The CAD Manager at Work

According to a book “The Psychology of Behavior at Work: The Individual in an Organization” by Adrian Furnham (2005), a manager behaves in several ways in the work environment.

Rather than being reflective systematic planners, managers often work in an unrelenting pace.  Their activities are characterized by short duration, variety, and are disjointed and often random when observed.  The book states that most managers dislike being reflective.

Rather than having no regular duties to perform, a manager is relegated to consistent, almost ritualistic duties.

Rather than using systematic data agregated over time, the author states, they often use verbal reports for decisionmaking.

And finally as opposed to becoming a science of professionally trained functions, management still depend much on intuition and personal judgement.

When thinking on CAD Manager duties I can see that they are very random at times, and then very structured at times.  I use a lot of data to make review and comparison decisions, but make a lot of call – off the cuff on my general feelings or based on trust of those reporting to me.

The book goes on to define Ten Roles that Managers take on within an organization.  I will cover those roles in the next few blog posts.