Navigating Complexity: A Contemporary Approach to Management
My Journey in Management
If you search for a management definition, you will stumble upon many, but all of them seem generic and vague. Despite the vast number of books, articles, and blog posts on management, there is no unique definition.
Let me share a personal journey to cast a light on the subject. In the early stages of my career, I had a complicated relationship with management. When I was a developer, I was advocating for the need for good practices, automation, TDD, etc., but my conversation was focused solely on the technical benefits; I couldn't get my manager to see their broader business value. I struggled to communicate the broader business benefits, feeling like we were speaking different languages. I was so frustrated that I wrote a note: “I must learn how to speak with managers”.
Then, gradually I shifted my focus to process and team, and I became an Agile coach. I broadened my perspective in this role by studying organizational design, coaching, and the different leadership styles. Most importantly, I learned how to shape my message, understand the problems and constraints managers faced, and finally find a middle ground with them.
The big step was when circumstances pushed me to become a manager myself. Initially, I remember colleagues joking about it, and for a good time, I was a bit ashamed of using the title. I came from a cultural background of highly skilled developers adopting eXtreme programming, where the phrases: “Are Managers needed?” were paramount. In that period, I started going deep into the management topic, and, to my surprise, I realized that there is no single agreed-upon definition of management.
If there are many versions, definitions, and flavors of management, I decided to frame mine; one more will not hurt the environment!
In this series, I'll unpack the multifaceted role of management as I've come to understand it, exploring its disciplines, metaphors, and values.
- Part one: In this first post, I’ll introduce the three core concepts of the manager’s multidisciplinary nature, the ecosystem metaphor, and finally, the management styles.
- Part Two: We'll tackle the provocative question, 'Are Managers Needed?' delving into the evolving role of leadership in modern organizations.
- Part Three: I will delve deeper into managers' multidisciplinary roles, introducing a domain model that has helped me organize and navigate the vast body of management knowledge.
- Part Four: We'll explore the implications of viewing management through the 'ecosystem' lens, discussing how this perspective transforms traditional management roles.
Join me as I dissect what management truly means and how it can be effectively applied.
The Multifaceted Role of Today’s Managers
In software development, we are used to the idea of multidisciplinary, but sadly, this idea remains mostly confined to technical roles. In my domain, everyone has heard of the full-stack developer, an almost mythological figure who could work on every aspect of the tech stack. Everyone is also familiar with the T-shape concept, which describes someone with a broad, shallow knowledge of different topics and deep knowledge of a specific technology.
We rarely talk about management in a similar way, but in my opinion, a manager shares many similarities with the T-shaped concept. There are also some discrepancies. One big difference is that managers don’t work in a team; at best, they work in a group of managers. They don’t have the support developers could find in their team, and the growth depends on their attitude to be out of their comfort zone and rapidity to learn. One last difference is that a manager needs to go deep in more than one skill, going towards an M-shaped concept.
A manager is exposed to many different concepts, ranging from business to processes and organizational designs. It is essential for managers to be effective communicators, understand people management, and grasp key industry elements. However, this notion is rarely stated clearly.
When you start your journey, you are exposed to all of them, which can be overwhelming and confusing, and finding your way could be challenging. For example, you may be asked to participate in a strategic session and contribute your input to the meeting, but it may be the first time you contribute to a strategy.
To fill the gap, we could learn from our colleagues and dedicate time to studying, prioritizing the most urgent subjects. I personally leveraged my previous experiences in training, coaching, and consulting to sense the situation and apply a mental model I was familiar with to the new scenario I was facing. In the end, this also helped me frame my idea of management as a multidisciplinary role, in which you anchor on what is already part of your knowledge and expand to other domains.
Obviously, the body of knowledge is huge and impossible to master entirely, and probably it’s also the reason why there is no clear unique definition of management.
I personally framed it in four areas: Business Management, Process and organizational design, people management, and industry domain.
I’ll discuss this classification in part three, but for the moment, we could say that anyone will specialize in some domains more than others. However, what’s essential is having a certain level of awareness in all domains. In my case, while deepening my expertise in process and organization design, where I already had a good background, I expanded my knowledge of business and people management, which is my form of being M-shaped.
One last word on people management: companies are made of people and their behavior and communication flow. With this in mind, I see the manager’s role as one of communication and facilitation, where empathy and soft skills are essential.
Organizational Metaphors: Machines vs. Ecosystems
If you are asked to describe with a metaphor how a company works, what metaphor do you choose? To simplify answering the question, I propose two different metaphors to choose from.
The first states that a company is like a machine, with departments and functions as the machine’s components; every part of the system pursues efficiency and must act synchronously to achieve the overall goals. Processes and procedures are defined to guarantee standards and repeatability, and people must adhere to them. In this way, people are part of the machine, but their role is secondary and replaceable like cogs.
This metaphor defines the company as a deterministic system, where problems have a root cause and are a deviation from standards. Any changes should be avoided or assimilated without altering the underlying structure and process.
From the management perspective, this drives all the practices of traditional management: the command and control structure, the adherence to plan, the long-term forecasting, the necessity of having a repeatable process, and the fact that people's growth, interest, and motivation are secondary to the company's stability.
This is the most famous metaphor, and it’s present in companies, as well as in our education system and government (to name a few). Since the Industrial Revolution, when machines changed society, efficiency, and way of life, the metaphor has been predominant in our culture, and now it comes naturally to refer to it.
The second metaphor describes the company as an ecosystem composed of subsystems and actors intertwined in a network of information and influences. One key concept is that studying and optimizing a part does not guarantee a contribution to the system's overall understanding and efficiency. People are essential actors in the system, and their development is paramount to the company’s success. Process and standards are important to enable certain behaviors, but they are transient, meaning that their effectiveness is limited in time and subject to the system’s changes and adaptation and depends on the current context in which they are applied.
This metaphor defines the company as a complex (adaptive) system in which change is a characteristic and then unavoidable. Change drives evolution and adaptation, and it’s generated by external forces (think about the impact of the pandemic on companies) and internal behavior. Adaptation is a first-class citizen fueling innovation and the company's and its people's evolution.
The manager’s role shifts in this context. A manager needs to observe the system in its entirety and discover behavioral patterns. They must influence the system through processes and practices, knowing that every intervention is context-dependent and has a limited-time effect. Observation and empathy are key soft skills to practice, and a different leadership style is generally required, focusing on facilitation, coaching, empowering people, adopting a systemic approach, etc.
This is not to say that planning, estimations, processes, and standards are valueless or should be discarded under this metaphor. I see them as tools that produce certain dimensional information rather than exact values to match, and the tool itself is subjected to change like everything else in the system. For example, it’s possible to approach plans or budgeting iteratively and treat discrepancies as a source of learning and adaptation, not mistakes.
What is fascinating is that this metaphor could also apply to cities, economies, and social systems.
In the case of organizations, I’m convinced that the complex system metaphor better matches the complexity of our times, complexity that can be seen at the macroeconomic level, at the company level, and down to the social and personal level. In this context, a traditional management approach lacks the tools to comprehend the complexity, and a different approach is required.
Reflecting on Values and Management Styles
From the previous section, it could seem that one metaphor is right and the other is wrong, but that’s not true. Certainly, the metaphor you adopt influences your management style, but leaning towards one or the other depends on your culture, attitude, personal beliefs, and, most importantly, the context you are in. Understanding these metaphors isn't just an academic exercise—it's about aligning them with actionable management practices that reflect what you truly value.
In theory, we could agree that the ecosystem metaphor better grasps the complexity of our time. However, recognizing this is not enough to adopt a different management style; it requires a different set of standards and behaviors. To bridge this gap, it's important to reflect critically on the values that underpin your management decisions.
To stimulate reasoning, consider the following questions designed to help readers assess whether their current management practices align with the complex system metaphor or the traditional machine view. These aren't just theoretical considerations; they are practical queries that test the consistency between what we claim to value and what we actually practice in our management roles:
Leadership
Do you delegate defined activities to be checked on completion, or do you delegate responsibility and mentor the delegee during execution?
Is Leadership a quality reserved for managers only, or is it an emergent trait anyone could show in the company in different circumstances?
How do you approach psychological safety? Are you actively trying to shape an environment where people can speak without fear of being judged?
Organizational Practices
How do you treat corporate activities like budgeting, revenue estimation, portfolio management, and resource allocation? Do they create a plan to adhere to or envision a path subject to modification during the year?
Are you willing to accept that some practices and processes can no longer be effective without implying that they were wrong in the past or that their proposer was wrong?
Decision Making
Do you prefer to make a decision based on partial data with the aim of collecting early feedback and then adapting, or do you prefer to spend time crafting the best decision at the cost of delaying feedback and validating your assumptions?
Do you evaluate people by activities completed and seniority or by outcomes and trajectory on personal growth?
System Thinking
How often do you step back from your day-to-day activities to observe how the information flows, trying to spot emergent roadblocks?
Do you evaluate whether a decision you are crafting could have unexpected consequences in other parts of the system?
Knowing your company’s business model, do you have the opportunity to evaluate whether the process and practices are still relevant in supporting your business?
One final remark: in answering the questions, I suggest you follow what you apply daily or are forced to apply by the system you work in, which is not an ideal scenario. If you find discrepancies between your daily practices and ideal management style, consider what barriers prevent alignment.
Bringing It All Together
In this article, I have defined three main concepts: the multidisciplinary nature of management, the company metaphor, and what we value. In this final section, I want to highlight how these concepts are connected.
The ecosystem metaphor depicts a scenario in which complexity and uncertainty are key. To help navigate this environment and not feel overwhelmed, seeking help from well-established practices like the System Thinking mentioned above, Cynefin, Beyond Budgeting, and others is useful. Incorporating this knowledge into your toolbox shapes your values and management style.
The metaphor also implies that managers must have a holistic approach and grasp the essence of the overall system. For example: How does the information flow? What is the company’s core business? What drives the other departments or teams? Asking those questions is relevant regardless of seniority and management level. In finding the answers, managers will gradually expand their skills and expertise outside their core, leading to the multidisciplinary role discussed in the first section.
Now, I would love to hear from you. How does this reasoning sound, considering your context and experience? Have you applied these concepts in your role, or what challenges do you face in adopting the ecosystem metaphor? Feel free to reach out in the comments below, by email, or through LinkedIn; I would love to continue the conversation!