Managers Matter More Than Innovators?
"Even in a young industry that rewards creative and innovative products, innovative roles explain far less variation in firm performance than do managers. This is surprising for two reasons. First, we would expect that individual variation in innovative roles would be greater than that of more standardized managerial roles. Second, given the research tradition on the importance of organizational factors to facilitate the success of middle managers..., the finding that individual managers account for more variation in performance than firm-level factors in some occasions is particularly intriguing. These two results – that individuals explain much of the performance difference between firms and that managerial roles have more impact on performance than innovative ones – challenge long-held assumptions about firm performance," notes this study ("People and Process, Suits and Innovators: The Role of Individuals in Firm Performance," Ethan R. Mollick, University of Pennsylvania - Wharton School, June 27, 2010) after examining video game companies.
In other words, great processes, and organizational structures, are important. And talented, creative innovators are key. But expert middle managers are the thing that correlates most strongly to the success or failure of the enterprise.
That's right, the so-called "suits" and the decisions, coaching, and culture they perpetuate are, at the very least, the outwardly identifiable thing in successful creative tech companies that indicates a high performing business is in play.
This study offers various hypotheses about why this might be the case, but doesn't actually dive into testing these hypotheses. Here is the food for thought:
"It suggests that high-performing innovators alone are not enough to generate performance variation; rather, it is the role of individual managers to integrate and coordinate the innovative work of others.... For example, good managers will be able to whittle down a designer’s product ideas into a realistic project plan, while a less capable manager working with a more capable designer may be unable to translate a better design into reality. Or, it may be that certain managers are good at facilitating the sort of collective creativity that results in high-quality products..., while others are less capable of making their teams more than the sum of their parts."
As I indicate, this study demonstrates the correlation, but before acting on this data, I would suggest we need more than guesses about possible mechanisms of causation. These findings do mean that when evaluating a firm's potential for future success, a hard look at middle management will tell one a lot. But it doesn't prove that bolstering middle management will produce great results. It is still possible that some other factor(s) lead to both excellent middle management *and* excellent company results.
Source
In other words, great processes, and organizational structures, are important. And talented, creative innovators are key. But expert middle managers are the thing that correlates most strongly to the success or failure of the enterprise.
That's right, the so-called "suits" and the decisions, coaching, and culture they perpetuate are, at the very least, the outwardly identifiable thing in successful creative tech companies that indicates a high performing business is in play.
This study offers various hypotheses about why this might be the case, but doesn't actually dive into testing these hypotheses. Here is the food for thought:
"It suggests that high-performing innovators alone are not enough to generate performance variation; rather, it is the role of individual managers to integrate and coordinate the innovative work of others.... For example, good managers will be able to whittle down a designer’s product ideas into a realistic project plan, while a less capable manager working with a more capable designer may be unable to translate a better design into reality. Or, it may be that certain managers are good at facilitating the sort of collective creativity that results in high-quality products..., while others are less capable of making their teams more than the sum of their parts."
As I indicate, this study demonstrates the correlation, but before acting on this data, I would suggest we need more than guesses about possible mechanisms of causation. These findings do mean that when evaluating a firm's potential for future success, a hard look at middle management will tell one a lot. But it doesn't prove that bolstering middle management will produce great results. It is still possible that some other factor(s) lead to both excellent middle management *and* excellent company results.
Source