On describing this concept to my university audience, they just groaned; not so much at the amount of money, but at the unhappy fact that they must prepare and account for every dollar in their budgets up to eighteen months in advance. No slack or flexibility exists. They can't "play" with any money and this year is the longest time horizon their system allows. And it is boring and frustrating.
Government and not-for-profit institutions particularly suffer from a shortage of resources and overly restrictive bureaucratic controls, but of course many businesses do also. In general, however, today's most innovative firms provide internal environments more attractive to self-developer types.
Insensitivity to Political Environment
All human organizations are political. For a business to be effective, its managers must engage in the politics by which power is directed to problems and solutions implemented. Unfortunately, many young managers are insensitive to or resentful of "office politics." This hurts them personally because they become passive about their careers and it hurts the firm because it hinders the power coalition development necessary for effective performance.
Managers who rapidly climb hierarchies tend to be protégés of successful higher executives. In general, sponsor-protégé linkages move together because their members come to respect and trust each other. They personalize organizational life and make it more predictable. A manager who has a problem prefers to consult a friend, not just an anonymous incumbent of a bureaucratic position. Unfortunately, the criteria for inclusion in the group are often arbitrary and undemocratically devoted to old school ties and "proper" religion, race or gender, but they are still important.
The importance of political relationships to the corporation is that they form the power coalitions necessary to implement decisions. Very few firms are autocratically ruled by an omnipotent chief executive; even fewer are pure democracies in which the majority dominates. Most require a skillful minority coalition able to lead the majority through competent argument and common action. Without strong coalitions, power remains fractionated, actions are divisive, and the firm drifts willy-nilly.
Older pragmatic executives sometimes complain that recent business school graduates overemphasize rational analytical tools to the detriment of human understanding. Like the primarily achievement need-oriented managers section, many young grads treat others as manipulable objects. And indeed, business school students appear to be even higher in their indices of Machiavellianism than practicing managers.34 With experience, successful managers learn that they generally must treat people with respect and honesty or retaliation will render them ineffective. Unfortunately, some bright and ambitious young professionals learn too slowly. One senior corporate executive told me that half of the MBAs he hired failed and were asked to leave after three or four years because they still hadn't learned that "people are human beings and not merely entries in some analytical equation."
Personal Passivity
Young professionals who are insensitive to their political environments frequently are also characterized by personal passivity and inadequate probing of the world around them. Overly confident people may assume that their virtue guarantees reward and that their good intentions are enough to make everyone think they are doing a fine job. The less confident may feel helpless because organizations seem to have so many confining rules and traditions that one can't risk being different. To behave differently might be dangerous because "one simply doesn't do that." Of course, corporations demand substantial conformity, but many binding chains are of our own forging because we are afraid to test ourselves or lack faith that the firm would reward our initiatives.
Drifting with the times in the hope that things will work out for the best is tempting but not a recipe for managerial success. The paradox is that it may be the most promising young staff specialists who find it easiest to drift. To be in demand connotes status, and being busy gives a feeling of importance. Talented young people sometimes allow themselves to be dominated by others' desires, to become captives of narrow specialties, and to remain in staff positions too long. If you think of the firm as a cone, staff tends to be on the outer surface whereas line management is closer to a central power axis. A thirty-year-old staffer fairly high on the surface of the cone might erroneously denigrate a lower line position physically farther away from the top but closer to the power axis with a more direct route upward.
Tension with Older Managers
Tension between different aged professionals is very common. It may be greater or lesser depending on personalities, but basically the tension stems from differences in life and career stages. Recent graduates understandably rely on what they know best--academic knowledge from school. Statistics, finance, psychology, and economics learning, of course, can all be very valuable, but they can also hinder working relationships with older colleagues. Armed with an arsenal of analytical techniques, you look for problems to which they can be applied. But frequently the problems the textbooks have solved are not the important ones in your firm. Worse yet, talking to seniors in the arcane vocabulary of stochastic variables, portfolio theory, breakeven points, and self-actualizing opportunities can be threatening to them. Older managers to whom such terms are unfamiliar may believe they are being manipulated.
In some cultures older persons are automatically respected for age and assumed wisdom, but in the United States the young often respond to older people's skepticism with thinly veiled contempt. Because an older manager does not know the latest techniques, the young professional erroneously infers that the manager is incompetent or impotent. This can be a career-crippling mistake, because political influence has little to do with technical knowledge. An offended older executive can scuttle the offending younger manager's advancement.
You need to recognize that some older managers may see you as a threat (although they will deny it even to themselves). The threat is not to their job, but to their obsolescence. You are a reminder of human mortality--and this is so even when your boss personally likes you. The best younger managers know how to project themselves into the shoes of their boss and anticipate what his or her needs and anxieties are, recognizing that they must give as well as receive.
