The Complexity of Management Competency Development

Editor's Notes

• #2: Thank you very much for that warm introduction, Greg. I’d like to begin by echoing others by thanking DIATA (DEETA) for graciously hosting this truly important event. Distinguished guests, today I will discuss an issue near and dear to everyone at the ASI Institute’s heart: Management Competency Development. More specifically, I will share with you issues and complexities arising when assessing management competency needs.
• #3: Before we begin, I’d like to contextualize the presentation by giving you a snapshot of the ASI Institute. The ASI Institute fulfills its parent company Aviation Strategy International’s mission in that it focusses on management competency development in air transportation. In addition to being an ICAO TRAINAIR PLUS Full Member, It has been the been the Programme Designated Administrator since 2007, and has recently been extended until 2019 the ACI-ICAO Global Airport Management Professional Accreditation or AMPAP. It has designed and developed in house management competency building programmes such as the Airport Management Excellence Programme or AMEP, for Angkasa Pura II: the administrator of Jakarta and 12 other Western Indonesian airports It has also been a key partner in other management competency development organizations and workshops
• #4: While the NGAP Task Force to date does not deal with the aviation management talent development need, we know from taking to industry leaders that there is a pressing need for qualified managers and leaders in the field. Almost ten years ago when the initial needs assessment was being conducted for AMPAP, Mr. Jim Cherry, then Chairman of ACI World Governing Board and CEO, Aéroports de Montreal expressed his deep concern with regards to succession planning. Consistently growing enrollments in AMPAP are a testament to this fact.
• #5: Now let’s take a look at where these air transport industry managers come from
• #6: They are either recruited from industry or promoted from within
• #7: We have learned, from AMPAP and other programmes that we have worked on in the air transport industry, that the key to successfully onboarding new managers, whether they are coming from other industries or rising up through the ranks, is to present them with the necessary global and systematic picture of the air transport industry. But that only covers the knowledge part: what about the skill? Essentially, the reason why this knowledge is important is to inform and enable strategic decision making, a key competency for all managers. Fundamentally, we are providing learners with a compass and bearings, as well as the skills to navigate their managerial roles in the air transport system.
• #8: Now that we have our management competency, applying the ICAO STP methodology should be easy, right? Unfortunately, not quite. The TDG methodology was conceived primarily for technical training, as it focusses on job and task analysis. We asked 2 airports, 2 airlines, 2 air navigation service providers and 2 civil aviation authorities to share with us their organizational chart and job descriptions for managers with key decision making functions, and we realized at that moment that we were not getting the full picture with regards to what was expected of managers with strong decision making responsibilities, as the competencies required were often implicit rather than explicit.
• #9: This is when we decide to turn to the body of research on management competencies, and I will share with you a few examples of our findings.
• #10: Managers must fulfil many different roles and are continuously switching roles as tasks, situations, and expectations change. According to Mintzberg, the manager’s roles can be organized into three categories: interpersonal roles through which managers build and maintain interpersonal relations with relevant contacts informational roles to listen to and communicate with relevant contacts decisional roles where they commit to specific courses of action ________________ reference only ______________________ Interpersonal Category The roles in this category involve providing information and ideas. Figurehead – Managers have social, ceremonial and legal responsibilities. They are expected to be a source of inspiration. People look up to them as a person with authority, and as a figurehead. Leader – This is where managers provide leadership for their team, department, or the entire organization; this is where they manage the performance and responsibilities of everyone in the group. Liaison – Managers must establish internal and external contacts. They need to be able to network effectively on behalf of your organization. Informational Category The roles in this category involve processing information. Monitor – In this role, managers regularly seek out information related to their organization and industry, looking for relevant changes in the environment. They also monitor their team, in terms of both productivity, and well-being. Disseminator – This is where managers communicate potentially useful information to relevant stakeholders and inside their team. Spokesperson – Managers represent and speak for their units. In this role, they are responsible for transmitting information about their organizational units and its goals to the people outside it. Decisional Category The roles in this category involve using information. Entrepreneur – Managers create and control change within their organizational units. This means solving problems, generating new ideas, and implementing them. Disturbance Handler – When an organization or team hits an unexpected roadblock, it is the manager who must take charge. Resource Allocator – Managers also need to determine where organizational resources are best applied. This involves allocating funding, as well as assigning staff and other organizational resources. Negotiator – Managers need to take part in, and direct, conversations involving differences in positions relative to different issues within their team or with other organizational units or stakeholders.
• #11: On the other hand, Snowden’s decision making framework based on complexity theory suggest different approaches required to decide under different types of situations. Leaders need to identify the context they are working in and then learn to change their behavior and decisions to match the context. This framework classifies situations into five contexts and suggests an appropriate approach for each. Snowden underlines that business schools and organizations usually prepare leaders to operate in the ordered domains (simple and complicated: fact-based management), but that leaders must rely on their natural capabilities to face the unordered (complex and chaotic: pattern-based management) ________________ reference only ______________________ The framework called The Cynefin Framework classifies situations into five contexts and suggests an appropriate approach (a series of actions) for each: Simple contexts, the domain of best practices (known-knowns): Characterized by stability and clear cause-and-effect relationships that everybody agrees on. In this case, leaders must first assess the facts of a situation (sense) then categorize them and respond on the base of established practice. Complicated contexts, the domain of experts (known unknowns): There may be multiple right answers exhibiting clear relationship between cause and effect, but that not everyone can clearly recognize. In this case, it is recommended that leaders sense, then analyze, and respond. Complex contexts, the domain of emergence (unknown unknowns): Because the right answers can't be uncovered (just identified after the fact), the leader needs to look for instructive patterns that can emerge if the leader conducts experiments that can safely fail. Leaders need to probe first, then sense, and only then respond. This is the context to which much of contemporary business has shifted. (Approach used in Apolo 13 incident) Chaotic contexts, the domain of rapid response (unknowables): In this domain, there is no point in looking for right answers. Cause-and-effect relationships are impossible to determine because they change constantly and no manageable patterns exists (just turbulence). Here, a leader must first act to establish order, sense where stability is evident and from where is absent, and after, respond to switch the situation from chaos to complexity. (Approached needed in September 11, 2001 crisis). A fifth context, disorder, applies when it is unclear which of the other four contexts is predominant. The way out is to break the situation into its constituent parts and assign each to one of the other four contexts. Leaders can then make decisions and intervene in contextually appropriate ways.
• #12: From the literature, we went back to our job descriptions and organizational charts, and the results by developing the following framework.
• #13: Our observations were significantly indicating that the research literature on management competencies was right on the mark.
• #14: When addressing management competency development, we need to go beyond the job and task analysis to identify complex knowledge and skill required by managers which are often implicitly expected. With the rapidly growing air transport system, we cannot afford to leave management competency development to chance.