The Hindu Business Line : Maximising value

MANAGERS in most modern organisations are responsible for optimising output from minimal resources regardless of changes in the business environment. While this may be a welcome challenge, what baffles managers is the massive amount of non-value adding work that is added to their list of responsibilities.

Most of such work is clerical in nature and hampers managers' effective contribution to organisational goals. Not only that, but it also exhausts them. Consequently, managers are unable to attend or even complete core tasks in time.

Let us say, for example, a fast-moving consumer goods company operating out of two remote manufacturing locations in Tamil Nadu, has a niche market for its soaps and low-priced detergents. Pitched as it is, against the multinational giants, the marketing manager of this company would have a very challenging task on hand: Increase the brand image of the company among existing customers and plan brand extensions in a phased manner, that would consolidate the position of its brand across South India. The mammoth task would require him to go on extensive tours, collect customer feedback, plan advertising campaigns and stick to a low-cost business model through it all. If this marketing manager had to bother about the nitty-gritty of the distribution channels, for example, he would obviously be diluting his value addition to his core job of brand building.

Such an organisation would do well to recruit MBAs as management trainees from second-tier B-Schools, train them on the job and employ them for subsidiary tasks aligned with the core marketing jobs.

In fact, some of the smart companies operating in similar markets in Tamil Nadu follow this model of building talented managers. The relatively less pay packages in such organisations is off set by rich job satisfaction.

The key questions are: What are the key tasks that need to be done, in terms of managers' potential to bring in profits? What should be the profile of managers to get these tasks done? What are the subsidiary jobs that align with the most important core jobs? Answers to the first two questions lie in hiring talented managers. Manpower selected and trained to do the jobs associated with the third question could be junior executives and clerical staff, who will add some value to the final outcomes. This is the best way to organise managerial jobs in order to maximise their value.

A. B. Sivakumar

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