a car manufacturing company focuses on what the car market will be like in the next decade and what kind of model needs to be planned and developed for that future market.
• Managers at the level below this are concerned with 'tactics'. What concerns them is what is happening now and in the near future. For example: what adjustments have to be made to the volume of production, pricing, advertising or distribution of an existing product; to ensure its continuing success.
• Managers at the operational level have to ensure that these tactical adjustments are carried out.

Now let's consider what really happens by telling a disguised true story. A company making diesel-engined cars has secretly distorted the engine emission data for one of its models to make it look like it meets legal environmental criteria; when, in fact, it doesn't. After the car has been on the market for several years, an investigative journalist discovers and reveals this illegal deception, and the news of it goes viral on the internet and in the media. Now what do the CEO and the directors of the company do? Do they stand aloof from this current issue because their concern is with strategy rather than daily tactics in dealing with this scandal? No; they immediately forget about plans for the next decade and take hold of managing the daily tactics of dealing with the media.

And, at other times, what about those tactical and operational managers? Do they leave strategy to  the CEO and the directors? Of course not. How could any strategy about what kind of model needs to be planned and developed for that future market, without referring to information about the existing production capacity, workforce skills, logistical facilities, etc.; in order to assess what changes and development will be needed? To do this, experience at the tactical and operational 'level' needs to be included at the strategic 'level'. Hence, 'tactical' and 'operational' management is involved in 'strategy'.

Far from being a triangle of 'levels', management is something that emerges from dynamic groupings and combinations that change in response to unpredictable disturbances from the environment of the organization.

There are no fixed hierarchies in management

More symptoms . . .