MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing by information
Managerial Tasks
Managing by Information
8.14. Dempsey and McKevitt (2001) contains criticisms of managerial
communication during the merger. Whilst examples of good practice
were found, such as a newsletter with a column guaranteeing
responses from a member of the Senior Management Team to staff
questions, the article concludes that ‘lack of staff resources led to
communication becoming piecemeal and it was not possible to develop
the required strategic communication policy’ (p 10)
Personally, however, some UNISON managers reflect on
communication as part of their management practice:-
I see myself as the conduit -- no, that's not the right term --
between the centre and the region. You know, it's important that
the corporate issues that we are pursuing get communicated
within the region and to the staff and the lay members, not just
communicated but people engaged with them. (Interviewee O)
You start to see bigger than the little niche that you work in and
become interested in how things work and how the problems get
resolved. So I did come through that route and that probably that
meant that I was quite (I think it would have been natural
anyway) a consultation manager. I kind of wanted to talk to
people a lot and make sure they felt all right about things and
saw, I suppose, initially the side of management that I like doing
is very much being about motivating people and looking at what
people are good at and trying to encourage them to go a bit
further, that kind of thing, I suppose. Soft management, I
suppose. (Interviewee G)
Another manager has found that her staff have taken initiatives in this
area:-
I was going to drive the team that was going to deliver IIP in the
department and I very quickly learned that it doesn't work like
that and so we have now set up a team within the department
taking responsibility for doing the work on it which has been a
great innovation and they have got a lot more, they are very
much more able to sell it to their colleagues that I ever would be
because it would have looked like another management initiative
if it was me. So they are enthused in their own right and they
are coming up with lots of ideas about things they would like to
do differently, ways they would like to communicate differently.
So we have our own newsletter, we have done our own survey
on what changes we would like to see. All this the staff have
initiated rather than me. (Interviewee J)
Another manager reflects on one particular difficulty he admits in his
communication with his staff:-
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