Two of the most formative learning experiences of my life came in my first year of working as a graduate trainee in the motor industry. Neither was planned but they shaped my early understanding and approach to management.

The first was when the senior foreman in charge of the swarf house – the scrap reclamation department for the factory – was called into hospital unexpectedly early for a hernia operation. No one suitable was available to take his place, so I was given the wonderful opportunity, working with about twenty much wiser and more experienced bluecollar colleagues, to ‘manage’ the department for ten weeks.

I made every mistake in the book. The fact that I did not lose the company a fortune was down to my colleagues’ perseverance and experience, rather than any contribution I made to the complex, not to say bewildering, array of judgements that needed to be made every day. And the fact that I escaped the sack and was able to learn from my mistakes was down to the counsel and patience of a personnel manager who helped me reflect and refine how I would go about things differently next time.

The second was in that same Coventry factory. Professor Keith Thurley at LSE was doing research into what first and second line managers actually did. Somehow, I became aware of this and persuaded the personnel manager that we should volunteer to take part.

For a week at a time, I shadowed four or five different managers, noting what they did and summarising it in pie charts. Where their job descriptions used words like scheduling, planning, organising, allocating and so on, their actions had a great deal more to do with fixing, compromising, trouble-shooting, progress chasing and being an agony aunt. They were lubricating the management process but were hardly part of it in the sense of determining or directing what went on.

I learned that management is not a universally coherent process and managers don’t all do the same things!

Managers are really interesting. They get necessary things done. They multi-task, juggling today’s operational priorities, coping with unplanned events and trying to deliver the longer-term strategic intent of the organisations they serve.

Managers are in the front-line of change. It is their job to make sense of the turbulence all around them. Rising customer expectations, fickle markets, disruptive technologies, regulation, competition, globalisation, political, financial and stakeholder pressures are relentless.

Managers have to digest a mass of unclear signals and competing calls for their attention, while optimising the use of resources, maximising performance and projecting a confident future.

Crucially, too, they have to develop, motivate and manage the many people upon whose willing contribution every organisation depends. Employees are not conscripts, conditioned to comply with whatever instructions are handed down to them.

Managers have to ensure that employees have the ability, the motivation and the opportunity to contribute to the level of their potential. They have to craft effective relationships which cause people to want to use their initiative to delight customers, to learn continuously and to apply the fruits of that learning in the interests of the organisation.

Managers make tough choices, often on the basis of imperfect knowledge. The models of systematic analysis, long-term planning and rational decision-making that underpin our management literature are necessary but not sufficient to capture what managers do. Management is also about judgement, experience, intuition when it comes to steering a path through ever-shifting pressures, priorities and accidents that make up reality for organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Yet we know that most managers are inadequately trained for the job. A tiny minority have formal qualifications or have undertaken serious programmes of learning in management. Doubts are widespread about the value of much of what is on offer in management education. Teaching management as an academic subject, remote from the opportunity to put it into practice, can only be of limited value.

We know from the pioneering work of Alan Mumford, Peter Honey (the author of this book) and others that managers learn best – that is, change their behaviour so that they do things differently – from learning and doing in a practical work situation. The CIPD’s (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) own research confirms that there has been a shift from training to learning, demanding a different approach to the development of employees. Emphasis in organisations is being shifted from training as a series of top-down interventions to a focus on individual and team learning as on-going activity.

Testing ideas, experimenting, measuring results, reflecting on what works and what doesn’t, forming new plans of action, and so on in a continuous and systematic process of learning is how most managers raise their game. Yet, despite the growing recognition of the need to change, most managers still don’t have that opportunity. Instead they are thrown in at the deep end and expected to sink or swim, without the support that evidence shows can make a lasting, beneficial impact.

And, finally, managers are human. They suffer from all the insecurity, self-doubt, psychological flaws, blind-spots and less-than-perfect ability to know everything and do it right first time that the rest of us suffer from too.

Peter Honey knows this. His work is sensitive, as well as practical and relevant. In 50 Cautionary Tales for Managers, he presents real-life people in real-life situations. I recognise and may have met many of the people he describes. I think I’m even there in some of them myself.

With charm and humour, 50 Cautionary Tales for Managers captures many of the dilemmas of managerial life. With modesty and affection for the managers living the experience, Peter gently suggests how different behaviours might have led to better results.

This book is a good read for managers. It offers short-cuts to learning without having to go through the pain, cost and career risk of learning only from mistakes experienced personally.

Management trainers will find it a rich resource from which to pick hard-edged, realistic case studies to help them in their work.

It will help too, those in public policy grappling with the performance of national economies. We know we have a gap between the need for capable managers and the supply. We have lots of evidence of what makes for effective management and of how to develop it. Joining them together into a strategy which is widely taken up in practice continues to be an elusive target.

Peter’s book is a timely reminder of what we know and of how to put it into practice. He doesn’t under-estimate the problem. He doesn’t preach grand, one-size-fits-all panaceas. And he never forgets that managers are people, with all the needs, wants, flaws and irrationality that people have.

These pen portraits deserve to be read widely, reflected upon and used to stimulate management learning. That will provide a much better return on investment than the alternative, more familiar approaches which have failed us thus far.

If you are a manager, even if we have never met, I’ll guarantee you are in this book! Something you say or do, your management style, a favourite catch-phrase, a mannerism – you’ll be here in one or more of these stories.

If you don’t recognise yourself, perhaps some of the situations in the stories will be familiar – times when you emerged relatively unscathed or times when you were overwhelmed by events. You will also find stories about managers who are not at all like you; stories about bullies, sexual harassers, arrogant autocrats, chronic ditherers, pedantic meddlers – they are all here.

For over 40 years I have worked with many hundreds of managers of different shapes and sizes, initially because they were my bosses and, since 1969, because they were my clients. I personally knew all the managers who feature in this book. All the stories are based on real-life events with, of course, the occasional bit of artistic licence thrown in for good measure! Naturally, I have changed the names of the managers and I have been careful to avoid identifying any organisations.

I have concluded each story by offering some advice to the central character. I have done this with some trepidation because, in my experience, offering advice, unless it has been sought, is usually futile. Even when people ask for advice, it is invariably more acceptable if it emerges through dialogue. The most effective advice, i.e. advice that is a) owned, b) acted upon and c) makes a difference for the better, is best drawn out of the person. Managers are usually perfectly capable of solving their own problems. All they need is a dispassionate sounding board to help them crystallise their ideas.

The advice sections in this book are not therefore a good illustration of the way I would normally approach advising my clients. Despite this, even while masquerading as an agony aunt, I have attempted to adhere to the same guidelines that I would use when facilitating advice, as opposed to simply giving it. These are:

• To converge on one issue, or area for improvement, in order to reduce the risk of overwhelming the manager with numerous options.
• Wherever possible, to maximise the probability of arriving at something practical by focusing on the overt behaviour of the manager, rather than delving deeper into motives, attitudes and feelings.
• To err on the side of recommending actions that the manager will find relatively easy to implement.
• To concentrate on work-based actions rather than recommending courses to go on or other books to read.

Books (especially management books) are supposed to be useful; to have some declared purposes. The contents of this book have a number of potential uses.

• 1.Whether you are a manager, an aspiring manager, or a professional, it has been written to entertain. It could cheer you up as you realise you are not alone – that there are other organisations as crazy as yours! I hope you will chuckle at the exploits of some of the managers you’ll find here, and let out a whoop of joy when someone you disapprove of gets the comeuppance they deserve.
• 2.Since each story has a ‘message’ and generates some advice, I hope you will find some ideas that are useful to you. In particular, some of the advice sections may provide you with the germ of an idea that you can tailor to fit your particular circumstances.
• 3.Alternatively, you could ignore the advice sections and use the stories themselves as case studies. They could provide a good, non-threatening way to stimulate useful discussion about management dilemmas and practices. I once ran a session at a management conference where I told three of these stories and, after each, invited the audience to share their interpretations. Each story generated at least half a dozen different insights. Try it with your team. If you focused on just one story a week, you’d have enough material to keep you going for a year!
• 4.The book offers you a number of other practical possibilities. If, for example, you have a boss who makes your life a misery, you could mark the relevant passages and send him or her a copy anonymously (mark it ‘from a well-wisher’!). Alternatively, if you are brave enough, you could use the book as a way to indulge in some continuing professional development. Simply ask your colleagues or staff to tell you which story (or stories!) are most like you. Then, resisting the temptation to become argumentative, do an honest stock-take of your own managerial ways and decide which to continue and which to curtail.

If all else fails, just relax, go into denial, and enjoy the stories.

All the managers in my stories are men and I have made a conscious decision not to indulge in any gender reversals. There are two reasons for this.

First, without exception, all the quirky managers I have worked with have been male. I have, of course, worked with a few female managers too, but, gratifyingly, they weren’t in the least quirky. In fact, they were far too ‘normal’ to include in this book! This is not a sexist remark. I have also worked with many male managers who weren’t sufficiently ‘interesting’ to qualify for one of my stories. Throughout my career as a management consultant, there have always been far more male managers than female ones. This is hardly surprising. In the decade 1990 to 2000, only 12% of British companies had any female managers at all and, during the same period, only 3% of directors were female. I’m not condoning this state of affairs, simply recognising it as a fact. Second, I once had an unfortunate experience that taught me that you tinker with genders at your peril. I had prepared six short case studies, each describing a situation that needed to be handled assertively. Participants on the programme I was running were invited to imagine themselves in each situation and to work out how to deal with it assertively. On its first outing a female participant told me in no uncertain terms that my case studies were unacceptable because all the managers were male and all the subordinates were female. I apologised, told her that all the managers in the case studies had in fact been male, and assured her I would make the necessary adjustments.

After the programme I explained the nature of the complaint to my (female) secretary and left her to swap the sexes of some of the managers and subordinates. On the exercise’s second outing a female participant said, ‘Dr Honey, this is outrageous! All the women are baddies and all the men are goodies.’ I apologised and promised to fix the problem.

Together with my secretary, I drew up a grid and spent half a day carefully working out who should be male and who should be female! In the circumstances, I’d rather not face that task with the 50 managers who appear in this book. They really were all male – and I think it best they stay that way.

As I hope the stories in this book will convey, I have a soft spot for managers (well, most managers!). I feel sorry for them – especially for middle managers, those much maligned people, uncomfortably sandwiched between those above and those below.

Managers are visible and vulnerable. They are exposed to relentless downward and upward scrutiny, they are the subject of constant speculation and gossip, they make convenient scapegoats and, when their people commit mistakes, they are held accountable (that means blamed!). Not an enviable position to be in.

In my experience, most people didn’t actually set out to become managers – certainly not middle managers! It was just a horrible accident – the way things worked out. Interestingly, whenever I have asked captains of industry whether they planned to do what they were doing, they have always dropped their voice (as if it was a shameful thing to admit) and told me that they ascribed their glorious careers to a series of coincidences, to being in the right place at the right time, and to sheer opportunism. So much for career planning!

What most managers really wanted was to relish being an acclaimed salesperson, scientist, accountant, lawyer or IT expert. Unfortunately they reached a stage in their career where, for various reasons, they had to make the puzzling transition and become a manager. I describe the transition as puzzling because the skills of doing something well yourself and of getting other people to do things well for you are so utterly different.

Instead of becoming a world authority in some chosen specialism, managers wrestle daily with a host of open-ended challenges; how to admit that you don’t know something without losing face, how to balance short-term tactics with longer-term strategy, how to base sound decisions on inadequate data, how to achieve over-demanding targets whilst nurturing and developing people, how to find and retain talented staff, how to motivate people to do more with less, how to win and retain people’s trust, how to keep continuous processes fresh and sustainable, how to be a role model when you don’t feel like it, how to achieve a sensible work/life balance, whether to manage or lead or do both ... and so on.

It probably sounds odd to say that I feel sorry for managers. What, those fat cats, those downsizers, those people who are out to exploit the workers? How could you feel sorry for them? Well, here are seven good reasons.

1. The perils of delegating and letting go

Every manager, by definition, has a job that is too big to be accomplished singlehanded. It requires other people (variously called subordinates, staff, direct reports or colleagues) to help. Inevitably, therefore, managers must confront the dangerous business of how to delegate, i.e. how to get someone else to do part of their job for them, preferably willingly.

This may sound straightforward, but on closer examination delegation is something of a minefield. For example, the delegating manager has to decide:

• what to delegate;
• how to make it a task with some degree of coherence;
• whom to entrust with part of their job;
• whether to risk ‘stretch delegation’, i.e. where the task is deliberately delegated to someone in order to provide them with a developmental opportunity;
• what authority the person needs in order to carry out the delegated task;
• whether to delegate by sticking to ‘whats’ and leaving the person to decide ‘hows’;
• how to delegate so that the person feels accountable (even though, in truth, the accountability remains with the manager);
• to what extent to let the person work on the task without supervision;
• how, and when, to follow up – before or after the agreed deadline.

The whole process is fraught with uncertainty. No wonder so many managers are timorous delegators.

2. The perils of losing control

Every organisation has a built-in propensity to fail. Much of what managers do falls into the category of ‘maintenance’, that is to say, working hard to maintain the status quo. An unspoken fear of failure lurks just beneath the surface. Anything that smacks of anarchy or chaos is a threat. The instinctive reaction is to impose authority and tighten control. The overriding belief is that people and processes must be controlled if they are to operate effectively. The maxim is ‘people do what’s checked, not what you expect’.

Much of the control is, however, illusory. It is impossible for managers, particularly senior managers, to know what is going on. The information they are fed is selected and, invariably, laundered. Naturally, managers like to feel they are in touch and that when they tell someone what to do it will be done.

Every day, however, people lower in the hierarchy decide what work is actually done. Managers may have a right to command, but the commanded have a right to decide how far to obey.

Of course, managers are under pressure to relinquish some of their control and empower people to ‘see what’s important and do it’. But in my experience, most managers are wary of letting go. It seems to them little short of suicidal. They are even wary of more participation (a fraction of what is involved in letting go!). It seems messy and time-consuming and people might make the wrong decision.

So, beleaguered managers, bombarded with messages about the need to encourage their people to take responsibility, are racked with doubt about the wisdom of letting go. It reminds me of the old navy saying:

3. The perils of developing people

Managers know they are supposed to develop their people’s talents by providing them with ample opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills. They even understand the benefits of doing so; competent staff are more dependable and make fewer mistakes.

However, it is one thing to understand this intellectually and quite another to make it a daily priority. The gap between managers’ knowing and doing is usually at its widest when it comes to people management.

Most managers are highly embarrassed when it comes to giving people honest feedback – either praise or criticism – or of conducting appraisals, or of having any sort of constructive discussion about someone’s performance. They don’t know what to say and worry that the conversation could get out of hand or that someone could get upset. It is far easier to avoid such vague, emotive topics and stick to safe things like the latest share price or even the weather!

Managers have a perfect excuse to fudge developing people. They know that sooner or later their best people will be poached or promoted. Better, therefore, not to bring them on in the first place or, if they are already competent, to hide them.

4. The perils of keeping up the pretence

Managers are human. They have off-days, days when they don’t feel like keeping up the pretence that they are omnipotent. Yet they are expected to appear keen and enthusiastic, to exude a ‘can do’ attitude, to ‘walk the talk’, to ‘do the vision thing’.

I have always been critical of those books that suggest managers need to be ‘super’ or ‘great’ or ‘incredible’. I find the calls to walk on water unrealistic and depressing, and, should such propaganda be believed, it runs the risk of making managers feel even more inadequate. Good managers don’t need to be miracle workers. They just need to be honest and resilient enough to keep going in the face of difficulties and setbacks.

Managers, however, are understandably loath to drop the facade. Imagine a manager saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t think we have the slightest chance of achieving this target’ or, even more unlikely, ‘I was wrong and I’m pleased to announce a U-turn.’ Imagine a manager calling his or her staff together and saying, ‘I am suffering from low self-esteem and paranoia and I can’t keep up the pretence any longer. From now on I’m going to be me.’

Sadly, managers are role models whether they like it or not. Their staff take an unhealthy interest in all that they say and do. I have known entire organisations come to a halt as rumours spread about the CEO’s latest crazy idea, the next hare-brained initiative or a boardroom coup.

5. The perils of loneliness

Managers have few people they can trust with confidences. The climate in most organisations encourages protecting your back and fighting off predators. Few managers feel genuinely secure.

Quite understandably, therefore, managers expend much time and energy ensuring that they keep safe and blame-free. Who can you turn to for advice and guidance – perhaps even for some honest feedback? Increasingly the answer is to an external coach or mentor, someone who has no axe to grind, someone who doesn’t covet your job. To admit inadequacies and secret worries to a colleague, or to your boss, would be considered naïve and ‘career limiting’.

I have known many managers who appeared to be robust and self-sufficient, but who, in reality, were feeling exposed and frightened. Once they came to trust me, out would pour stories of woe – stories of victimisation, stories of impossible demands and expectations, stories of confusion and ambiguity and, of course, stories of inadequate subordinates.

Feeling vulnerable saps energy and hampers creativity and bold decision-making. It makes it likely that managers will indulge in ‘analysis to paralysis’ and hide behind committee decisions. It also erodes self-confidence and drives managers to increase their efforts to pretend they know what they are doing.

6. The perils of not knowing whether to lead or manage

Despite all the current emphasis on leadership, few managers are clear whether managing is leading or whether there is a significant difference between the two. I’m not at all surprised. I am the first to admit (easy for me, I’m not a manager!) that I’m not at all sure what leadership is and where managing stops and leading begins.

I have studied those lists that purport to distinguish between managing and leading. You know the sort of thing:

Managers	Leaders
Administer	Innovate
Keep their eye on the bottom line	Keep their eye on the horizon
Ask ‘how’ and ‘when’	Ask ‘what’ and ‘why’
Do things right	Do the right things
Make incremental changes	Make transformational changes
Delegate	Empower

But I always find the overlaps greater than the differences, with the boundaries so fuzzy as to be indistinguishable. Surely managers need to lead and leaders need to manage? Doesn’t everyone need to be ambidextrous?

Then we have those lists of characteristics that researchers claim successful leaders display. Warren Bennis, for example, the well-known writer on leadership, lists five characteristics that his studies of 150 ‘outstanding’ leaders revealed. They all displayed:

• 1.A strong sense of purpose, a passion, a conviction, a sense of wanting to do something important to make a difference.
• 2.The capacity to develop and sustain deep and trusting relationships.
• 3.Positive illusions of reality allowing them to be the ‘purveyors of hope’.
• 4.A balance in their lives between work, power, and family or outside activities.
• 5.A bias towards action and risk taking.2

For me, lists like this raise more questions than they answer. Might these five characteristics be coincidental to the success of these leaders? Are these the critical characteristics or just the ones Warren Bennis happens to favour? What about all those other characteristics that other researchers list? How many leaders, despite having these five characteristics, failed – overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control? Do you have to be a paragon of virtue before you can be a good leader?

Finally, we have those lists that read like recipes for successful leadership – especially in times of change (and that is all the time!):

• 1.Set the vision.
• 2.Communicate it.
• 3.Secure agreement from key stakeholders.
• 4.Identify the values and behaviours that are consistent with the vision.
• 5.Incorporate them into the performance management systems.

And so on. I find recipes like this arrogant because they assume that this is The Answer regardless of the situation. It is yet another version of ‘one size fits all’. They are too generic, too tidy, too linear. Try as we might, the complexities of managing and leading cannot be reduced to mere lists.

7. The perils of expecting to be provided with The Answer

Managers, as they wrestle with numerous open-ended problems, are eminently suggestible. They harbour the illusion that someone, somewhere has The Answer. It is psychologically more comforting to treat open-ended problems (i.e. problems where there are numerous possible solutions) as if they were close-ended (i.e. problems where there is a single right answer if only you could locate it). In their heart of hearts, managers know perfectly well that right answers are few and far between.

Managers are under constant bombardment from persuasive gurus peddling the latest management fad(s). Band wagons come and go: management by objectives, participatory management, matrix management, zero-based budgeting, management by walking around, process re-engineering, quality circles, self-managed teams.

An understandable yearning for answers makes managers particularly susceptible to rhetoric about the need to stay nimble in the face of relentless change. They are so fearful of losing competitive advantage that they dare not ignore a fad in case, against all expectations, it proves to be a winner (and, perish the thought, a competitor successfully exploits it). Small wonder that managers are so suggestible.

So, despite a catalogue of disappointments, somehow the appetite for new answers remains. The proliferation of management fads from the supply side is hardly surprising – gurus need to sell their latest book. Meanwhile, poor managers announce another initiative and allow themselves to believe that this one really will make a difference.

In conclusion

On balance, therefore, I sympathise (perhaps a better word would be empathise) with managers. Most managers I have worked with (alas, not all) have had their hearts in the right place and were trying, under difficult circumstances, to do their best. It is just that so many of them exhibited the sort of flawed behaviour patterns that Dotlich and Cairo describe in their book Why CEOs Fail.

Aloofness – managers who are disengaged and disconnected.

Arrogance – managers who are convinced they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Eagerness to please – managers who court popularity above all else.

Eccentricity – managers who revel in being different just for the hell of it.

Excessive caution – managers who are afraid to make decisions.

Habitual distrust – managers who are convinced people can’t be trusted to do a good job

Melodrama – managers who have to be the centre of attention.

Mischievousness – managers who believe rules are made to be broken.

Passive resistance – managers whose silence is interpreted as agreement.

Perfectionism – managers who concentrate on getting the little things right while the big things go wrong.

Volatility – managers who have sudden mood swings.3

Recently, when invited to address management conferences, I have concluded my remarks by getting the audience to join me in a rendering of The Line Manager’s Lament. I sing (well, chant!) the verses and the audience sings the chorus. Afterwards, managers always tell me how true it was and ask me for a copy of the words (so that they, in turn, can sing it with their colleagues?).

Here are the words so that you too can sing along.