64 Functions (& 4 Dimensions) of Leadership and Management: Specifying When and How Much of Particular Management Functions are Needed so Such Functions Can Be Delivered by Means Other than a Designated Social Class (an Expensive Fixed Inventory) of Managers -- Towards Just-in-Time Delivery of Management Functions Without 'Managers'

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTIONS --- The Intellectual and Research Foundations of a Just-in-Time Leading/Managing Science: 1. What are the bases upon which top people in any field rise to the top of their field? 2. What are the functions that people nominated as great at managing/leading and that people nominated as naming themselves as having been greatly managed/led specify as essential functions to managing/leading? 3. What are alternative ways, to an expensive fixed inventory of people -- named managers or leaders -- to deliver essential managing/leading functions? 4. How can we measure the amount of managing/leading and appropriateness of the sort of managing/leading being delivered to any group by any system of delivery? How can we accurately compare the capability of different systems for delivering managing/leading functions to any group? 5. What is the correlational, and longitudinal causal linkage between delivery of the essential managing/leading functions found in this research and reported in this paper and quality of outcome and performance for all stakeholders of any organization? Do the functions that this paper’s sample of excellent leaders/being-led-persons specify actually cause good outcomes for stakeholders and which stakeholders with what conditionalities/contingencies?

THE ARGUMENT --- An argument can be made, from the standpoint of what just-in-time inventory has found as the cost-benefits of fixed inventories of parts, that a fixed inventory of leaders or managers is not worth what it costs, and, it can be argued that a designated fixed social class of people is not the only or best way to deliver functions of leading or managing to people and organizations today. Alternative ways to deliver leading and managing functions can be imagined and implemented but they depend on a good model of the functions basic to leading and managing.

METHOD --- Ask Suppliers and Customers of Leading/Managing (nominated as excellent at leading/being-led) What the Functions of Leading/Managing are: 1. Ask suppliers nominated as great at delivering managing/leading functions what constitutes great managing/leading. 2. Ask customers nominated as having been greatly managed/led at one time or another what constitutes great managing/leading? 3. The same categorization procedures applied first to the answers to 1 and 2 above,and then second to well used books on managing and leading, so that several models of great managing/leading result -- one from suppliers and customers, and the others from research published on managing/leading for comparison purposes.

METHOD, THE SAMPLE --- Asking academics for such functions, in the past, has produced such greatly distorted function sets as those represented in Harvard Business School, Case Studies (and the great distortions in business practice that produced the global finance meltdown of 2009). Asking leaders and managers produces distortions as great or greater than overly rational academic distortions (these, afterall, are the experts who led the metldown in 2009). Instead of these approaches, an expert systems and quality process modeling approach were embedded in an interview instrument administered to 150 leaders and managers nominated by 315 high performer people in a stratified sample of 63 different professions from 41 nations.

METHOD, THE DATA & ANALYSIS --- All mentions of leading/managing functions,levels at which functions get applied, domains (horizontally segmenting organizations) at which they get applied were marked in transcripts, grouped, groups named, similar groups grouped, such super-groups named, and so on, then a principle of ordering was applied to top level items, and by analogy to all other levels and domains till all items at all levels followed roughly the same principle of ordering. Then branch factor at each level and across levels was unified.

RESULT--FRACTAL CONCEPT MODEL DISPLAY --- The result is called a “fractal concept model” and has memorization and application properties superior to usual irregular network models. 64 functions, all of them mentioned by at least 44 of the 150 respondents in the sample, are included in this final fractal concept model of functions of leading/managing. 36 levels (vertical scales) and 15 domains (horizontal traditional areas of organizing) at which the 64 functions are applied to handle any of 256 system effects from the non-linearity of the world (the system effects model, one of 4 dimensions of leading mentioned in this article is developed and presented in another chapter of this book). The 64 functions thusly applied at particular levels and domains to handle particular system effects constitute the 4 dimensions of leading/managing that the research of this paper presents.

NEXT STEPS --- Future research will explore uses of this model to measure quality of leading/managing, gaps between amount and types of leading being delivered and amount and types needed in particular situations, enterprises, and groups, as a curriculum for training people, and as an agenda of what it is that alternative delivery vehicles for delivering leading/managing functions are to deliver. A general metric of the quality of leading/managing, measuring amounts and types delivered compared to amounts and types needed, as well as quality of delivery of amounts and types being delivered (regardless of whether needed or unneeded) results.

OVERALL RESULT --- A model of 64 functions of managing/leading organized fractally; 3 models from summarized research publishings for comparison. With this tool we can now begin to measure, evaluate, and assess various alternative ways to deliver these functions to any group under any circumstances. Also, if such measurement improves the model and validates it, we can measure how well any system delivers these functions and how well these functions impact outcomes that various stakeholders care about.

Keywords: just-in-time leading, just-in-time managing, alternative ways to deliver leadership functions, replacing managers, managerless management systems, self-managing workforces, inventory of executives reduction, measures of type and amount of leadership actually delivered