Is your boss over the hill?
27 May 2008
It should not come as any surprise that we are all getting older. But what may creep up on us is that so many of our senior managers are getting too old – all at the same time. This is both inconsiderate of them - and problematic for the rest of us.
This was a thought that was thrust upon me when two separate events coincided in a pincer-like like effect resulting in me being unable to ignore it. The first thing was that Susan Mucha’s latest column arrived from across the Atlantic and highlighted some of the problems associated with The Changing of the Guard. She describes how the situation has evolved where expertise is in danger of being lost unless the situation is carefully monitored and handled.
A starker, and darker, version of the same problem confronted me when I went to visit a PCB manufacturer last week. I was there to discuss a whole range of things, but one subject that came up was the company’s management – and the simple fact is that he was ‘getting on a bit’. Notice I said ‘he’ and not ‘they’. This is because this particular company fell into a fairly traditional model an SME in the electronics industry. A huge number of engineers learnt their craft with the lumbering (often defence-based) giants back in the 70s. Frustrated with the lack of drive and excited by the possibilities of miniaturisation, surface mount and the rest of the technological progress in electronics, some of these people left to form their own, more agile companies to serve growing markets in computing, consumer and all the other markets that now have electronics at their heart.
Some of these companies crashed and burned, and therefore, obviously, have no management. Some grew big or huge, and therefore developed management structures that not only were able to guide the company from day to day, but also with a vision, sometimes even a plan, for the future.
But then there are the majority of companies that have done quite well. The founder’s dedication, perseverance, intuition and ability have enabled his or her company to not only survive but grow and flourish. And these companies, SMEs, can be managed in different ways.
Sometimes these companies are led with inspiration and employees buy-in to the company and become part of the reason for its success. In these cases the founder will have recognised his own strengths and weaknesses and those of his recruits, so that many people will have important roles in the functioning of the company. When the Managing Director takes the day off to play golf everybody knows what they are doing in his absence.
On the other hand there are those companies where the founder IS the company. I have been in factories where the Managing Director has the last say (and often the first) on design, procurement, production, finances, sales, marketing, health and safety, décor, IT and everything else. I have been in many of these companies and, quite often, they run smoothly. Unless the Managing Director takes the day off to play golf in which case nobody knows what they are doing – particularly if something goes wrong.
Of course, most companies fall somewhere between the two, but the closer they are to falling into the second model the more exposed they are. If the company revolves around one person, what happens when that person is not there? And going back to an earlier point, we are at a time in North America and Western Europe when our captains of industry are getting old. If a thirty-something set up their own company in the 70s then they re now of an age when they will probably be looking to move on to pastures new (or maybe be put out to pasture!).
A well managed company in this position might seamlessly be passed on to the next generation of managers, a badly managed company might have a void that is difficult to fill and the company may need a complete change of direction or ownership if it is to survive.
Either way, we have reached a time when many companies have ‘matured’ at the same time, and when SMEs now form the bedrock of industry in Western Europe and North America it could prove an interesting time while the ‘Guard is Changed’.
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