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How our managers go wrong.
Compiled by Eng K K Hewavithana
Engineer Motive Power (Diesel Hydraulic), Sri Lanka
Railways.
Email: [email protected]
Today any modern organizations in this highly competitive
business environment facingseveral challenges namely challenges due
to advancement/development of technology,availability of sufficient
financial back up, competition from other players, competitionfrom
alternative products or services etc. But due to the open
environment and liberalpolitical setup spread throughout, may be as
globalization and development ininformation technology it is very
difficult to gain a competitive advantage through abovefactors. It
is clearly evident that in todays environment competitive advantage
emergesfrom better utilization of human capital. It is to attract
talented, dynamic self motivatedand knowledgeable people to the
organization and more importantly retain them withinthe
organization. Effective handling of human capital can only be
ensured by usingcorrectly formulated management decisions which are
taken by middle and higher levelmanagement. Correct attitude of the
leadership towards decision making will act a vitalrole in this
process.
Management decision making process is highly influenced by the
perception of themanager. It is the process by which managers
select, interpret, retrieve and respond to
information received from the environment or organization. It is
clearly understood d thathuman perception differs so much among
individuals. Because perception acrossindividuals differ so much,
the same incident, problem and challenges will naturally
beperceived differently among members within the organization. Due
to this perceptionvariety people will act differently for the same
event.
In a highly complex and widely spread organization like Railway
it is impossible todevote managers attention to all information
available to them. So naturally they tend toselect, either
consciously or unconsciously, the information they will process.
This issomething like riding a bicycle by controlling only the
actions needed to keep it balance.
Managers organize information as efficiently as they can, and
they often need to useschemas and scripts to do this.
What is the schema/script? Schema is a knowledge stricture that
managers use toorganize and make sense of social and organizational
information and stricture. For example Stereotypes are schemas
.Managers have schema about group of people,specific profession,
cultures ect. While schema offers managers a system for
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categorizing and understanding behaviour of staff, they do not
necessarily guidemanagers into a specific action
Script guides one to understanding others behaviour and help
guide ones ownbehaviour or sequence of behaviours and events.
Managers can only behave in the
organization properly only if they know the right
script.Distortion in the managers perception process will
definitely affect both selection andorganization processes. Most
common perception distortions are
Stereotyping- This involves attributing behaviours or attitudes
to a person based on thatpersons membership or association of
particular group or category. (People often makeassumptions about
behaviour based on persons occupation or membership. For example,
managers may think a person as a trouble maker because he is a
member of a radical union.) Stereotyping tends to be inaccurate and
therefore managers must beaware of the danger in adapting them.
The Halo Effect- This exists when an individual allows one
salient aspect of a person todominate the individuals evaluation of
that person.( For example an enthusiastic publicspeaker who handles
questions very well might be perceived to be
intelligent,knowledgeable and friendly . A poor public speaker
might be perceived to be ill-informed or incompetent.)If managers
give prominence to one or two characteristics of aperson they risk
making broad assumptions about ones overall character,
intelligenceand effectiveness in an organization.
Projection-This exists when an individual attributes his/her own
attitudes or feelings toanother person. People often make the
assumptions that others are like themselves.For example, a manager
who believes that others are respecting the importance of
confidentiality may find later that some information is leaked.
Self fulfilling prophecy- This exists when an individual expects
another person to act or behave in a certain way, and they tend to
see these expectations realized. It must beunderstood that others
also may have methods or ideas which are equally good or evenbetter
than the method expected by the manager.
Elimination of above distortions is a prime requirement for
todays manager.
