11 Mar Formal Authority – in praise of managers

This article is in praise of managers (and supervisors and bosses and senior managers and junior managers). If you think management is a swear word, just hold your horses for a moment. 

While leadership is not a position, management is, and we don’t talk about it enough. Formal authority (being a manager at some level) gives authority over and through people – which gives access to information – which guides action and drives the work. 

Managers are usually crazy-busy people. They have to take care of the action (making sure that stuff gets done), they have to take care of the information (making sure that the right people know the right things in time for them to make good decisions), and they have to take care of a wide range of people (linking their own group, liaising with peers and relating to bosses and suppliers and customers). Their title gives them power and authority, along with responsibility. 

In a recent leadership workshop, we explored formal managerial authority, setting aside for a moment the ideas of “leadership” and asking, “what’s left when you take leadership away?” As it turns out, there is a lot left – managers must serve as figureheads in ceremonial events like staff farewells and social occasions, and they must liaise with a wide range of people within and outside their organisational unit.

Managers also spend time on gathering, distributing, and presenting information within their own group as well as across groups and up the organisational hierarchy. On top of that, managers shape change efforts in their unit (to processes, systems), they settle things down when things go wrong, they guide and shape work allocations and distribute resources for daily work. 

Managers also negotiate with everyone for things ranging from a better deal from suppliers, better contracts from clients, more budget for the next year, or new furniture for a weary team. 

Managers get all of this done in an environment of constant disruption – leaving meetings early to deal with some other issue, taking an urgent client call while sharing information with a colleague, or being called to a crisis while in the middle of preparing a plan. 

Managers benefit from help to grow their network (for better information and influence), help to develop decisional heuristics (to speed up problem solving) and help to keep focus on the work outcomes (so as not to veer off course). 

And before you yell “what about leadership,” it is without a doubt one of the ten or more behaviours of good management. To paraphrase Henry Mintzberg, managers link and lead people. They also frame, schedule, communicate and control information, guide, shape and make decisions, and they do the work – all in a morning. 

And yes – leadership is the behaviour that determines how much influence a manager can have, and how effective they will be as managers – but leadership alone is not enough. All aspects of a managers role need to be honoured, including but not limited to leadership.

When this is true, then organisations flourish. Good management is without doubt a critical factor in providing structural support for a successful organisation – giving rise to the idea that performance can be built into the system. In our March Conversation café, we explore this and other structural elements of success as we discuss “Context Engineering” through a thought experiment that asks, “What if there were no training budget”?

Imagine if there were no budget for training. How would we still help people grow and perform?

This isn’t an argument against training—it’s an exercise in rethinking how learning happens. If we strip training away, we uncover what the organisation itself can do to enable performance. Then, when training returns, it can be more targeted, impactful, and seamlessly integrated with daily work.

Join us for this conversation and explore how workplace design—not just training—can create the conditions for long-term success. Register [here].

Until then – if you are a manager, be proud of that. At the next braai, use “manager” when someone asks you what you do – and then smile quietly as they look as though you just swore. They don’t get it. But you do.