[MUSIC] In this final segment, of the first module the focus is going to be on what's in it for me? What's in it for you? What does all of this stuff that I've been talking about in terms of new ways of working. Actually mean, for us as individual employees. And I'm going to look at it both in the point of view of you as a manager of others, but also you just as a regular employee in an organization whether large or small. Let's take your role as a manager first. This is assuming that you have, you know, two people working for you or 200 people working for you. The same basic logic applies. Go back to the, the chart I showed you, three segments ago where we looked at the three waves. The Industrial Era, the Knowledge Era, and the Post Knowledge Era. In each of these waves, I argue that the fundamental sources of competitive advantage were shifting. From labor and capital to knowledge and information. To action and emotion. Each of these eras, you can actually kind of map onto it. A kind of an assumption about the nature of management work. So, in the old industrial era what was the job of the manager? Well, it was all about control. The manager's job was to monitor what happened, to control behavior of human beings, people working for them in order to make sure that they kind of did what they were told. And of course, as I, as I've already said, that worked very nicely in that era. But it was a very narrow and very traditional view of the work of management. What is the role of the manager, in the knowledge era? Well I would point to two things. One is that of course, in the world of knowledge and information, you know, one of the jobs of the manager is, is really as a conduit for information. The manager's job, is to be the person whom through, through whom, information flows. And if you're very senior, you're job is to pick out information from the outside world, and feed to it down. Perhaps if you're more junior, you're role is, to act essentially as the conduit between the top and bottom of the hierarchy. And that's an important role, but of course, it's also a very narrow role. Another part of the managers job in the knowledge era, of course, is being an expert. It's about being, the knowledgeable expert on the particular issues in question. So if you are running a factory, you'd better know everything there is to know about that factory. If you're in charge of a, an a group of actuaries in an insurance company, you'd better be a really good actuary. Again, that is a very particular set of skills and many people do it very well. As we move to the third era. The post knowledge era. What is the role of the manager there? Well that's kind of interesting isn't it? Because I've already said that the key differentiators are the ability to take decisive action. The ability to develop an emotional conviction. So, for me the managers role is two things. It is about essentially being very good at getting things done, implementing, following through, making sure that people actually deliver on their commitments. Not being afraid, occasionally, to even get involved in the dirty, nitty-gritty, day to day work yourselves, rather than standing above it. And then the second part is a completely different job. Which is, is almost like an empathizer. It's about creating, an emotional relationship with your, with your colleagues, with your employees, with your customers. It's about figuring out a way of harnessing that sort of emotional energy that exists, that makes your product or service or company special. And sometimes if you're at the very top of the organization, it's about delivering a really powerful message about the way that the organization needs to go in the future. Now again, these three waves, we're not saying for a second, that the old stuff is irrelevant. Managers still have to monitor and control. They still have to be a conduit for information. But as we become more and more progressive in terms of the way that, that our organizations think, the old roles become less important. We don't need to control people so much, if they're actually motivated to do a good job themselves. We don't have to be a conduit for information so much, because information moves freely. There's a great deal of transparency in organizations today. And, arguably there should be even more than that. So, as organizations gear up, if you like, for the challenges of the 21st century, the role of the manager, has to gradually lose some of those traditional qualities. And take on, some of the newer qualities. Successful managers today, it's almost all about the people. It's almost all about getting the most out of people. And all the other stuff around information and control is secondary, is necessary but it is not sufficient. So that is a point of view, on the role of the manager in the modern workforce. And just to give you one more example. Here is a, a nice chart, from Google actually. It was reported in the New York Times a couple of years ago and it was a story about Google, doing a project they called Project Oxygen. And it was Google's attempt to essentially figure out what made for a successful and effective manager. I needed a very detailed quantitative study. They took thousands and thousands of their personnel reports to figure out, what made a difference between a really good manager and a really poor manager. And, and the list is in front of you, I'm not going to read through this list. What you see here, is some very interesting points about the, the nature of management, it's all about trying to get to know your people, coaching them, taking an interest in their work. You know, technical skills are much less important, than people skills. So, we're going to talk much more about this issue, in the final module of this course, in terms of what it, what you actually have to do to become a better boss. But, in order to make sure that the links to the, the bigger picture are not lost we're introducing it here.
