Active management is the most important management behavior as it links front-line workers to management and coordinates resources and plans. However, it is very uncommon as managers on average only actively manage for about five minutes per day. For active management to be successful, there must be a schedule, accountability to the schedule, understanding of performance against the schedule, and good interpersonal skills from managers. While active management is important and uncommon, establishing it requires effort to change how organizations schedule work, measure performance, and hold people accountable. The benefits of active management include a more engaged workforce, greater accountability and innovation, and improved business results.

1. Active Management
What it is, why it’s so important
and why it’s so uncommon
By Peter Follows & Jennifer Fletcher

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Executive Summary
Active management is arguably the most important management behavior. It is the link between
front-line workers and management and it is crucial in order to co-ordinate resources and execute
plans. It is also very uncommon. Active management entails setting clear expectations, assigning
work and following up in order to identify variances and performance issues. This type of manager-
employee engagement doesn’t happen often. After observing managers in a wide variety of
industries, we found that on average they spend only about five minutes a day actively managing.
Four conditions are necessary for a leader to actively manage successfully:
1. You need a schedule.
2. You need to know how you’re doing against the schedule.
3. You need accountability to the schedule.
4. You need good interpersonal skills.
Active management is not common, and it takes a great deal of effort on all parts to install. However,
the benefits of active management are: a more engaged workforce; a culture of accountability and
innovation; and better business results.
This article discusses what active management is and how organizations can make it part of how
they operate.

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Active Management
Active management is arguably the most important management
behavior. It is the link between front-line workers and management,
between the business process and the management system. It is a
critical behavior required to co-ordinate resources and execute plans.
It is also uncommon.
By Peter Follows & Jennifer Fletcher
In order to understand what “active management” is, it is helpful to think of the role of a Hollywood
film director.When a studio is filming a script, the director plays a significant role in the outcome of the
movie. There are many important players, including writers, actors, the camera and lighting crew, all
withverydifferentskillsets.Thedirectorappropriatelydirectsthevariouspeopleandactivitiesinvolved.
He or she co-ordinates, provides expectations, coaches, corrects and influences the environment to
achieve a finished product. The key point is that the director is actively engaged in what is happening.
In the real world, managers are all too often“disengaged”from what is happening.
Active Management
Active management is the seemingly obvious part of managing people. It entails setting clear
expectations, assigning work and following up on how the work is going to identify variances and
performance issues in real time. It requires interaction between a manager and an employee, and
some type of discussion relevant to achieving a plan.
This type of manager-employee engagement is a basic component of most management training
courses. Yet it simply does not happen very much. In over 1800 hours physically observing managers
in a wide variety of industries, we found that they spend only 1% of their time or about five minutes a
day actively managing. The rest of their day is mostly consumed with firefighting (or fixing problems
after they occur), administration, or doing direct work that could or should be done by others. And
part of the problem is that managers don’t realize how little they actually actively manage. If you ask
managers what they think they do, most will tell you they actively manage about 15-20% of their
time (about 90 minutes a day). This is often because they misinterpret some of their fire fighting time
as active management. Ironically, the right amount of time to be spent actively managing others is
usually less than what they think they are doing already.

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As mentioned, active management requires an interaction between manager and employee. For
that interaction to be more than social bonding, there needs to be a point of discussion. This is
where a work schedule comes into play. The schedule, when properly designed, identifies what
needs to be done and when. It provides everyone involved in a process with clear expectations.
Schedules, in the true sense of the word, unfortunately don’t exist as often as you would think;
or they are not followed because they are not trusted or other priorities take precedence. Many
people work every day based on lists or sequences, rather than actual schedules. They have a
general idea of what they should be working on and how long it should take, but they are not
accountable to a specific time frame. This makes the interaction between manager and employee
less meaningful. One reason is that schedules by definition require work-to-time relationships,
which are called “standards”; they are generally accepted in manufacturing environments but are
frequently rejected in white-collar environments.
Front-line leaders and the people doing the actual work need to know if they are winning or losing
throughout the day. They need to know if they are performing according to the schedule or plan.
As just mentioned, if the schedule isn’t clear, it is difficult or impossible to measure against it. Some
people are good at making what are, in essence“to do”lists and then checking the tasks off as they
are completed. But these lists are rarely based on any comprehensive understanding of what is
required for the business. Many people work without ever knowing if they are winning or losing.
This is like a golfer playing the course but never keeping score day-after-day. Golf’s “par system” is
an elegant means of understanding expectations and measuring one’s performance. Providing a
form of competition and a means to measure achievement makes the game more interesting and
meaningful for participants.
How can something so simple and
seemingly obvious be so rare?
The reason is that active management is not as simple as it seems. To actively manage others, you
need the right environment supporting you. We have found that four conditions are necessary for
a leader to actively manage successfully. These are:
1. Schedule
2. How you’re doing
1. Schedule
What needs to be done and when
2. How you’re doing
Winning or losing throughout the day
3. Accountability
Results trigger management response
4. Good interpersonal skills
Provide feedback and resolve issues

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For plans and schedules to have any meaning, there also needs to be accountability for achievement.
This can be either positive reinforcement through rewards or recognition, or negative consequences
for poor performance. It is important that results trigger some kind of response from management
or ultimately the results have little meaning to people.
Research studies have proven that people respond to consequences (whether positive or negative)
more than just being provided with expectations. So it is not enough to simply set out expectations
for someone: you need to measure actual performance and provide an environment where
consequences are known and delivered. The more immediate and more certain the consequence,
the more effective it is in influencing behavior.
Accountability to a schedule requires problem-solving. There are often hiccups and obstacles
in schedules that challenge management during execution. But being accountable to a plan
means taking action to get the situation back under control and on schedule. Taking action
requires identifying the root cause of a problem and then developing ways to fix the problem.
Productivity and cost may temporarily take a back seat, but the schedule, when it is meaningful,
needs to be protected.
This kind of accountability can also facilitate innovation in both your product/service and your
business process as managers constantly look for better, faster, simpler ways of doing things. On
the flip side, when there is no real accountability to a schedule, or the schedule itself doesn’t really
mean anything, there is no “trigger”and little incentive to improve.
At its core, active management is a behavioral skill. For a manager to actively manage, he or
she needs good interpersonal skills: clear communication, active listening, assertiveness, and
appropriate tone of voice and body language.
Good leaders recognize that their job is to remove obstacles from the path of their employees,
not to police the process. This is critical in order to encourage staff to be honest and provide the
feedback necessary to identify and resolve operating problems.
* * *
Active management is a key concept in Carpedia’s methodology, and one of the things companies
who employ us must embrace both during and after an engagement. But it is not common, and
it takes a great deal of effort on all parts to install. To make active management a way of life for
managers, companies need to address the shortcomings in the way they schedule, execute and
measure the many tasks and activities required to make a business operate effectively. It is not
enough to simply send managers on a training course where they are immersed in the platitudes
of good management. They require an environment that reinforces the necessary behaviors. The
benefits of active management are: a more engaged workforce; a culture of accountability and
innovation; and better business results.
About the Authors
Peter Follows (pfollows@carpedia.com) is the President & CEO of Carpedia International Ltd. (www.carpedia.com).
Jennifer Fletcher (jfletcher@carpedia.com) is a Senior Director at Carpedia.
3. Accountability
4. Good
interpersonal skills

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