Usage Profile Series: The Management Usage Profile

30 Oct 2016

The concept of a Usage Profile was introduced in this post on September 19, 2016. This series of articles will describe eight role-based Usage Profiles plus a Foundational Usage Profile. These profiles cover well over 90% of all employee and contractor roles in the U.S., across all industries. Each Usage Profile article will describe:

The primary type of work done by people in the Usage Profile
The vertical industry segments where the Usage Profile occurs
The metrics for workers in the Profile
How the Profile is unique
How workers in the Profile communicate
The technologies and tools used by workers in the Profile, currently and evolving to the future

This post considers the eighth Usage Profile, Management.

Usage Profile 8: Management

What Management Does

The Management Usage Profile comprises both Executives and Managers who direct the activities of an organization in two ways. First, they set the strategies, mission and goals of the organization, which are the promises or value propositions that the organization commits to their customers, clients, citizenry, shareholders, communities, and employees. Second, they oversee, monitor, measure, and adjust the activities and structure of the organization to assure that promises or value propositions are met at or above the committed levels and to a greater degree than any comparable competitive organization. The responsibility for the overall success of an organization rests primarily with the Management Usage Profile.

The Management Usage Profile members spend the majority of their time reviewing and directing the work of others. They spend a portion of their time communicating outside of the organization with customers, with stakeholders such as shareholders, with communities, and with peer organizations.

Management Usage Profile members spend a large amount of their time in communications-intensive activities. Much of their communication is with groups involved in either of the two types of activities mentioned above. A smaller portion of their communication will be one-to-one, for discussion of ideas or issues and for reviews of individual performance or assignments.

All Management Usage Profile members are exempt from overtime.

Management Titles and Industries

The Management Usage Profile is in all vertical industry groups and in both public and private sector organizations. Analysis of U.S. employment by occupation¹ shows that Executives and Managers represented 17.0 million U.S. workers (11.4% of employment) in 2015. Titles for this Usage Profile range from top level titles such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Managing Director, President, Governor, General, Hospital Administrator, University President, and similar titles, to mid-range titles such as Vice-President, Director, Senator, Colonel, Captain, Chief of Service, Dean, and similar titles, and to the broad range of Manager titles. Small businesses have different Management Usage Profile titles such as Owner, Partner, or Farmer.

Management Usage Profile Metrics

Management Usage Profile members are measured against the promises and value propositions of their organization. The measurement is usually in comparison to similar competitive organizations in order to judge whether the Executives and Managers are performing above, at, or below average. Metrics in the private sector or for-profit organizations will almost always be financial measurements of revenue, margins, profits, assets, and growth rates. Metrics in the public sector or not-for-profit organizations will be based on the quantity and quality of services delivered, usually compared to the cost of the delivery of those services in comparable situations.

Executives and Managers will spend a significant amount of their time reviewing the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual results of their organization's performance. These reviews will likely be based on reports and data that are accessed electronically. The review of the data will usually lead to the communications activities mentioned above. The Executive or Manager first makes inquiries, often one-to-one, about the meaning of the performance information and then holds meetings to review the implications and the potential actions in response to the performance information.

How the Management Usage Profile Is Unique

The Management Usage Profile is unique, and is usually paired with the Administration Usage Profile, which provides supporting services for most Executives and Managers. This Management Usage

Profile is unique in these ways:

Communications Intensive: Communication of all forms - documents, presentations, email, IM, calls, meetings and online meetings on wired and wireless devices - is at the core.
Information-Centric: Executives and Managers base their work on flows of structured and unstructured information from within and outside their organization. While workers in the Collaboration Usage Profile also consume information, Executives and Managers usually have a broader information scope with much more performance reporting content.
Office-based with Intra-site, Inter-site and Off-Site Mobility: Executives and Managers usually have offices that have associated desks or cubicles for the Administration staff who support them. They may also have one or more convenient or dedicated meeting rooms. However, Executives and Managers often travel to meet their management team members and employees, to observe organization operations, and to meet with customers, partners, and communities.
White-Glove Service: Executives and some managers will receive specialized support for their communication and information devices, systems, and applications. This may lead to specialized communication equipment configurations, often not the same as required elsewhere in the organization. Often, the Management Usage Profile has premium communications systems with operating costs that are not justified for other Usage Profiles. For example, many executives adopted telepresence with dedicated rooms, expensive equipment, and very costly bandwidth services, while other Usage Profiles could justify only less costly or no video services.

How Management Usage Profile Members Communicate

Executives and Managers constantly review information and then communicate with others both within and outside the organization based on that information. Communication may be in-person or online, and may be one-to-one or with small or larger groups. Occasionally, Executives and Managers will hold "all hands" broadcast meetings as well.

Executives and Managers focus on organization performance and on the adjustments needed to sustain, remediate, or improve that performance. This requires reviewing significant amounts of information by reading data and reports and by having the information presented to them in meetings, together with interpretations of the information and recommendations for action.

Executives and Managers may have one-to-one dialogs with others to understand performance information and to discuss proposals for improvement. They will also participate in many meetings to obtain insights and inputs from groups of managers and staff. Executives and Managers prefer these meetings to be via video when possible, usually including the sharing of information, reports, analysis, and proposals.

Executives and Managers participate in collaborative activities in unique ways to create action plans or innovative initiatives that will support or improve organization performance. However, they will generally delegate the resulting collaborative projects and subsequently review the results of that collaborative work. Thus the Management Usage Profile does not work primarily in a collaborative workspace.

Management Usage Profile members work primarily from an office that is equipped with multiple communication tools to support one-to-one dialogs via email and IM, as well as voice or video calls and meetings. Usually, their real-time communication is based on or refers to reference materials from email, report files, or other sources, so real-time communication tools should include the ability to share reports, documents, or computer screens to provide the most effective and accurate information display.

Due their mobility, Executives and Managers require a seamless blend of traditional desk-based wired communications devices and innovative, full-function, mobile wireless devices. Most Executives and Managers will expect their Administration staff to use those same tools and to participate in screening and managing the communications, often including access to their phone lines, email/voicemail inbox, document files, online meeting systems, and similar tools.

Executives and Managers expect that their communications can be effectively and comprehensively managed by their Administration support staff, who are included in the Administration Usage Profile.

For example, Administration Staff will:

Have access to, and screen and maintain the Executive's or Manager's email inbox, calendar, voice mail inbox, and contacts.
Send outgoing email messages and meeting invites on behalf of the Executive or Manager.
Share multiple telephone lines with the phones on the Executive's or Manager's desk, side table, and conference room so as to be able to screen incoming calls, place calls on hold for Executive or Manager pickup, announce calls or visitors via an intercom, place outgoing calls on behalf of the Executive or Manager, and connect incoming calls or outgoing calls to the Executive's or Manager's mobile device when they are away from the office.
Arrange for duplication or replication of the Executive's or Manager's phone and computer setup at remote office locations or home offices. This is becoming more convenient with software-based voice and video applications, yet many situations still require advanced PBX features to provide a duplicate setup on a physical phone that is identical to the phone in the home office.
Initiate and, in some cases, monitor meetings for timely setup, effective operation, proper and authorized attendance, recording, note taking, action follow-up or other tasks.
Arrange for white glove support, or even personally provide, equipment setup or operation, such as initiating a multi-site video room conference.

Information and communication security is important in every Usage Profile, but is even more important for the Executives and Managers due to the scope of information that they access and review and to the value and risk of their decisions about future actions being discovered by competitors or investors.

Management Usage Profile Communications Directions for the Future

There is potential for the emergence of Executive or Manager dashboard-type software through which the organization's performance information is presented. We already see some examples of that in the Senior Management functional categories such as sales, service, transportation, healthcare and finance. If such dashboards become common, it will be a natural expectation that Management Usage Profile communication tools will be integrated into those dashboards so that the Executive or Manager can immediately reach out to relevant parties for dialog or meetings.

Mobile wireless devices, perhaps with docking or pairing stations in the offices or meeting rooms, will become the preferred mode of communications for Executives and Managers. Consumer wireless device functions are expected to be available for business use, and advanced information dashboards and communication coordination with Administration staff will likely be best provided and most easily used on a touch-screen, voice activated mobile device.

At some point, the desk phone will become irrelevant to Management Usage Profile, as it will be replaced by the mobile device and perhaps by the high-definition video devices that will be present in Executive and Manager workspaces.

These evolutions will require even more rigid information and communication security, perhaps leading to totally encrypted, separable, invitation-only meeting spaces for some or all Management Usage Profile information access, sharing and related communications.

Summary

The Management Usage Profile is a unique, specialized, communications-intensive Profile based on the simple operation of a broad and complex set of communications tools.

This Usage Profile focuses on the information and interactions necessary to direct and monitor an organization. Communications tools broadly serve almost all forms of real-time, near-real-time, and non-real-time communications, and increasingly include mobile device communications and video communications with information sharing. The communications tools are expected to work seamlessly and flawlessly, and require high levels of specialized white-glove support from the Administration and IT/Telecommunications staff.

For the Management Usage Profile, focus on the many dynamic patterns of communications that support the success of the Executives and Managers. Obtain inputs from the Administration staff who are key members of the Executives' and Managers' teams, since these Administration professionals understand the range and complexity of communications for this Usage Profile. Be sure to check on the current and expected adoption of both mobile wireless communications devices and new software solutions for secure, private information dashboards with integrated communications tools.

¹US Bureau of Labor Statistics Table 11b. http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#charemp.