Administrator = Leader + Technologist
A leader cannot be a successful public agency executive without skills in the use of management tools and techniques. Conversely, the administrator adept in management techniques will be unable to communicate with, organize, motivate and continually engage employees toward organizational goals without leadership skills.
Towards the maturity of an administrator’s term, it is common for an effective leadership style to have emerged in the management of the public service agency. By this time, the skill sets, controllability and management experience of directly reporting managers are known quantities. The delivery processes of the agency’s services and the general condition of the workplace have also been defined. The administrator has also exhaustively determined how to measure subordinates' satisfaction and performance, and has meticulously seen to it that the performance of direct reports aligns with the goals of the organization.
Even when the expression of leadership or to some, the soft side of management, is best in class, additional managerial traits must be in place to enable the agency to perform at expected levels. The required complement is management technology. The best administrator is not only a leader but a management technologist as well.
It is not realistic for the administrator to be expert with all the principal tools and methodologies comprising management technology, but it is expected that the executive can give lucid guidance to direct reports and avoid the “I was not asked that” syndrome. Instruction to subordinates must be contain measures of completeness and quality and not be based on “I’ll know it (is complete) when I see it” vagueness. The following are examples in the functional areas of management:
1. Management Decision. All decisions concerning the well-being of the public agency rest on the administrator role. Indeed the “buck stops” at that position. Decision making may be delegated to directly reporting managers, but the scope of this delegation only covers the authority to use the organization's resources while the executive alone is responsible for the decision’s outcome. Management tools guide problem structuring and assist the decision maker through paths characterized by combinations of information availability, rewards of good decisions and penalties of poor ones.
2. Human Resources. For service organizations, employees are service delivery assets supported by the majority of the budget and occupy most of the administrator’s attention. In this area, important management tools for maintaining employee engagement include the self-performance measurement constructs featured in continuous improvement methods. Executives and employees of service companies such as GE Capital are deftly engaged by regularly applying their Six Sigma skills to new organizational initiatives. Skilled administrators also oversee the hire-or-train policies and decisions to assure management actions align with the organization's goals. Proficient management also makes sure that employees are being managed by their employment life cycle as are capital assets. Similarly, employees may be viewed in a portfolio concept.
3. Operations Management. The analysis and management of service delivery can be performed by service optimization methods that originated in the agrarian endeavor through manufacturing and recently service delivery. These analytical approaches predate modern computers so they are steeped in mathematics that enable arriving close to the optimal solution in practical time to have utility in the operation. The advent of laptops permits the administrator to guide managers toward approaches for analyzing operational problems but requiring only an elementary application of mathematics. Examples of generic management tools include the optimal resources allocation tool that may assist in staff assignment, supply chain design and minimization of real estate tax support of human services. There is also the service waiting-line analytical approach that can help in the determination of the best tactical staffing compliment.
4. Recording and reporting of service delivery. It is not necessary for the administrator to be proficient in rudimentary principles of the double entry bookkeeping used to record service delivery transactions nor to understand the peculiarities of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) when applied to governmental organizations. It is, however, essential for the executive to know how the accountant’s budget report or income statement represents the agency’s operational performance through the eyes of its stakeholders.
5. Financial Management. Data from service delivery operations constitutes management information for mid- to lower level management. In combination with budget data, financial reporting data gives the administrator powerful information to assure alignment of all units towards organizational goals and objectives. The management control system is dependent upon it. Budget information melds productivity of disparate units into total productivity of the entire agency or organization.
These examples illustrate the breadth of management tools and techniques requiring the administrator to have “hands on” proficiency. Sufficient to train and guide direct reports and lower level managers. In essence, the organization’s generalist.