MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing through people
strike action are on or things like that. One member of staff has
got a domestic difficulty or some other problem in their personal
life to deal with and everyone in a small operation has to find a
role to play in how they are going to deal with that (Interviewee
D)
One manager has learned the importance of people from experiencing
poor management:-
I have always found that if you treat people as intelligent human
beings, you involve them in decisions, objective setting and that
kind of thing they buy into it and become committed to it and it
works basically. My observation from the outside of watching
others manage badly is that they do not involve their staff, they
did not involve the managers below them, that kind of thing.
Everyone operates in the dark and it doesn't work very well at all
(Interviewee C)
Making time to manage people in a busy life is seen as important, even
if the balance is not ideally achieved:-
The pressure tends to be just to focus on the bargaining rather
than making time for the people. I do make conscious effort to
make time for doing sort of one to one stuff with people. I like
doing it but I find that I don't have enough time to do it is much
as I would like (Interviewee G)
Delegation is seen by some managers as being a particularly important
aspect of people management:-
My idea is to give these people real power and authority
(Interviewee K)
But there is disagreement about the extent to which this has actually
been achieved:-
We haven’t…..in PCS really adopted a model which empowers
people and gives them the tools to do their jobs (Interviewee B)
And in one case, delegation to bargainers, in the context of their being
in charge of their ‘patches’ is felt to have gone too far so that, in trying
to rationalise bargaining arrangements between the union and (say)
EDS, it is difficult to convince staff that they should let go:-
We’ve delegated too much and let the bargainers get on with it
and trying to get them out of it is difficult…..We’ve let it go too far
and we’re not having any strategic input.’ (Interviewee H)
The values of these managers do appear to be exerting influence in the
direction of recognising the importance of managing people sensitively,
even if there are criticisms about the extent to which, overall, the
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