Wednesday, January 23, 2013

What are Management Patterns?


Management patterns are my observations of recurring practices in the area of management and team leadership. Both the name and the concept are loosely modeled on the notion of software design patterns. The idea is that a manager is constantly faced with a small number of archetypical problems which vary in their details but not in their overall form. For example, one such problem may be to make a decision between a cheap short-term solution and an expensive long-term solution. Such archetypical problems also lend themselves to archetypical solutions (or patterns) with which they may be handled. Again, the details will vary, but the overall approach need not. Understanding a pattern allows a manager to have a framework with which to come up with a unique solution to the particular problem they are facing.

I will also be using the term 'management pattern' to apply to something a bit different, which is a behavioural pattern or pathology which is quite common amongst managers. For example, I may describe as a pattern the tendency of many managers to seek to withhold unsettling information from their team.

Tomorrow I will post the first pattern, so hopefully this will give a bit more of a flavour of what they're like.

Note: I've put this description in the About This Blog page for the benefit of new visitors.

No comments:

Post a Comment