John P. Kotter
Here is a description of a typical day in the life of a successful executive,
in this case the president of an investment management firm.
7:35a.m. Michael Richardson arrives at work after a short commute, unpacks his
briefcase, gets some coffee, and begins a to-do list for the day.
7:40 Jerry Bradshaw arrives at his office, which is right next to Richardson s.
One of Bradshaw s duties is to act as an assistant to Richardson.
7:45 Bradshaw and Richardson converse about a number of topics. Richardson
shows Bradshaw some pictures he recently took at his summer home.
8:00 They talk about a schedule and priorities for the day. In the process,
they touch on a dozen different subjects relating to customers and employees.
8:20 Frank Wilson, another subordinate, drops in. He asks a few questions about
a personnel problem and then joins in the ongoing discussion, which is
straightforward, rapid, and occasionally punctuated with humor.
8:30 Fred Holly, the chair of the firm and Richardson s boss, stops in and
joins in the conversation. He asks about an appointment scheduled for 11 o
clock and brings up a few other topics as well.
8:40 Richardson leaves to get more coffee. Bradshaw, Holly, and Wilson continue
their conversation.
8:42 Richardson comes back. A subordinate of a subordinate stops in and says
hello. The others leave.
8:43 Bradshaw drops off a report, hands Richardson instructions that go with
it, and leaves.
8:45 Joan Swanson, Richardson s secretary, arrives. They discuss her new
apartment and arrangements for a meeting later in the morning.
8:49 Richardson gets a phone call from a subordinate who is returning a call
from the day before. They talk primarily about the subject of the report
Richardson just received.
8:55 He leaves his office and goes to a regular morning meeting that one of his
subordinates runs. About 30 people attend. Richardson reads during the meeting.
9:09 The meeting ends. Richardson stops one of the people there and talks to
him briefly.
9:15 He walks over to the office of one of his subordinates, who is corporate
counsel. Richardson s boss, Holly, is there, too. They discuss a phone call the
lawyer just received. The three talk about possible responses to the problem.
As before, the exchange is quick and includes some humor.
9:30 Richardson goes back to his office for a meeting with the vice chair of
another company (a potential customer and supplier). One other person, a
liaison to that company and a subordinate s subordinate, also attends. The
discussion is cordial and covers many topics, from the company s products to
U.S. foreign relations.
9:50 The visitor and the subordinate s subordinate leave. He opens the
adjoining door to Bradshaw s office and asks a question.
9:52 Swanson comes in with five items of business.
9:55 Bradshaw drops in, asks a question about a customer, and then leaves.
9:58 Wilson and one of his people arrive. He gives Richardson a memo and then
the three talk about an important legal problem. Wilson doesn t like a decision
that Richardson has tentatively made and urges him to reconsider. The
discussion goes back and forth for 20 minutes until they agree on the next
action and schedule it for 9 o clock the next day.
10:35 They leave. Richardson looks over papers on his desk and then picks one
up and calls Holly s secretary regarding the minutes of the last board meeting.
He asks her to make a few corrections.
10:41 Swanson comes in with a card for a friend who is sick. Richardson writes
a note to go with the card.
10:50 He gets a brief phone call, then goes back to the papers on his desk.
11:03 His boss stops in. Before Richardson and Holly can begin to talk,
Richardson gets another call. After the call, he tells Swanson that someone
didn t get a letter he sent and asks her to send another.
11:05 Holly brings up a couple of issues, and then Bradshaw comes in. The three
start talking about Jerry Phillips, whose work has become a problem. Bradshaw
leads the conversation, telling the others what he has done during the last few
days regarding the problem. Richardson and Holly ask questions. After a while,
Richardson begins to take notes. The exchange, as before, is rapid and
straightforward. They try to define the problem, and they outline possible next
steps. Richardson lets the discussion roam away from and back to the topic
again and again. Finally, they agree on the next step.
Noon Richardson orders lunch for himself and Bradshaw. Bradshaw comes in and
goes over a dozen items. Wilson stops by to say that he has already followed up
on their earlier conversation.
12:10 A staff person stops by with some calculations Richardson had requested.
He thanks her and they have a brief, amicable conversation.
12:20 Lunch arrives. Richardson and Bradshaw eat in the conference room. Over
lunch, they pursue business and nonbusiness subjects, laughing often at each
other s humor. They end the lunch talking about a potential major customer.
1:15 Back in Richardson s office, they continue the discussion about the
customer. Bradshaw gets a pad, and they go over in detail a presentation to the
customer. Bradshaw leaves.
1:40 Working at his desk, Richardson looks over a new marketing brochure.
1:50 Bradshaw comes in again; he and Richardson go over another dozen details
regarding the presentation to the potential customer. Bradshaw leaves.
1:55 Jerry Thomas, another of Richardson s subordinates, comes in. He has
scheduled for the afternoon some key performance appraisals, which he and
Richardson will hold in Richardson s office. They talk briefly about how they
will handle each appraisal.
2:00 Fred Jacobs (a subordinate of Thomas) joins them. Thomas runs the meeting.
He goes over Jacobs s bonus for the year and the reason for it. Then the three
of them talk about Jacobs s role in the upcoming year. They generally agree,
and Jacobs leaves.
2:30 Jane Kimble comes in. The appraisal follows the same format. Richardson
asks a lot of questions and praises Kimble at times. The meeting ends on a
friendly note of agreement.
3:00 George Houston comes in; the appraisal format is repeated.
3:30 When Houston leaves, Richardson and Thomas talk briefly about how well
they have accomplished their objectives in the meetings. Then they talk briefly
about some of Thomas s other subordinates. Thomas leaves.
3:45 Richardson gets a short phone call. Swanson and Bradshaw come in with a
list of requests.
3:50 Richardson receives a call from Jerry Phillips. He gets his notes from the
11 o clock meeting about Phillips. They go back and forth on the phone talking
about lost business, unhappy subordinates, who did what to whom, and what
should be done now. It is a long, circular, and sometimes emotional
conversation. By the end, Phillips is agreeing with Richardson on the next step
and thanking him.
4:55 Bradshaw, Wilson, and Holly all step in. Each is following up on different
issues that were discussed earlier in the day. Richardson briefly tells them of
his conversation with Phillips. Bradshaw and Holly leave.
5:10 Richardson and Wilson have a light conversation about three or four items.
5:20 Jerry Thomas stops in. He describes a new personnel problem, and the three
of them discuss it. More and more humor enters the conversation. They agree on
an action to take.
5:30 Richardson begins to pack his briefcase. Five people briefly stop by, one
or two at a time.
5:45 He leaves the office.
The behavior Richardson demonstrates throughout his day is consistent with
other studies of managerial behavior, especially those of high-level managers.
Nevertheless, as Henry Mintzberg has pointed out, this behavior is hard to
reconcile, on the surface at least, with traditional notions of what top
managers do (or should do).1 It is hard to fit the behavior into categories
like planning, organizing, controlling, directing, or staffing. The implication
is that such behavior is not appropriate for top managers. But effective
executives carry our their planning and organizing in just such a hit-or-miss
way.
How Effective Executives Approach Their Jobs
To understand why effective GMs behave as they do, it is essential first to
recognize two fundamental challenges and dilemmas found in most of their jobs:
figuring out what to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of
potentially relevant information;
getting things done through a large and diverse group of people despite having
little direct control over most of them.
These are severe challenges with powerful implications for the traditional
management functions of planning, staffing, organizing, directing, and
controlling. To tackle those challenges, effective general managers rely on
agenda setting and network building. The best ones aggressively seek
information (including bad news), skillfully ask questions, and seek out
programs and projects that can help accomplish multiple objectives.
Agenda Setting.
During their first six months to a year in a new job, GMs usually spend a
considerable amount of time establishing their agendas; they devote less time
to updating them later on. Effective executives develop agendas that are made
up of loosely connected goals and plans that address their long-, medium-, and
short-term responsibilities. The agendas usually address a broad range of
financial, product, market, and organizational issues. They include both vague
and specific items. (See the exhibit A Typical GM s Agenda. )
A Typical GM s Agenda
Although most corporations today have formal planning processes that produce
written plans, GMs agendas always include goals, priorities, strategies, and
plans that are not in those documents. This is not to say that formal plans and
GMs agendas are incompatible, but they differ in at least three important
ways.
First, the formal plans tend to be written mostly in terms of detailed
financial numbers. GMs agendas tend to be less detailed in financial
objectives and more detailed in strategies and plans for the business or the
organization. Second, formal plans usually focus entirely on the short and
moderate run (3 months to 5 years), whereas GMs agendas tend to focus on a
broader time frame, which includes the immediate future (1 to 30 days) and the
longer run (5 to 20 years). Finally, the formal plans tend to be explicit,
rigorous, and logical, especially regarding how various financial items fit
together. GMs agendas often contain lists of goals or plans that are not
explicitly connected.
Executives begin the process of developing their agendas immediately after
starting their jobs, if not before. They use their knowledge of the businesses
and organizations involved along with new information that they receive each
day to quickly develop a rough agenda typically, a loosely connected and
incomplete set of objectives, along with a few specific strategies and plans.
Then over time, as they gather more information, they complete and connect the
agendas.
In gathering information to set their agendas, effective GMs rely more on
discussions with others than on books, magazines, or reports. These people tend
to be individuals with whom they have relationships, not necessarily people in
appropriate jobs or functions (such as people in the planning function). In
this way, they obtain information continually, not just at planning meetings.
And they do so by using their current knowledge of the business and
organization and of management in general to help them direct their
questioning, not by asking broad or general questions.
Having acquired the necessary information, GMs make agenda-setting decisions
both consciously (or analytically) and unconsciously (or intuitively) in a
process that is largely internal. Indeed, important agenda-setting decisions
are often not observable. In selecting specific activities to include on their
agendas, GMs look for those that accomplish multiple goals, are consistent with
all other goals and plans, and are within their power to implement. Projects
and programs that seem important and logical but do not meet those criteria
tend to be discarded or at least resisted.
Network Building.
In addition to setting agendas, effective GMs allocate significant time and
effort to developing a network of cooperative relationships among the people
they feel are needed to satisfy their emerging agendas. This activity is
generally most intense during the first months in a job. After that, GMs
attention shifts toward using their networks to implement and to help update
the agendas.
Network-building activity is aimed at much more than just direct subordinates.
GMs develop cooperative relationships with and among peers, outsiders, their
bosses boss, and their subordinates subordinates. Indeed, they develop
relationships with (and sometimes among) any and all of the hundreds or even
thousands of people on whom they feel in some way dependent. Just as they
create an agenda that is different from, although generally consistent with,
formal plans, they also create a network that is different from, but generally
consistent with, the formal organizational structure. (See the exhibit A
General Manager s Network. )
A General Manager s Network
The nature of their relationships varies significantly, and GMs use numerous
methods to develop them. They try to make others feel legitimately obliged to
them by doing favors or by stressing their formal relationships. They act in
ways that encourage others to identify with them. They carefully nurture their
professional reputations. They even maneuver to make others feel that they are
particularly dependent on them for resources, career advancement, or other
support.
In addition to developing relationships with existing personnel, effective GMs
also often shape their networks by moving, hiring, and firing subordinates. In
a similar way, they also change suppliers or bankers, lobby to get different
people into peer positions, and even restructure their boards. And they try to
create an environment in terms of norms and values in which people are willing
to work hard on the GM s agenda and cooperate for the greater good. Although
executives sometimes try to create such an environment among peers, bosses, or
outsiders, they do so most often among their subordinates.
Execution: Getting Networks to Implement Agendas
GMs often call on virtually their entire network of relationships to help
implement their agendas. I have seen GMs call on peers, corporate staff,
subordinates reporting three or four levels below them, bosses reporting two or
three levels above them, suppliers and customers, and even competitors to help
them get something done.
In each case, the basic pattern was the same. The GM was trying to get some
action on items in his agenda that he felt would not be accomplished without
his intervention. And he chose the people and his approach with an eye toward
achieving multiple objectives without disturbing important relationships in the
network.
GMs often influence people by simply asking or suggesting that they do
something, knowing that because of their relationship, he or she will comply.
In some cases, depending on the issue involved and the nature of the
relationship, GMs also use their knowledge and information to help persuade
people to act in a way that supports their agenda. Under other circumstances,
they will use resources available to them to negotiate a trade. And
occasionally, they resort to intimidation and coercion.
Effective GMs also often use their networks to exert indirect influence on
people. In some cases, GMs will convince one person who is in the GM s network
to get a second, who is not, to take some needed action. More indirectly still,
GMs will sometimes approach a number of different people, requesting them to
take actions that would then shape events that influence other individuals.
Perhaps the most common example of exerting indirect influence involves staging
a meeting or some other event.
GMs achieve much of their more indirect influence through symbolic methods.
They use meetings, language, stories about the organization, even architecture,
in order to get some message across indirectly.
All effective GMs seem to get things done with these methods, but the best
performers tend to mobilize more people to get more things done, and do so
using a wider range of tactics to influence people. Excellent performers ask,
encourage, cajole, praise, reward, demand, manipulate, and generally motivate
others with great skill in face-to-face situations. They also rely more on
indirect influence than do the good managers, who tend to apply a narrower
range of techniques with less finesse.
How the Job Determines Behavior
Most of the visible patterns in daily behavior seem to be direct consequences
of the way GMs approach their jobs, and thus consequences of the nature of the
job itself and the type of people involved.
Spending most of their time with others (pattern 1) seems to be a natural
consequence of the GM s overall approach to the job and the central role the
network of relationships plays. Likewise, because the network tends to include
all those the GM depends on, it is hardly surprising to find the GM spending
time with many others besides a boss and direct subordinates (pattern 2). And
because the agenda tends to include items related to all the long-, medium-,
and short-run responsibilities associated with the job, it is to be expected
that the breadth of topics covered in daily conversations will be very wide
(pattern 3).
Other patterns are direct consequences of the agenda-setting approach employed
by GMs. As we saw earlier, agenda setting involves gathering information on a
continual basis from network members, usually by asking questions. That GMs ask
a lot of questions (pattern 4) follows directly. With the information in hand,
we saw that GMs create largely unwritten agendas. Hence, major agenda-setting
decisions are often invisible: they are made in the GM s mind (pattern 5).
We also saw that network building involves the use of a wide range of
interpersonal tactics. Since humor and nonwork discussions can be used as
effective tools for building relationships and maintaining them under stressful
conditions, we should not be surprised to find these tools used often (pattern
6). Because maintaining relationships requires GMs to deal with issues that
other people feel are important (regardless of their centrality to the
business), it is also not surprising to find that they spend time on issues
that seem unimportant to them (pattern 7).
GMs implement their agendas by using a wide variety of direct and indirect
influence methods. Giving orders is only one of many methods. Under these
circumstances, one would expect to find them rarely ordering others (pattern 8)
but spending a lot of time trying to influence people (pattern 9).
The Efficiency of Seemingly Inefficient Behavior
Of all the patterns visible in daily behavior, perhaps the two most difficult
to appreciate are that the executives do not plan their days in much detail but
instead react (pattern 10), and that conversations are short and disjointed
(pattern 11). On the surface at least, such behavior seems particularly
unmanagerial. Yet these patterns are possibly the most important and efficient
of all.
The following is an example of the effectiveness and efficiency of reactive
behavior. On his way to a meeting, a GM bumped into a staff member who did not
report to him. Using this two-minute opportunity, he asked two questions and
received the information he needed, reinforced their good relationship by
sincerely complimenting the staff member on something he had recently done, and
got the staff member to agree to do something that the GM needed done.
The agenda in his mind guided the executive through this encounter, prompting
him to ask important questions and to request a needed action. And his
relationship with this member of his network allowed him to get the cooperation
he needed very quickly. Had he tried to plan this encounter in advance, he
would have had to set up and attend a meeting, which would have taken at least
15 to 30 minutes much more time than the chance encounter. And if he had not
already had a good relationship with the person, the meeting may have taken
even longer or been ineffective.
Similarly, agendas and networks allow GMs to engage in short and disjointed but
extremely efficient conversations. Consider the following dialogue, taken from
a day in the life of John Thompson, a division manager in a financial services
corporation. It includes three of Thompson s subordinates, Phil Dodge, Jud
Smith, and Laura Turner, as well as his colleague Bob Lawrence.
Thompson: What about Potter?
Dodge: He s okay.
Smith: Don t forget about Chicago.
Dodge: Oh yeah. [Makes a note to himself.]
Thompson: Okay. Then what about next week?
Dodge: We re set.
Thompson: Good. By the way, how is Ted doing?
Smith: Better. He got back from the hospital on Tuesday. Phyllis says he looks
good.
Thompson: That s good to hear. I hope he doesn t have a relapse.
Dodge: I ll see you this afternoon. [Leaves the room.]
Thompson: Okay. [To Smith.] Are we all set for now?
Smith: Yeah. [He gets up and starts to leave.]
Lawrence: [Steps into the doorway from the hall and speaks to Thompson.] Have
you seen the April numbers yet?
Thompson: No, have you?
Lawrence: Yes, five minutes ago. They re good except for CD, which is off by
5%.
Thompson: That s better than I expected.
Smith: I bet George is happy.
Thompson: [Laughing.] If he is, he won t be after I talk to him. [Turner sticks
her head through the doorway and tells him Bill Larson is on the phone.]
Thompson: I ll take it. Will you ask George to stop by later? [The others leave
and he picks up the phone.] Bill, good morning, how are you? Yeah Is that
right? No, don t worry about it. I think about a million and a half. Yeah
Okay Yeah, Sally enjoyed the other night, too. Thanks again. Okay. Bye.
Lawrence: [Steps back into the office.] What do you think about the Gerald
proposal?
Thompson: I don t like it. It doesn t fit with what we ve promised corporate or
Hines.
Lawrence: Yeah, that s what I thought, too. What is Jerry going to do about it?
Thompson: I haven t talked to him yet. [He turns to the phone and dials.] Let s
see if he s in.
This dialogue may seem chaotic to an outsider, but only because an outsider
does not share the business or organizational knowledge these managers have and
does not know Thompson s agenda. More important, beyond being not chaotic,
these conversations are in fact amazingly efficient. In less than two minutes,
Thompson accomplished all of the following:
He learned that Mike Potter agreed to help with a problem loan. That problem,
if not resolved successfully, could have seriously hurt Thompson s plan to
increase the division s business in a certain area.
He found out that one of his managers would call someone in Chicago in
reference to that loan.
He found out that the plans for next week about that loan were all set. They
included two internal meetings and a talk with the client.
He learned that Ted Jenkins was feeling better after an operation. Jenkins
works for Thompson and is an important part of his plans for the direction of
the division over the next two years.
He found out that division income for April was on budget except in one area,
which reduced pressure on him to focus on monthly income and to divert
attention from an effort to build revenues in that area.
He initiated a meeting with George Masolia to talk about the April figures.
Thompson had been considering various alternatives for the CD product line,
which he felt must get on budget to support his overall thrust for the
division.
He provided some information (as a favor) to Bill Larson, a peer in another
part of the bank. Larson had been helpful to Thompson in the past and was in a
position to be helpful in the future.
He initiated a call to Jerry Wilkins, one of his subordinates, to find out his
reaction to a proposal from another division that would affect Thompson s
division. He was concerned that the proposal could interfere with the division
s five-year revenue goals.
In a general sense, John Thompson and most of the other effective GMs I have
known are, as Tom Peters has put it, adept at grasping and taking advantage of
each item in the random succession of time and issue fragments that crowd his
day. 2 That seems to be particularly true for the best performers. Their
agendas allow them to react in an opportunistic (and highly efficient) way to
the flow of events around them, all the while knowing that they are doing so
within some broader and more rational framework. The networks allow terse (and
very efficient) conversations to happen. Together, the agenda and networks
allow GMs to achieve the efficiency they need to cope with very demanding jobs
in fewer than 60 hours per week through daily behavior patterns that on the
surface can look unmanagerial.
What Should Top Managers Do?
What are the implications? First and foremost, putting someone in a GM job who
does not already know the business or the people involved, simply because he or
she is a successful professional manager, is risky. Unless the business is
easy to learn, it will be very difficult for the new general manager to learn
enough, fast enough, to develop a good agenda. And unless the situation
involves only a few people, it will be difficult to build a strong network fast
enough to implement the agenda.
Especially for large and complex businesses, this condition suggests that
growing one s own executives should be a high priority. Many companies today
say that developing their own executives is important, but in light of the
booming executive search business, one has to conclude that either they are not
trying hard or their efforts simply are not succeeding.
Second, management training courses, offered both in universities and in
corporations, probably overemphasize formal tools, unambiguous problems, and
situations that deal simplistically with human relationships.
Some of the time-management programs currently in vogue are a good example of
the problem. Based on simplistic conceptions about the nature of managerial
work, these programs instruct managers to stop letting people and problems
interrupt their daily work. They often tell potential executives that short
and disjointed conversations are ineffective. They advise managers to
discipline themselves not to let irrelevant people and topics into their
schedules. Similarly, training programs that emphasize formal quantitative
tools operate on the assumption that such tools are central to effective
performance. All evidence suggests that while these tools are sometimes
relevant, they are hardly central.
Third, people who are new in general management positions can probably be
gotten up to speed more effectively than is the norm today. Initially, a new GM
usually needs to spend a considerable amount of time collecting information,
establishing relationships, selecting a basic direction for his or her area of
responsibilities, and developing a supporting organization. During the first
three to six months on the job, demands from superiors to accomplish specific
tasks or to work on pet projects anything that significantly diverts attention
away from agenda setting and network building can be counterproductive.
In a positive sense, those who oversee general managers can probably be most
helpful initially if they are sensitive to where the new executive is likely to
have problems and try to help him or her in those areas. Such areas are often
quite predictable. For example, if people have spent their careers going up the
ladder in one function and have been promoted into the general manager s job in
an autonomous division (a common occurrence, especially in manufacturing
organizations), they will likely have difficulties with agenda setting because
they lack detailed knowledge about the other functions in the division.
On the other hand, if people have spent most of their early careers in
professional, staff, or assistant jobs and are promoted into a general manager
s job where they suddenly have responsibility for hundreds or thousands of
people, they will probably have great difficulty at first building a network.
They don t have many relationships to begin with, and they are not used to
spending time developing a large network.
Finally, the formal planning systems within which many GMs must operate
probably hinder effective performance. A good planning system should help a
general manager create an intelligent agenda and a strong network. It should
encourage the GM to think strategically, to consider both the long and the
short term and, regardless of the time frame, to take into account financial,
product, market, and organizational issues. Furthermore, it should be a
flexible tool so that, depending on what kind of environment among subordinates
is desired, he or she can use the planning system to help achieve the goals.
Unfortunately, many of the planning systems used by corporations do nothing of
the sort. Instead, they impose a rigid number crunching requirement on GMs
that often does not require much strategic or long-range thinking in agenda
setting and that can make network building and maintenance needlessly difficult
by creating unnecessary stress among people. Indeed, some systems seem to do
nothing but generate paper, often a lot of it, and distract executives from
doing those things that are really important.
1. Henry Mintzberg, The Manager s Job: Folklore and Fact, HBR July August
1975, p. 49; reissued March April 1990.
2. Thomas J. Peters, Leadership: Sad Facts and Silver Linings, HBR November
December 1979, p. 164.
Dr. John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus
at Harvard Business School and the Chief Innovation Officer at Kotter
International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in
their organizations. His new book, Accelerate, released in April.