Managerial CommunicationFour Questions

• Is there a standard behavior pattern to managerial work?

• What causes this pattern of work?• Can you improve how they work?• How can you support this type of communication at a

distance?

How do managers spend their time?

• Henry Mintzberg. The Manager’s Job: Folklore & Fact.• “I intend to … introduce a more supportable and useful

description of managerial work [that] derives from my review and synthesis of research on how various managers have spent their time.”

• How do they spend their time?

Manager’s time use

Mintzberg’s observations

• Managers are always busy at activities characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity

• Spend much of their time in communication.• Strongly favor verbal media, telephone calls and

meetings, over documents.• Constant interruptions.• Action-oriented, with little time on reflective activities

(thinking & planning).• Day-to-day focuses on tangible details, not analytic

summaries• Makes decisions incrementally

Mintzberg’s summary

• “Pressures of the job drive the manager to take on too much work, encourage interruption, respond quickly to every stimulus, seek the tangible and avoid the abstract, make decisions in small increments, and do everything abruptly.” (p. 11)

How do managers spend their time?

Stylized facts found in many studies over decades

• In talk • Cumulatively with lots of others• Talk with peers & subordinates, not boss• Meetings are frequently small, informal, and

spontaneous• In fragmented activities

• Multiple tasks per day• Each task gets a small slice of attention at a time• Pattern is accentuated for senior managers

Time allocation among different managers (1980s & 1990s)

Medium (% of day) Average CEOCollege

presidentMiddle

managerMiddle

managerSchool

principal

Elementary school

principalScheduled face-to-face 27.8 35 34 10 34 26Unscheduled face-to-face 37.4 32 26 55 34 40Phone 8.8 6 6 9 13 10Total verbal 75.0 78 75 66 74 81 76Alone 25.0 22 25 34 26 19 24

Participants (% interactions)Subordinates 54.6 48 52 37 66 70Larger organization 18.8 7 8 52 21 6Peers & public 26.4 45 40 11 12 24

RhythmWork hours 45.4 44 52 42 44 45% of inteactions with 1 person 50.2 48 47 32 25 60 89# verbal contacts/day 15

Tasks per day

Interactants per day

% day in communication

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Senior MgmtOther

Face-to-face

Phone

Other communication

Solitary work

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Senior MgmtOther

Tasks on stack

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5

Senior Mgmt

Other

• Shadowing methodology

• Days are filled with people and interlocking tasks

• Each episode gets a few minutes

• Tasks are accomplished in small chunks

• Senior managers have more demands, but shorter attention spans

Minutes per episodes

OtherSenior

Phone Company Execs, 1990

IBM Managers, 2002

• Time-sampling method

• Face-to-face communication ~50% of time

• Unplanned ~40% of communication time – Planning increases

with number of participants

– With managerial level

IT & Financial Consultants 2004 & 2005

González, V., & Mark, G. (2004). Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness: managing multiple working spheres CHI04: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in computering systems (pp. 113-120). New York, NY: ACM Press.

Time spent in desk vs communication work~ 48% of work day in communication

Average time per episode before switch in form or substance

• ~ 48% of work day in communication• 2/3s in verbal communication• Short work episodes

Q: Does this pattern of communication serve a purpose?• Lots of communication• Many partners, especially peers & reportees• Spontaneous communication• Preference for face-to-face & interactive communication• Short episodes of communication & work, with lots of interruptions

• Functional explanations• Assume that common behaviors are retained because they benefit the

person/organization exhibiting them (e.g., Mintzberg)

• Mechanistic explanations• Identify the underlying mechanisms that produce the pattern• No assumption of beneficial outcomes (e.g., Perlow)

What causes this pattern?Is it functional or dysfunctional?

Functions of “Informal Communication”

Mintzberg: Debunking the traditional view of managerial work

• Myth: Manager as systematic, analytic planner– Reality: Works in short time blocks, time pressured, responding to

problems, in communication• Myth: Delegates & oversee, rather than works

– Reality: Many ritual & regular duties, responding to crises• Myth: Uses abstract, aggregate data to see “big picture”

– Reality: Strong preference for verbal media over documents– ad hoc meetings, phone calls, meetings

• Myth: “Scientific management” exists– Reality: Management is still highly craft-based and intuitive

Functional: Benefits from this type of communication

• Informal communication – Helps managers do environmental scanning, get info from lots of

sources, predigested, just in time decision making, incrementally shaping organization (nudging) towards larger plan

– Provides managers with fresh information to deal with uncertain tasks– Allows managers to fulfill communication roles– Gives managers better quality communication

• Interactivity for common ground• Visual elements for focus on work objects• Rich media for complex, equivocal, & ambiguous communication

tasks (?)

• Examples of informal workplace communication

Needed for managers roles & functions

• Functions– Plan– Organize– Coordinate– Decide– Control

• Roles– Interpersonal

• Figurehead• Leader• Liaison

– Informational• Nerve center• Disseminator• Spokesperson

– Decisional• Entrepreneur• Dispute resolver• Resource allocator• Negotiator

COMMUNICATION IS ESSENTIAL TO ALL ROLE

& FUNCTIONS

What are the problems with this style of communication?

Possible problems

• Interruption costs & switching costs– Too little time for sustained analysis & decision making– http://interruptions.net/

• Opportunistic communication – Over-exposure to local partners– Importance of communication not a criteria

• Managers’ communication needs place a communication burden on other workers

Interrupted

• Observations of 24 financial analysts & IT professionals

• ~ 57% of all tasks are externally interrupted• Average time on task between interreptions =3-11

minutes

Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). No task left behind?: examining the nature of fragmented work CHI '06: Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 321 - 330). New York: ACM Press.

When are interruptions harmful?

• When task requires concentration• When interruptions cause loss of train of thought (esp.

when interruptions don’t occur at a good break point)• When they lead to major task shifts

• “You forget what you are working on so you kind of do something else for a while and then you remember what you were working on.”

• “…you have your mind on something else and then you have to shift completely. It is disruptive in the sense that if we are going to leave it unattended for a period of time and by the time you come back to it your frame of mind is completely different …”

Perlow (1999): Time FamineResearch Methods

• Multiple methods– Participant observation– Interviews– Shadowing– Diaries: Beeper-Report activities in last hour

Perlow (1999): Mechanistic

Perlow’s explanation• Managers (and engineers) need to communicate for organizational

success• But they also need solo work time Engineers think interruptions are helpful to the organization, but get in the

way of their “real” (i.e., technical) work

• Failure of synchronization• A particular communication is likely to be more beneficial to the

initiator than the recipient• Initiator knows own current need, but not recipient’s state• Initiator schedules communication to fit own schedule• Much communication is opportunistic

• Coordination failures compounded by “heroic culture”• Best performers work 80-100/hrs weeks

• Engineers spent 60% of time in solo work• Short bursts, interrupted with interactions• 60% < hour long• 25% < 30 minutes long

What do you recommend to improve managerial communication?

• To handle the tension between spontaneous, informal communication vs. need for sustained periods of concentration

Perlow: One Attempt to Fix This Problem

• Concentrated “quiet time” gave impression of improved efficiency– Phase 1: Quiet morning vs interactive afternoons– Phase 2: Quiet 11-2– Phase 1: Quiet morning vs interactive afternoons

• Engineers report ~ 50% productivity gains• Gains evaporated as organizational culture reasserted itself

• Why?

Pricing Communication as a Coordination Mechanism

• Interruptions typical benefit interrupter over interruptee• Pricing encourages sender, who knows the content, to evaluate

a message.• For receive, price serves as

– Signal — “Is the message worth my time?”– Incentive to communication

Email Pricing Examined in Lab Experiments & Field Trials

• seriosity.com offers a virtual economy for email– Users get 100 ‘serios’ per week – Senders can place value on particular

msg they send

Sender: Pricing a msg Receiver: Sorting by price

• Recipients can sort by importance (serios)• Weekly quote senders won’t exaggerate

importance

Results of 11 Week Field Trial

• 26 people in a single department

• Serios influenced speed of attending: < 1-9 serios 37 min

> 20 serios 20 min

No serios 28 min