How the Managerial Escalator Applies to the Career Experiences of Managers - Essay Example

?Executive Summary In this paper, the role of managers is defined as being that of supervising, directing, planning and coordinating the activities of organizations, it then discusses the concept of management escalator that applies to the progression of employees from technical to managerial positions. The paper presents the results of two interviews on managers who had moved up the managerial escalator one Brad Egeland, from being a programmer to a program director and another Drue Hammond from a crewmember to a Human resource consultant at MacDonald’s. Their rises through the ranks are discussed at length from their points of view as expressed during the interviews and in summary; it is found that the management escalator model fits with their career advancements. In any organizations, the role of management is crucial in ensuring the smooth running of activities and day to day operations, it is for these purpose that certain individuals; by virtue of their academic qualification, experience or both occupy management positions in most firms either formerly or informally (Reh, n.d). Specific duties of managers vary in different firms; nonetheless, managers are generally tasked with the responsibility of planning, monitoring and directing the efforts of a group of individuals place under him/her. They may direct works through supervisors or do it directly, however for one to be an effective manager, they needs must be familiar not only with the workers or supervisors, but also with the jobs, which they do. This is not to say they must be the best at any, or all the duties carried out by their subordinates many, who are specialists, however, they should have some understanding of the working of the different departments to be able to synchronize their activities as well as to direct the efforts. Managers specialize in is in knowing how to manage the resources at their disposal in their particular organizations and departments, and this mostly means human resource, however they also oversee the use of other resources such as money and equipment (York 2009, 185). In many organizations, managers emerge from the teams therein especially individuals who prove they have not only the requisite skills and experience but also leadership skills. Thus it is possible a specialist or technician to escalate to the top of the ranks and become a manager, they will apply not only their technical skills but acquired experience and judgment as well as familiarity with firm procedures to run their respective departments (Richard 2001, 17). In this essay, focus will be on management and based on how the managerial escalator (Rees and Porter, 2001) applies to the career experiences of two managers who have made it to management levels from the bottom. The term managerial escalator refers to the progression of responsibilities in a firm gradually from technical or specialist to managerial positions gradually through time to help employees acquire the managerial skills while honing their technical skills. Initially, specialists spend a major fraction of their time in the organization engaged in their fields of specialization, however , the more competent specialist or those who show leadership potential gradually acquire supervisory duties, albeit informally at times. This is because leadership skills are necessary in a manager, these can be seen in their behavior and attitudes, and they are used to determine if he/she is capable of taking charge and responsibility of a team (Wilson et al, 2006, 21). The promotion of the best performers can often be attributed to the fact that most organizations run on a reward system, however employees who gain academic credentials such as master’s degree substantial improve their chances of “escalation”. The transition from technician to management is takes time and this can be as much as 5 to 10 years or as little as one year, depending on the organization’s structure. Specialist may begin to acquire more responsibilities than their peers and even seniors based on their competence and levels of expertise; this is often followed by a formal promotion to a managerial level. It is worth noting that despite being good at their work, some technicians may not perform as managers and thus even in the process of promotion, attention must be given to other factors apart from technical competence such as confidence, language and communication skills (Morgan Sourcing, n.d, 1 ). During the transition, the responsibilities placed on the specialist as a manager gradually increases in inverse proportion to their specialist roles, for most people they end up spending all their time on the managerial roles (Rees and Porter 2001, 20). Depending on the particular organizations, this promotion would usually involve an element of managerial responsibility and one may be made team leader or similar elevations, these serve as platform on which the bosses can test him and determine his fitness for promotion. It is worth noting that promotions do not have to be limited to the organization for the individual to be considered to escalate, they may be transferred to a different branch of the firm. They could even be hired by another firm which may have noted their progress and wishes to utilize their talents, such situations often culminate in a junior manager in affirm being “poached by another and elevated further in the new firm possibly to senior management. For this paper, I interviewed, two individuals holding in management positions in their respective organizations, the one factor they had in common in relation to the topic was that they had both escalated up from technical to managerial positions. The first interviewee is Brad Egelandis a project manager, he started his career as programmer and gradually moved up the ladder to become a senior level It and business manager. I found out about his through his blog and when I emailed him for an online interview, he gracefully agrees to make the time. When he was employed at first, it was on a technical level as a COBOL programmer and spent most of the first few years coding and as well as drafting proposals for government contract for the firm’s clients. Although he loved his job, he did not plan to spend his whole career programming, however, he needed to show not only competence but initiative, when one of the contracts was awarded he volunteered to manage it. He took full charge of the project and even was put in charge of a small staff, after a few years he was promoted officially to project manager, however he still was only dealing with small individual projects. As such, despite the title project manager, he felt he was still just a program manager; he wanted to run multiple contracts and engagements, which was the epitome of project management by his firm’s standards. As a project manager, he was aware that one needed to learn on the job so as to expand their knowledge and skill base, this included other not technical skills, and this could best be achieved in experiencing challenges in dynamic environment(Richard 2001, 17). He was then hired by a firm called Rockwell, Collins who put him in charge of their internet, intranet and extranet contracts, at this point his dream of rising to full project management was fulfilled. He was had a considerable team of web developers under him and he was fully in charge of multiple projects from the beginning to the end, he was even responsible for handling the sales and could be dealing with as many as 15 live projects at a time. From that point on, he has worked in several firms as a project manager his inspiration was his drive to achieve and move up from the obscurity of a technician to the relative independence of a manager. He was also inspired by mentors several of whom were his seniors in the first two jobs, on noting that he was inclined toward project management and was quite good at it, they advised him and motivated him. The second manager I interviewed was Drue Hammond, she is a senior manager at the fast food chain, McDonalds, and her rise is possibly more notable and remarkable since she started for the bottom most rugs. She was a crewmember who meant she was, in charge of food preparation, service and hygiene; she had not studied for the job and actually left school to work on full time basis. She started working for MacDonald’s worked part time as college student and at the age of 18, she dropped out of school so she could work on a full time basis. That was her first step on the management escalator since as full time crewmember she has to handle more responsibly that she could have as a part time student. Her first promotion was to shift boss and she was made put in charge of making the duty rotes and ensuring the other employees were in time and in their places of work, that way she started doing less serving and more managing. Shortly she was promoted officially to shift manager in and later in this position; she rose to the position of assistant manager for the restaurant branch in which she worked. The progress ensured that she went up and her workload entailed more supervision and management duties and paperwork and by the time she became assistant manager, she hardly required to do any of the crew work. She was instead focused on handling suppliers and corresponding with managers from other branches as well as dealing with staff and customer complains; in the absence of the manager, she made the crucial decisions in the running of the restaurant. Her talents impressed her superiors so much that she was soon prompted to business manager; she was no longer in charge of one but seven restaurants in the chain. For over one year, she worked as the operations consultant and her responsibilities went beyond even the regional chains since she often had to lies with managers and consultants from other chains even outside the restaurant chain for supporting services and marketing. This is because when one is in management, they are among other things expected to bring change and create new relationships and connections with customers and suppliers, as well as maintain existing ones (Mccaulay and Brutus n.d, 8). She was offered second ment to the HR department, today she works as a HR consultant, despite dropping out of school, and she had followed up on her studies while working by enrolling for part-time classes. She acquired a, (CIPD) Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development qualification and this helped her ascend the managerial ladder. She said she was inspired and encouraged by the friendly and accommodating environment in MacDonald’s which not only rewarded effort but encouraged the staff to develop their skills and experiences through external and in-house training. The two managers interviewed despite coming from radically different industries, food production to ICT and program management, are evidence that managerial escalator plays a significant part in grooming and providing future managers form the specialist and technicians. In the discussion on escalation, it was noted that as one shows talent and skill, they are given more responsibility and often put in charge of their colleagues. In Egeland’s case, he was put in-charge of implementing one of his successful projects and several of his colleagues worked under him, although it was not a formal promotion, successful completion of the task was almost a guarantee of escalation. The same case applied to Hammod, she was made shift boss a position no different from class monitor in a school situation, however, when she proved herself, she was promoted to shift manager. This initial assigned responsibilities portended the future promotions which in turn resulted in both doing less of their technical work; Brad Egeland did less programming and writing contract, and more supervision and management of projects. Hammond less Crew duties and more managerial work until she ultimately stopped running the individual employees and in chains and begun running many chain restaurants and their collective crews. It is evident in both cases their rises occurred gradually and the former technician/crew ended up serving as managers and using the skills in both sides to develop their respective companies and personal careers. At the end of the day, management is about results and it makes sense that employees who have proven themselves capable on a lower level will be undoubted fitted to serve in the higher echelons of management. From the definition of managerial escalator as the gradual movement of technicians toward management, the managers interviewed embody the concept since they were able to ascend the managerial ladder through the skills and experience acquired as technicians. Ergo, it is important to take cognizant the fact that despite the open nature of the managerial escalator, not everyone can ascend it and for those few, they must have talent, competence commitment and initiative and leadership qualities. References Wilson A., Lenssesn, G., Hind, H. (2006). “Leadership Qualities and management practices for cooperate responsibility” European Academy of Business, In society. [Online]. Available from http://www.ashridge.org.uk/website/IC.nsf/wFARATT/Leadership%20Qualities%20and%20Management%20Competencies%20for%20Corporate%20Responsibility/$file/LeadershipQualitiesAndManagementCompetenciesForCorporateResponsibility.pdf [Accessed 20/02/2013] Richard, M. (2001). “Project Management; Keys to a Successful Management Endeavor” Prentice-Hall, Inc.: 12-25. Reh, J.F. (n.d). “Management; Manager.” About.com. [Online]. Available from http://management.about.com/od/policiesandprocedures/g/manager1.htm [Accessed 20/02/2013] Morgan Sourcing. (n.d). “Tech to Exec; Making a Successful Transition.” [Online]. Available from http://www.morgansourcing.com/pdfs/Becoming-a-CIO-in-Atlanta.pdf [Accessed 20/02/2013]. McCaulay, C. and Brutus, S. (n.d). “Management Development Through Job Experiences” Center Creative for leadership. [Online]. Available from http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/MgmtDevelopmentBib.pdf [Accessed 20/02/2013]. York, M.K. (2009). Applied Human Resource Management: Strategic Issues and Experiential Exercises. California: SAGE Publications. Rees, D., Christine, P. (2008). The Skills of Management. Connecticut, U.S: Cengage Learning. . Appendix Questions . These questions were open to allow the respondent room and freedom for full self-expression in consideration to the different fields and experiences of the respondents Questions 1. What was your initial position when you first got employed? 2. What were your duties and responsibilities? 3. How did you get your first promotion? 4. Did you enjoy the work? 5. How did you begin to move up from the technical work to the managerial duties? 6. What was your first promotion? 7. What managerial position does you hold today and are happy with it? 8. What drives and inspires you? Contacts Brad Egeland; Linked In http://www.linkedin.com/in/bradegeland Website http://www.bradegeland.com Drue Hammond; Linked in http://www.linkedin.com/pub/drue-hammond/44/b6a/b28 Read More