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Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Part 5 18 Managing Service
and Manufacturing
Controlling Operations 384
18-1 Productivity 385
18-2 Quality 388
18-3 Service Operations 393
18-4 Manufacturing Operations 396
18-5 Inventory 398

Dirk Ercken/Shutterstock.com Endnotes 405


Index 433

16 Control 342
16-1 The Control Process 343
16-2 Control Methods 347
16-3 What to Control? 351

17 Managing Information 362


17-1 Strategic Importance of Information 363
17-2 Characteristics and Costs of Useful Information 366
17-3 Capturing, Processing, and
Protecting Information 370
17-4 Accessing and Sharing
Information and Knowledge 379

Contents vii

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
PA RT 1

1 Management
Jan Faukner/Shutterstock.com

LEARNING Outcomes
1-1 Describe what management is. After you finish
1-2 Explain the four functions of management. this chapter, go
1-3 Describe different kinds of managers.
to PAGE 21 for
1-4 Explain the major roles and subroles that managers perform in their jobs.

1-5 Explain what companies look for in managers.


STUDY TOOLS
1-6 Discuss the top mistakes that managers make in their jobs.

1-7 Describe the transition that employees go through when they are promoted
to management.

1-8 Explain how and why companies can create competitive advantage through people.

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1-1  Management Is . . .
Management issues are fundamental to any organiza-
tion: How do we plan to get things done, organize the
company to be efficient and effective, lead and motivate
employees, and put controls in place to make sure our

Ken Wolter/Shutterstock.com
plans are followed and our goals met? Good manage-
ment is basic to starting a business, growing a business,
and maintaining a business after it has achieved some
measure of success.
To understand how important good management is,
think about this. Sears, one of the oldest retailers in the Sears is so cash strapped that it has sacrificed
United States, has lost $8.2 billion since 2011. In 2015 alone, future earnings for short-term needs by selling a
Sears saw revenues decline 20 percent—a $6 billion drop. dozen profitable stores.
The company lost $1.1 billion that year and was forced to
close 562 stores. Without the $9.5 billion it raised from
selling Lands End clothing, Sears Hometown and Out-
let Stores, and 327 profitable Sears stores, Sears would Nayar’s description of managerial responsibili-
be hemorrhaging cash and filing for bankruptcy. Robert ties suggests that managers also have to be concerned
Futterman, CEO of RKF, a retail leasing and consulting with efficiency and effectiveness in the work process.
company, said, “Retailers invest in their best stores and Efficiency is getting work done with a minimum of
refurbish them, they don’t sell them.”1 effort, expense, or waste. At aircraft manufacturer Air-
Ah, bad managers and bad management. Is it any bus, lasers help workers join massive fuselage pieces
wonder that companies pay management consultants together 30 percent faster (and 40 percent cheaper).
nearly $210 billion a year for advice on basic manage- Similarly, rather than reaching up for hours to assemble
ment issues such as how to outperform competitors to and install overhead luggage bins, workers now assemble
earn customers’ business, lead people effectively, orga- these parts at waist-high benches and then bolt them
nize the company efficiently, and manage large-scale to the plane’s ceiling. Besides being easier for workers,
projects and processes?2 This textbook will help you un- this process is 30 percent faster. When testing a plane’s
derstand some of the basic issues that management con- electrical circuitry, engineers previously used probes
sultants help companies resolve. (And it won’t cost you to validate electrical connections, hand recording the
billions of dollars.) results of 35,000 such tests on each plane’s paper blue-
Many of today’s managers got their start welding on prints. Today, wireless probes paired to computer tablets
the factory floor, clearing dishes off tables, helping cus- test each connection, automatically recording the results
tomers fit a suit, or wiping up a spill in aisle 3. Similarly, onto the plane’s digital blueprints. Finally, by using a
lots of you will start at the bottom and work your way massive ink-jet printer, Airbus has cut the time it takes to
up. There’s no better way to get to know your competi- paint airline logos on plane tail fins from 170 to 17 hours.
tion, your customers, and your business. But whether Efficiency alone, however, is not enough to ensure
you begin your career at the entry level or as a supervi- success. Managers must also strive for effectiveness,
sor, your job as a manager is not to do the work but to which is accomplishing tasks that help fulfill organiza-
help others do theirs. Management is getting work tional objectives such as customer service and satisfac-
done through others. tion. Time Warner Cable
Vineet Nayar, CEO of IT services company HCL (TWC) recently reduced
Management getting work
Technologies, doesn’t see himself as the guy who has to do its eight-hour service- done through others
everything or have all the answers. Instead, he sees him- call window to just one
hour by outfitting tech- Efficiency getting work done
self as “the guy who is obsessed with enabling employees with a minimum of effort, expense,
to create value.” Rather than coming up with solutions nicians with iPads that or waste
himself, Nayar creates opportunities for collaboration, for geolocate the nearest
customer needing ser- Effectiveness accomplishing
peer review, and for employees to give feedback on ideas tasks that help fulfill organizational
and work processes. Says Nayar, “My job is to make sure vice. Company spokes- objectives
everybody is enabled to do what they do well.”3 man Bobby Amirshahi
CHAPTER 1: Management 3

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
said, “We know when a tech is finishing up at one home, and controlling.10 Most management textbooks today
the one-hour window somewhere near them is starting have updated this list by dropping the coordinating
to open for another customer, so we can dynamically function and referring to Fayol’s commanding func-
dispatch that technician to the next job.”5 The focus on tion as “leading.” Fayol’s management functions are
improving customer service is paying off. Today, TWC thus known today in this updated form as planning,
technicians arrive within the set one-hour window organizing, leading, and controlling. Studies indi-
98 percent of the time. TWC’s TechTracker app pro- cate that managers who perform these management
vides customers with the technician’s arrival time, functions well are more successful, gaining promo-
name, identification number, and photo. Thanks to tions for themselves and profits for their companies.
improvements in TWC reliability, repair-related visits For example, the more time CEOs spend planning,
dropped by 15 percent and the number of pay-TV sub- the more profitable their companies are.11 A 25-year
scribers increased.6 TWC Chairman Rob Marcus said, study at AT&T found that employees with better plan-
“Our customers expect and deserve the best customer ning and decision-making skills were more likely to
experience we can deliver.”7 be promoted into management jobs, to be successful
as managers, and to be promoted into upper levels of
management.12

1-2 Management The evidence is clear. Managers serve their compa-


nies well when they plan, organize, lead, and control. So

Functions we’ve organized this textbook based on these functions


of management, as shown in Exhibit 1.1.

Henri Fayol, who was a managing director (CEO) of a Now let’s take a closer look at each of the management
large steel company in the early 1900s, was one of the functions: 1-2a planning, 1-2b organizing, 1-2c leading,
founders of the field of management. You’ll learn more and 1-2d controlling.
about Fayol and management’s other key contributors
when you read about the history of management in
Chapter 2. Based on his 20 years of experience
as a CEO, Fayol argued that “the success of an
enterprise generally depends much more on the Exhibit 1.1
administrative ability of its leaders than on their
technical ability.”8 A century later, Fayol’s argu-
The Four Functions of Management
ments still hold true. During a two-year study
code-named Project Oxygen, Google analyzed
performance reviews and feedback surveys to
identify the traits of its best managers. According
to Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for peo-
ple operations, “We’d always believed that to be a Planning Organizing
manager, particularly on the engineering side, you
need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert
than the people who work for you. It turns out
that that’s absolutely the least important thing.”
What was most important? “Be a good coach.”
“Empower; Don’t micromanage.” “Be product
and results-oriented.” “Be a good communicator
and listen to your team.” “Be interested in [your]
direct reports’ success and well-being.” In short,
Google found what Fayol observed: administrative Leading Controlling
ability, or management, is key to an organization’s
success.9
According to Fayol, managers need to perform
five managerial functions in order to be successful:
planning, organizing, coordinating, commanding,

4 PART one

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
industry, that usually means matching staffing levels
1-2a Planning to customer traffic, increasing staffing when busy, and
Planning involves determining organizational goals then decreasing staffing when slow. Walmart recently
and a means for achieving them. As you’ll learn in Chap- implemented software to match the schedules of its
ter 5, planning is one of the best ways to improve perfor- 2.2 million associates with the flows of its 260 million
mance. It encourages people to work harder, to work for weekly customers. While this dynamic, just-in-time ap-
extended periods, to engage in behaviors directly related proach sounds like a great idea, it resulted in highly
to goal accomplishment, and to think of better ways to fragmented schedules for thousands of store employ-
do their jobs. But most importantly, companies that plan ees who could be sent home from work after just a few
have larger profits and faster growth than companies hours (due to unexpectedly slow customer traffic) or
that don’t plan. called back unexpectedly (when customer traffic in-
For example, the question “What business are we creased). These unpredictable work schedules, which
in?” is at the heart of strategic planning. You’ll learn effectively put many associates perpetually on call,
about this in Chapter 6. If you can answer the ques- produced backlash from employees, advocacy groups,
tion “What business are you in?” in two sentences or and unions alike. In response, Walmart reconfigured its
fewer, chances are you have a very clear plan for your schedules using three types of shifts: open, fixed, and
business. But getting a clear plan is not so easy. As flex. Managers schedule open shift employees
the manufacturer of backpacks for industry lead- during times that they previously indicated that
ing brands like JanSport, North Face, Timber- they would be available for. Fixed shifts, which
land, and Eastpak, VF Corporation dominates the are offered first to long-time employees, guar-
$2.7 billion backpack business. The increasing antee the same weekly hours for up to a year.
digitalization of textbooks and other documents Finally, flex shifts let employees build their
has led VF to reassess how customers use its own schedules in two- to three-week blocks.
backpacks. According to JanSport director of Walmart is also developing an app that will allow
research and design Eric Rothenhaus, “We employees to view, update, and set their schedules
realized we needed to forget everything we using a smartphone. Walmart managers have high
knew about the category. . . . We started to ask: hopes for the new shift structures, which reduced
What are the things we carry with us? How do absenteeism by 11 percent and employee turn-
we carry them? And how is that changing?”13 VF over by 14 percent during a two-year test.15
Michaeljung/Shutterstock.com

studied college students, homeless people, and


You’ll learn more about organizing in Chapter 9 on
extreme mountaineers, learning that they had sur-
designing adaptive organizations, Chapter 10 on
prisingly similar requirements: water-resistance,
managing teams, Chapter 11 on managing human
flexibility, storage for electronics, and the ability
resources, and Chapter 12 on managing individu-
to pack and unpack several times a day. So rather
als and a diverse workforce.
than making bags to carry things from point A to
point B, VR’s JanSport backpacks are designed for
people who move and work in multiple locations—
classrooms, coffee shops, shared office spaces, and be-
1-2c Leading
yond. “When you need to be on the go,” Rothenhaus Our third management function, leading, involves
said, “you need a backpack.”14 inspiring and motivating workers to work hard to achieve
organizational goals. Eileen Martinson, CEO of software
You’ll learn more about planning in Chapter 5 on planning
developer Sparta Sys-
and decision making, Chapter 6 on organizational strat-
tems, believes that it is Planning determining
egy, Chapter 7 on innovation and change, and Chapter 8 organizational goals and a means for
important for leaders
on global management. achieving them
to clearly communicate
what an organization’s Organizing deciding where
goals are. She says, “A decisions will be made, who will do
1-2b Organizing boss taught me a long
what jobs and tasks, and who will
work for whom
Organizing is deciding where decisions will be made, time ago that people are
who will do what jobs and tasks, and who will work for going to remember only Leading inspiring and motivating
workers to work hard to achieve
whom in the company. In other words, organizing is two to three things.” So organizational goals
about determining how things get done. In the retail at her first company-wide

CHAPTER 1: Management 5

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Management Tips from the Pros

T he functions of planning, organiz-


ing, leading, and controlling all
seem straightforward enough, but
organized is by crowdsourcing
meeting agendas. She asks cowork-
ers to add agenda items to an on-
how do managers do all of them si- line spreadsheet, and then during
multaneously? Today’s managers are the meeting, covers only the topics
busy; as you’ll learn later in the chapter, listed—no more.
managers spend as little as two min- ▸ Leading: Indra Nooyi, CEO of
utes on a task before having to switch PepsiCo, handwrites notes to
to another! Here are some techniques roughly 200 of the company’s top
seasoned managers use to be more ef- employees and even to top recruits.
ficient and effective as they execute on She also sends notes to the parents
the four functions of management. of her direct reports, thanking them
▸▸ Planning: Carlos Ghosn is CEO of for their child.
two automakers with headquar- ▸ Controlling: Birchbox CEO Katia
ters halfway around the world from Beauchamp insists her coworkers
each other: Nissan (in Japan) and give her a deadline for every ques-

iStockphoto.com/EdStock
Renault (in France). He is also the tion they ask her, no matter how
chairman of a third—AvtoVaz (in simple. That way, she can prioritize
Russia). To balance all his respon- her responses and stay on track.
sibilities, he plans his schedule out Source: J. McGregor, “How 10 CEOs Work Smarter,
more than a year in advance. Manage Better, and Get Things Done Faster,”
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi speaks Washington Post, January 2, 2015, https://www
▸▸ Organizing: One of the ways Adora .washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership
at a conference in Miami, Florida. /wp/2015/01/02/how-10-ceos-work-smarter
Cheung, CEO of Homejoy, stays -manage-better-and-get-things-done-faster/.

meeting, she communicated just one goal—doubling rev- standards. When traveling, Indians are much more likely
enues over the next few years.16 Martinson says, “The em- to stay with friends or family than in a hotel. In fact, there
ployees completely understand where we are going, and are just two hotel rooms for every 10,000 people in India
we’ve built a culture around that. If you have to come in and (compared to 40 in China and 200 in the United States).
show me 45 charts and go through a lot of mumbo jumbo Why is this? Analyst Chetan Kapoor says, “There are lots
that neither of us understands, it’s not going to work.”17 of hotels where customers go in thinking, ‘Will there be
rats in my room?’”18 Roughly 60 percent of those rooms
You’ll learn more about leading in Chapter 13 on motiva-
are located in independent budget hotels, which vary dra-
tion, Chapter 14 on leadership, and Chapter 15 on manag-
matically in quality. Oyo Rooms is aiming to change that
ing communication.
with its new hotel inspection service. Oyo inspects hotels
across 200 dimensions, including linen quality, mattress
1-2d Controlling comfort, cleanliness, shower water temperature, and staff
appearance. Hotels agree to maintain those standards
The last function of management, controlling, is
as a condition of staying in Oyo’s 175 city database. Oyo
monitoring progress toward goal achievement and tak-
Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal says that inspections en-
ing corrective action when progress isn’t being made.
courage hoteliers to make repairs and upgrade facilities.
The basic control process involves setting standards to
As a result, he says, “When you book a room through Oyo,
achieve goals, comparing
you know exactly what you’re going to get.”19
actual performance to
Controlling monitoring progress You’ll learn more about the control function in Chapter 16 on
those standards, and then
toward goal achievement and taking
corrective action when needed making changes to return control, Chapter 17 on managing information, and Chapter
performance to those 18 on managing service and manufacturing operations.
6 PART one

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1-3 Kinds of Managers performance. That is, top managers are responsible
for creating employee buy-in. Third, top managers
must create a positive organizational culture through
Not all managerial jobs are the same. The demands language and action. Top managers impart company
and requirements placed on the CEO of Facebook are values, strategies, and lessons through what they do
significantly different from those placed on the manager and say to others both inside and outside the company.
of your local Chipotle restaurant. Indeed, no matter what they communicate, it’s critical
for them to send and reinforce clear, consistent mes-
As shown in Exhibit 1.2, there are four kinds of managers,
sages.25 When Phil Martens became CEO of aluminum
each with different jobs and responsibilities: 1-3a top
producer Novelis, he spent his first 100 days visiting
managers, 1-3b middle managers, 1-3c first-line man-
plants around the world and discovered that the com-
agers, and 1-3d team leaders.
pany, with 11,000 employees, had highly fragment-
ed business practices, operations, and strategies. To
1-3a Top Managers clearly communicate, “that we’re going to move from a
Top managers hold positions such as chief execu- fragmented, regional company to a globally integrated
tive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), chief company,” Martens had shirts with the slogan, “One
financial officer (CFO), and chief information officer Novelis,” distributed so that a symbolic picture of the
(CIO) and are responsible for the overall direction of the leadership team could be taken. For the picture, said
organization. Top managers have three major responsi- Martens, “We stood in a very defined triangle, very pre-
bilities.20 First, they are responsible for creating a con- cise, because I wanted to create the image of order, and
text for change. When R. J. Dourney was hired as Cosí’s that we are together.”26 Likewise, it’s important to ac-
CEO, the sandwich chain had struggled for 12 years tively manage internal organizational communication.
under nine CEOs who never posted a profit. After just As part of the One Novelis program, Martens created
two days on the job, Dourney announced to the compa- a global safety program, called Together We Are Safe,
ny’s corporate employees that its Chicago headquarters which monitored health and safety practices across
would close and be relocated in Boston, where Dourney Novelis’s global sites, identified best practices, and then
had been a successful franchiser of thirteen Cosi stores adopted and communicated them as a global standard.
before becoming CEO. Dourney immediately closed As a result, from 2009 to 2013, Novelis saw injuries, ill-
ten unprofitable stores, updated the menu, and changed nesses, and fatalities drop by over 40 percent.27
Così’s stock-incentive program to be performance based. Finally, top managers are responsible for monitoring
He then rolled out a more efficient serving system to their business environments. This means that top managers
serve customers quickly at all locations. In less than a must closely monitor customer needs, competitors’ moves,
year, those same store sales rose 20 percent while the and long-term business, economic, and social trends.
company’s stock price rose 160 percent per share.21
Indeed, in both Europe and the United States,
35 percent of all CEOs are eventually fired because of their
1-3b Middle Managers
inability to successfully change their companies.22 Creat- Middle managers hold positions such as plant
ing a context for change includes forming a long-range manager, regional manager, or divisional manager.
vision or mission for the company. When Satya Nadella They are responsible for setting objectives consistent
was appointed CEO of Microsoft, the company was per- with top management’s goals and for planning and im-
ceived as a shortsighted, lumbering behemoth. Nadella plementing subunit strategies for achieving those ob-
reoriented the company with a series of acquisitions and jectives.28 Or as one middle manager put it, a middle
innovations, including purchasing Mojang, maker of the manager is, “the imple-
Minecraft video game, and a 3D-hologram feature for menter of the company’s Top managers executives
controlling Windows. After following Microsoft for years, strategy” who figures responsible for the overall direction
one analyst noted about Nadella’s new direction for the out the “how” to do the of the organization
company, “Microsoft hasn’t really shown any sort of vision “what.” Ryan Carson
29
Middle managers responsible
like this in a long, long time.”23 As one CEO said, “The founded online learn- for setting objectives consistent with
CEO has to think about the future more than anyone.”24 ing company Treehouse top management’s goals and for
After that vision or mission is set, the second res­ Island without manag- planning and implementing subunit
strategies for achieving these
ponsibility of top managers is to develop employ- ers because he believed objectives
ees’ commitment to and ownership of the company’s that his 100 employees
CHAPTER 1: Management 7

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Exhibit 1.2
What the Four Kinds of Managers Do
Jobs Responsibilities
Top Managers
CEO CIO Change
COO Vice president Commitment
CFO Corporate heads Culture
Environment

Mmichaeljung/Shutterstock.com/BlueSkyImage/Shutterstock.com/Kzenon / Shutterstock.com/Racorn/Shutterstock.com
Middle Managers
General manager Resources
Plant manager Objectives
Regional manager Coordination
Divisional manager Subunit performance
Strategy implementation

First-Line Managers
Office manager Nonmanagerial worker supervision
Shift supervisor Teaching and training
Department manager Scheduling
Facilitation

Team Leaders
Team leader Facilitation
Team contact External relationships
Group facilitator Internal relationships

could make decisions better and faster by themselves. One middle manager described his job as, “A man who
However, that decision was severely tested when rapid can discuss strategy with [the] CXO at breakfast and
growth resulted in 100,000 students enrolled in Tree- [then] eat lunch with workers.”31
house Island’s online courses. Employees, unsure of A third responsibility of middle management is to
their responsibilities, became increasingly frustrated as monitor and manage the performance of the subunits
endless meetings never seemed to result in meaningful and individual managers who report to them. Finally,
action or decisions. Tasks and projects that were nec- middle managers are also responsible for implement-
essary to keep up with demand started to fall behind ing the changes or strategies generated by top manag-
schedule. Carson fixed the situation by creating roles ers. Why? Because they’re closer to the managers and
for middle managers. “That [managerless] experiment employees who work on a daily basis with suppliers to
broke,” said Carson. “I just had to admit it.”30 effectively and efficiently deliver the company’s product
One specific middle management responsibility or service. In short, they’re closer to the people who can
is to plan and allocate resources to meet objectives. A best solve problems and implement solutions. How im-
second major responsibility is to coordinate and link portant are middle managers to company performance?
groups, departments, and divisions within a company. A study of nearly 400 video-game companies conducted

8 PART one

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of enough sandwiches for lunch?) After the day is planned,
Business found that middle managers’ effectiveness the manager turns to weekend orders. After accounting
accounted for 22 percent of the differences in perfor- for the weather (hot or cold) and the sales trends at the
mance across companies. In fact, middle managers were same time last year, the manager makes sure the store
three times as important as the video-game designers will have enough beer, soft drinks, and snack foods on
who develop game characters and storylines. Profes- hand. Finally, the manager looks seven to ten days ahead
sor Ethan Mollick, who conducted the study, said that for hiring needs. Because of strict hiring procedures (ba-
middle managers are the key to “making sure the people sic math tests, drug tests, and background checks), it can
at the bottom and the top [of the organization] are get- take that long to hire new employees. Said one conve-
ting what they need.”32 As for Treehouse Island, revenue nience store manager, “I have to continually interview,
is up, the number of instructional videos has increased, even if I am fully staffed.”35
and response times to student questions have been cut in
half. According to teacher Craig Dennis, things are “light
years better” with middle managers in place.33
1-3d Team Leaders
The fourth kind of manager is a team leader. This rela-
tively new kind of management job developed as compa-
1-3c First-Line Managers nies shifted to self-managing teams, which, by definition,
First-line managers hold positions such as office man- have no formal supervisor. In traditional management
ager, shift supervisor, or department manager. The pri- hierarchies, first-line managers are responsible for the
mary responsibility of first-line managers is to manage the performance of nonmanagerial employees and have the
performance of entry-level employees who are directly authority to hire and fire workers, make job assignments,
responsible for producing a com- and control resources. In this new
pany’s goods and services. structure, the teams themselves
Thus, first-line managers perform nearly all of the func-
are the only managers who tions performed by first-line
don’t supervise other man- managers under traditional
agers. The responsibilities hierarchies.36

Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com
of first-line managers include Team leaders are
monitoring, teaching, and primarily responsible for
short-term planning. facilitating team activi-
First-line managers en- ties toward accomplishing
courage, monitor, and reward a goal. This doesn’t mean
the performance of their work- team leaders are responsible
ers. First-line managers are also for team performance. They
responsible for teaching entry- aren’t. The team is. So how do
level employees how to do their team leaders help their teams
jobs. They also make detailed sched- accomplish their goals? Avinoam
ules and operating plans based on middle manage- Nowogrodski, CEO at Clarizen, a software
ment’s intermediate-range plans. In contrast to the long- company, says, “Great leaders ask the right
term plans of top managers (three to five years out) and questions. They recognize . . . that a team is much bet-
the intermediate plans of middle managers (six to eigh- ter at figuring out the answers.”37 Team leaders help
teen months out), first-line managers engage in plans their team members
and actions that typically produce results within two plan and schedule work,
First-line managers
weeks.34 Consider the typical convenience store man- learn to solve problems, responsible for training and
ager (e.g., 7-Eleven) who starts the day by driving past and work effectively supervising the performance of
competitors’ stores to inspect their gasoline prices and with each other. Man- nonmanagerial employees who are
then checks the outside of his or her store for anything agement consultant directly responsible for producing
the company’s products or services
that might need maintenance, such as burned-out lights Franklin Jonath says,
or signs, or restocking, such as windshield washer fluid “The idea is for the Team leaders managers
responsible for facilitating
and paper towels. Then comes an inside check, where team leader to be at the
team activities toward goal
the manager determines what needs to be done for that service of the group.” accomplishment
day. (Are there enough donuts and coffee for breakfast or It should be clear that
CHAPTER 1: Management 9

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
the team members own the outcome. The leader is
there to bring intellectual, emotional, and spiritual re-
1-4 Managerial Roles
sources to the team. Through his or her actions, the
leader should be able to show the others how to think Although all four types of managers engage in planning,
about the work that they’re doing in the context of organizing, leading, and controlling, if you were to follow
their lives. It’s a tall order, but the best teams have them around during a typical day on the job, you would
such leaders.38 probably not use these terms to describe what they actually
Relationships among team members and between do. Rather, what you’d see are the various roles managers
different teams are crucial to good team performance play. Professor Henry Mintzberg followed five American
and must be well managed by team leaders, who are CEOs, shadowing each for a week and analyzing their
responsible for fostering good relationships and ad- mail, their conversations, and their actions. He concluded
dressing problematic ones within their teams. Getting that managers fulfill three major roles while performing
along with others is much more important in team their jobs—interpersonal, informational, and decisional.43
structures because team members can’t get work done In other words, managers talk to people, gather and
without the help of teammates. Clarizen CEO Avino- give information, and make decisions. Furthermore, as
am Nowogrodski agrees, saying, “Innovation is created shown in Exhibit 1.3, these three major roles can be sub-
with people who you respect. It will never happen in divided into ten subroles.
a group of people who hate each other. If you want to Let’s examine each major role—1-4a interpersonal roles,
have innovation within your company, you need to have 1-4b informational roles, and 1-4c decisional roles—
a culture of respect.”39 And, Nowogrodski adds, that and their ten subroles.
starts with the team leader. “If you respect other peo-
ple, they’ll respect you.”40 Tim Clem emerged as a team
leader at GitHub, a San Francisco—based software 1-4a Interpersonal Roles
company that provides collaborative tools and online
More than anything else, management jobs are people-
work spaces for people who code software. GitHub,
intensive. When asked about her experience as a
itself, also uses team structures and team leaders to
decide the software projects on which its 170 employ-
ees will work. After only a few months at the company,
Clem, who had not previously led a team, convinced Exhibit 1.3
his GitHub colleagues to work on a new product he had Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
designed for Microsoft Windows. Without their ap-
proval, he would not have gotten the go-ahead and the Interpersonal Roles
resources to hire people to do the project. By contrast, Figurehead
a manager, and not the team, would have likely made Leader
this decision in a traditional management structure.41 Liaison
Team leaders are also responsible for managing
external relationships. Team leaders act as the bridge or
liaison between their teams and other teams, departments,
and divisions in a company. For example, if a member of Informational Roles
Team A complains about the quality of Team B’s work, Monitor
Team A’s leader is responsible for solving the problem by Disseminator
initiating a meeting with Team B’s leader. Together, these Spokesperson
team leaders are responsible for getting members of both
teams to work together to solve the problem. If it’s done
right, the problem is solved without involving company Decisional Roles
management or blaming members of the other team.42 Entrepreneur
In summary, because of these critical differences, Disturbance Handler
team leaders who don’t understand how their roles are Resource Allocator
different from those of traditional managers often strug- Negotiator
gle in their jobs. Source: Adapted from “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact,” by Mintzberg,
H. Harvard Business Review, July–August 1975.
You will learn more about teams in Chapter 10.

10 PART one

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Seven Deadlies—Things Great Bosses Avoid
A manager is responsible not only for providing direction and
guidance to employees but also for making sure to create a
work environment that allows them to be the best. Author and col-
6. Asking employees to do something that you
don’t want to do.
7. Asking employees to reveal personal informa-
umnist Jeff Haden identifies seven things that managers often do tion in the spirit of “team building.”
that create an uncomfortable and unproductive work atmosphere:
1. P ressuring employees to attend social events. When your
employees are with people from work, even at some party,
it might just end up feeling like “work.”
2. Pressuring employees to give to charity.
3. Not giving employees time to eat during mealtime hours.

4. Asking employees to do self-evaluations.

Brues/Shutterstock.com
5. Asking employees to evaluate their coworkers.

Source: J. Haden “7 Things Great Bosses Never Ask Employees to Do” Inc.com, March 12,
2015, accessed March 28, 2015. http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/7-things-the-best
-bosses-refuse-to-ask-employees-to-do.html.

first-time CEO, Kim Bowers, CEO of CST Brands, for 2013. Xu said, “The (2013) target was very ambitious
said, “We have 12,000 employees. [So,] I spend a to motivate staff.”47
lot of time out in the field with them.”44 Estimates In the liaison role, managers deal with people
vary with the level of management, but most manag- outside their units. Studies consistently indicate that
ers spend between two-thirds and four-fifths of their managers spend as much time with outsiders as they do
time in face-to-face communication with others.45 If with their own subordinates and their own bosses. For
you’re a loner, or if you consider dealing with people example, CEOs often sit on other companies’ boards.
a pain, then you may not be cut out for management CEO Stephen Zarrilli, of Safeguard Scientifics, which
work. In fulfilling the interpersonal role of manage- invests in high-growth health care and technology
ment, managers perform three subroles: figurehead, firms, says, “When you sit on another company’s board,
leader, and liaison. you gain perspective—not only about the company and
In the figurehead role, managers perform cer- its industry—but, more importantly, about other oper-
emonial duties such as greeting company visitors, speak- ating methodologies, governance, and viewpoints that
ing at the opening of a new facility, or representing the can be very beneficial
company at a community luncheon to support local char- when you bring them
ities. When Fendi, the Italian fashion house, launched a back to your compa- Figurehead role the
design initiative to raise money for charity, CEO Pietro ny.”48 Indeed, companies interpersonal role managers play
Beccari hosted a gala at the company’s recently opened in low-growth, highly when they perform ceremonial
duties
flagship store in New York City.46 competitive industries
In the leader role, managers motivate and encour­ whose CEOs sit on out- Leader role the interpersonal
role managers play when they
age workers to accomplish organizational objectives (see side boards earn an av-
motivate and encourage workers to
box “Seven Deadlies—Things Great Bosses Avoid”). erage return on assets accomplish organizational objectives
One way managers can act as leaders is to establish chal- 15 percent higher than
Liaison role the interpersonal
lenging goals. William Xu, the enterprise division chief companies with CEOs
role managers play when they deal
of Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Enter- who don’t sit on outside with people outside their units
prises, gave his division a 40 percent sales growth target boards!49

CHAPTER 1: Management 11

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
1-4b Informational Roles for monitoring social media.51 An-
other site, Federal News Service
Not only do managers spend most of (http://fednews.com), provides sub-
their time in face-to-face contact with scribers with daily electronic news
others, they spend much of it obtaining clips from more than 10,000 online
and sharing information. Mintzberg news sites.52
found that the managers in his study Because of their numerous
spent 40 percent of their time giving personal contacts and their ac-
and getting information from others. cess to subordinates, managers
In this regard, management can be are often hubs for the distribu-
viewed as gathering information by tion of critical information. In the
scanning the business environment disseminator role, managers
and listening to others in face-to-face share the information they have
conversations, processing that infor- collected with their subordinates

AP Images/Keith Srakocic
mation, and then sharing it with people and others in the company. At
both inside and outside the company. Qualtrics, a software company
Mintzberg described three informa- that provides sophisticated on-
tional subroles: monitor, disseminator, line survey research tools, CEO
and spokesperson. Ryan Smith makes sure that
H.J. Heinz Company CEO
In the monitor role, managers everyone in the company is clear
scan their environment for information, Bernardo Hees acts as
on company goals and plans.
actively contact others for information, a spokesperson for his Every Monday, employees are
and, because of their personal con- company. Here, Hees speaks asked via email to respond to two
tacts, receive a great deal of unsolicited at an exhibition at the Senator questions: “What are you going to
information. Besides receiving firsthand John Heinz History Center in get done this week? And what did
information, managers monitor their en- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. you get done last week that you
vironment by reading local newspapers said you were going to do?” Smith
and the Wall Street Journal to keep track says, “Then that rolls up into one
of customers, competitors, and technological changes that email that the entire organization gets. So if someone’s
may affect their businesses. Today’s managers can sub- got a question, they can look at that for an explanation.
scribe to electronic monitoring and distribution services We share other information, too—every time we have
that track the news wires (Associated Press, Reuters, and a meeting, we release meeting notes to the organiza-
so on) for stories and social media posts related to their tion. When we have a board meeting, we write a let-
businesses. These services deliver customized news that ter about it afterward and send it to the organization.”
only includes topics the managers specify. Business Wire Qualtrics also uses an internal database where each
(http://www.businesswire.com) monitors and distributes quarter employees enter their plans for meeting the
daily news headlines from major industries (for example company’s objectives. Those plans are then made vis-
automotive, banking and financial, health, high tech).50 ible to everyone else at Qualtrics.53
CyberAlert (http://www In contrast to the disseminator role, in which man-
.cyberalert.com) keeps agers distribute information to employees inside the
Monitor role the informational round-the-clock track
role managers play when they scan
company, managers in the spokesperson role share
their environment for information of new stories in cat- information with people outside their departments or
egories chosen by each companies. One of the most common ways that CEOs
Disseminator role the subscriber. It also offers
informational role managers play
act as spokespeople for their companies is speaking at
when they share information with CyberAlert Social, which annual meetings and on conference calls with sharehold-
others in their departments monitors roughly 25 mil- ers or boards of directors. CEOs also serve as spokes-
or companies lion individual social people to the media when their companies are involved
Spokesperson role the media posts daily across in major news stories. When Kraft Foods merged with
informational role managers play 190 million social me- H.J. Heinz Company in 2015, managers began work-
when they share information with dia sources worldwide. ing to reduce spending. They announced 5,000 layoffs
people outside their departments or
Brandwatch and Viral- and implemented zero-based budgeting, which re-
companies
Heat are additional tools quires even the smallest expenses to be justified every
12 PART one

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year. With earnings drop- writedown. Cornell said,

Tupungato/Shutterstock.com
ping and revenue down “Simply put, we were losing
nearly 10 percent, CEO money every day,” and could
Bernardo Hees told the not, “find a realistic scenario that
media and investors, “We got Target Canada to profitability until at
are instituting routines least 2021.”56
that represent discipline, accountability, and methodol- In the resource allocator role, managers decide
ogy for how we will operate. The actions under the re- who will get what resources and how many resources
sulting plan will take us two years to be [sic] complete, they will get. Ford’s F-series truck, the best selling ve-
but will make us more globally competitive and acceler- hicle in the U.S. for 32 consecutive years, generates
ate our future growth.”54 $22 billion in sales a year and accounts for 12 percent
of Ford’s global sales and 40 percent of its global prof-
its. In 2009, Ford committed to a multibillion-dollar in-
1-4c Decisional Roles vestment to redesign the F-series, whose prices range
Mintzberg found that obtaining and sharing information from $24,000 to $50,000, to be built with a completely
is not an end in itself. Obtaining and sharing information aluminum body, something found only in much more
with people inside and outside the company is useful expensive cars, such as the the $70,000 Tesla Model S
to managers because it helps them make good deci- or the $75,000 Audi A8. Ford Chairman Bill Ford, says,
sions. According to Mintzberg, managers engage in four “Some people might say, ‘Aren’t you taking a chance with
decisional subroles: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, your best-selling vehicle?’ But that’s what you have to
resource allocator, and negotiator. do.” He said, “I would have had much more anxiety if
In the entrepreneur role, managers adapt them- they had come in with business-as-usual.” The 2015 F-
selves, their subordinates, and their units to change. series is 700 lbs. lighter, which allowed Ford engineers
For years, Whole Foods Market, was the top—and to replace a 6.2 liter V8 with a 3.5-liter turbocharged
only—organic grocery retailer. When traditional chains, V6. While still capable of towing 8,000 pounds, overall
such as Kroger and Walmart, began offering organic gas mileage rose by 16 percent from 19 mpg to 22 mpg,
produce, meat, and packaged foods for cheaper prices, making the F-series the most fuel efficient gas-powered
Whole Foods—sometimes called “Whole Paycheck” vehicle in its class.”57
due to its high prices—became vulnerable and earnings In the negotiator role, managers negotiate sched-
plummeted. Co-CEO Walter Robb said, “All of a sud- ules, projects, goals, outcomes, resources, and employee
den . . . you can get the same stuff in many other places raises. When low-cost Dublin-based airline Ryanair was
and you could get it cheaper.” So the company cut prices, shopping for 200 new planes in 2014, it pressed Boeing
which, “Will tell customers what we are about: values and and Airbus to add an extra eight to eleven seats per plane.
value,” says founder and Co-CEO John Mackey. Whole Doing so cuts costs by 20
Foods also launched its first national advertising cam- percent and earns an extra Entrepreneur role the
paign, started a customer loyalty program, and partnered 1 million euros per plane decisional role managers play
with Instacart to deliver groceries to customers’ homes each year. CEO Michael when they adapt themselves, their
subordinates, and their units to
in fifteen cities. Co-CEO Robb says that changes—and O’Leary traveled from change
lower prices—will continue.55 Ireland to Seattle to per-
In the disturbance handler role, managers re- sonally negotiate the deal Disturbance handler
role the decisional role managers
spond to pressures and problems so severe that they and acknowledged pitting play when they respond to severe
demand immediate attention and action. In Decem- Ryanair’s longtime suppli- pressures and problems that
ber 2014, Brian Cornell, Target’s new CEO, went on a er Boeing against Airbus, demand immediate action
solo tour of the company’s Canadian retail stores. Tar- saying, “We were very Resource allocator role the
get Canada, the company’s first international expan- close to going to Airbus decisional role managers play when
sion, had lost $2 billion since starting in 2011. Cornell, in the spring [of 2014].” they decide who gets what resources
CEO for just four months, wanted to see the strug- O’Leary left Boeing with and in what amounts
gling Canadian stores firsthand. On returning home, a deal for 200 planes, each Negotiator role the decisional
he reviewed Target Canada’s sales numbers, and just with eight extra seats, and role managers play when they
a few weeks later, in January 2015, announced Target a hefty discount off the negotiate schedules, projects, goals,
outcomes, resources, and employee
would spend $600 million to liquidate all 133 Canadian $104 million retail price raises
stores, lay off 17,000 employees, and take a $5.4 billion of Boeing’s 737-MAX
CHAPTER 1: Management 13

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
jet (still in development) that brought the total price tag
down from $20.8 billion to $11 billion.58 Exhibit 1.4
Management Skills
What Companies

Importance
1-5

High
Look for in
Managers
I didn’t have the slightest idea what my job was.
I walked in giggling and laughing because I had

Importance
been promoted and had no idea what principles

Low
or style to be guided by. After the first day, I felt
like I had run into a brick wall. (Sales Repre-
Technical Human Conceptual Motivation
sentative #1) Skills Skills Skills to Manage

Suddenly, I found myself saying, boy, I can’t Team Leaders Middle Managers
be responsible for getting all that revenue. I First-Line Managers Top Managers
don’t have the time. Suddenly you’ve got to go
from [taking care of] yourself and say now I’m
the manager, and what does a man-
ager do? It takes awhile think-
goals. If performance in nonmanagerial
ing about it for it to really
jobs doesn’t necessarily prepare you for
hit you . . . a manager gets
a managerial job, then what does it
things done through other
take to be a manager?
people. That’s a very, very hard transition
When companies look for em-
to make. (Sales Representative #2)59
ployees who would be good managers,
The preceding statements were made by two they look for individuals who have technical
star sales representatives who, on the basis of skills, human skills, conceptual skills, and
their superior performance, were promoted the motivation to manage.60 Exhibit 1.4
to the position of sales manager. As their shows the relative importance of these
comments indicate, at first they did not four skills to the jobs of team leaders,
feel confident about their ability to do their first-line managers, middle manag-
jobs as managers. Like most new managers, ers, and top managers.
these sales managers suddenly realized that the Technical skills are
knowledge, skills, and abilities that led to suc- the specialized proce-
cess early in their careers (and were probably dures, techniques, and
responsible for their promotion into the ranks knowledge required to get the job done. For
of management) would not necessarily help the sales managers described previously, tech-
them succeed as managers. As sales representa- nical skills involve the ability to find new sales
tives, they were responsible only for managing prospects, develop accurate sales pitches based
their own performance. But as sales managers, on customer needs, and close sales. For a nurse
Viorel Sima/Shutterstock.com

they were now directly responsible for supervis- supervisor, technical skills include being able to
ing all of the sales representatives in their sales insert an IV or operate a crash cart if a patient
territories. Further- goes into cardiac arrest.
more, they were now Technical skills are most important for team
Technical skills the specialized directly accountable leaders and lower-level managers because they
procedures, techniques, and for whether those supervise the workers who produce products or serve
knowledge required to get the job
done sales representatives customers. Team leaders and first-line managers need
achieved their sales technical knowledge and skills to train new employees
14 PART one

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How to Be an Effective Executive in the Age
of Brilliant Machines

I n the era of big data, powerful analytics, enterprise software


tools, and apps that do just about anything, there’s no deny-
ing that technology has made many jobs obsolete. Could the
▸▸ Tolerating ambiguity—The bigger and broader a problem,
the better suited it is to a manager who can tolerate ambi-
guity and has a high level of discernment.
same be true for managers? Could technology make manage- ▸▸ Employing soft skills—Humans have the advantage when
ment obsolete? it comes to interpersonal skills such as empathy, inspira-
As data science and artificial intelligence begin to permeate tion, and coaching.
business organizations, it will become increasingly critical for man-
In the era of brilliant machines, the managers who master hu-
agers to have strong human skills. In this era of brilliant machines,
man skills will be the ones who have the edge.
managers make the biggest difference by doing the following:
▸▸ Asking questions—It takes judgment to know who to ask, Source: Irving Wladawksy-Berger, “As Big Data and AI Take Hold, What Will It Take
to Be an Effective Executive,” Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2015. http://blogs
what questions to ask, and when to ask them. .wsj.com/cio/2015/01/23/as-big-data-and-ai-take-hold-what-will-it-take-to-be
-an-effective-executive/tab/print/.
▸▸ Attacking exceptions—An algorithm might identify ex-
ceptions, but good managers will chase them down to
resolve them.

and help employees solve problems. Technical knowl- average intelligence by approx­ imately 48 percent.62
edge and skills are also needed to troubleshoot problems Clearly, companies need to be careful to promote smart
that employees can’t handle. Technical skills become less workers into management. Conceptual skills increase in
important as managers rise through the managerial ranks, importance as managers rise through the management
but they are still important. hierarchy.
Human skills can be summarized as the ability to Good management involves much more than intelli-
work well with others. Managers with human skills work gence, however. For example, making the department ge-
effectively within groups, encourage others to express their nius a manager can be disastrous if that genius lacks tech-
thoughts and feelings, are sensitive to others’ needs and nical skills, human skills, or one other factor known as the
viewpoints, and are good listeners and communicators. Hu- motivation to manage. Motivation to manage is an as-
man skills are equally important at all levels of management, sessment of how motivated employees are to interact with
from team leaders to CEOs. However, because lower-level superiors, participate in competitive situations, behave
managers spend much of their time solving technical prob- assertively toward others, tell others what to do, reward
lems, upper-level managers may actually spend more time good behavior and punish poor behavior, perform actions
dealing directly with people. On average, first-line manag- that are highly visible to others, and handle and organize
ers spend 57 percent of their time with people, but that administrative tasks. Managers typically have a stronger
percentage increases to 63 percent for middle managers motivation to manage than their subordinates, and man-
and 78 percent for top managers.61 agers at higher levels usu-
Conceptual skills are the ability to see the ally have a stronger mo- Human skills the ability to work
organization as a whole, to understand how the tivation to manage than well with others
different parts of the company affect each other, and managers at lower levels.
Conceptual skills the ability
to recognize how the company fits into or is affected by Furthermore, managers to see the organization as a whole,
its external environment such as the local community, with a stronger motivation understand how the different parts
social and economic forces, customers, and the com- to manage are promoted affect each other, and recognize how
petition. Good managers have to be able to recognize, faster, are rated as better the company fits into or is affected
by its environment
understand, and reconcile multiple complex problems managers by their em-
and perspectives. In other words, managers have to be ployees, and earn more Motivation to manage
smart! In fact, intelligence makes so much difference money than managers an assessment of how enthusiastic
employees are about managing the
for managerial performance that managers with above- with a weak motivation to work of others
average intelligence typically outperform managers of manage.63
CHAPTER 1: Management 15

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1-6 Mistakes Managers Exhibit 1.5
Make Top Ten Mistakes Managers Make
1. Insensitive to others: abrasive, intimidating, bullying style
Another way to understand what it takes to be a manager 2. Cold, aloof, arrogant
is to look at the mistakes managers make. In other words, 3. Betrays trust
we can learn just as much from what managers shouldn’t
4. Overly ambitious: thinking of next job, playing politics
do as from what they should do. Exhibit 1.5 lists the top
5. Specific performance problems with the business
ten mistakes managers make.
Several studies of U.S. and British managers have 6. Overmanaging: unable to delegate or build a team

compared “arrivers,” or managers who made it all the 7. Unable to staff effectively
way to the top of their companies, with “derailers,” or 8. Unable to think strategically
managers who were successful early in their careers 9. Unable to adapt to boss with different style
but were knocked off the fast track by the time they 10. Overdependent on advocate or mentor
reached the middle to upper levels of management.64 Source: M. W. McCall, Jr., and M. M. Lombardo, “What Makes a Top Executive?”
The researchers found that there were only a few dif- Psychology Today, February 1983, 26–31.

ferences between arrivers and derailers. For the most


part, both groups were talented, and both groups had

weaknesses. But what distinguished derail-


Chrisdorney/Shutterstock.com
ers from arrivers was that derailers pos-
sessed two or more fatal flaws with respect
to the way they managed people. Although
arrivers were by no means perfect, they
usually had no more than one fatal flaw or
had found ways to minimize the effects of
their flaws on the people with whom they
worked.
The top mistake made by derailers was that they
were insensitive to others by virtue of their abrasive,
intimidating, and bullying management style. The
authors of one study described a manager who walked
into his subordinate’s office and interrupted a meeting
by saying, “I need to see you.” When the subordinate
tried to explain that he was not available because he
was in the middle of a meeting, the manager barked,
“I don’t give a damn. I said I wanted to see you now.”65
Not surprisingly, only 25 percent of derailers were
rated by others as being good with people, compared
Werner Heiber/Shutterstock.com

to 75 percent of arrivers.
The second mistake was that derailers were
often cold, aloof, or arrogant. Although this sounds
like insensitivity to others, it has more to do with
derailed managers being so smart, so expert in their
areas of knowledge, that they treated others with
The top mistake made by derailers is having an contempt because they weren’t experts, too.66 For
abrasive, intimidating, and bullying management example, AT&T called in an industrial psychologist
style. to counsel its vice president of human resources be-
cause she had been blamed for “ruffling too many

16 PART one

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feathers” at the company.67 Interviews with the vice decisions that their subordinates should be making—
president’s coworkers and subordinates revealed that when they can’t stop being doers—they alienate the
they thought she was brilliant, was “smarter and fast- people who work for them. Rich Dowd, founder of
er than other people,” “generates a lot of ideas,” and Dowd Associates, an executive search firm, admits
“loves to deal with complex issues.” Unfortunately, to constantly monitoring and interrupting employees
these smarts were accompanied by a cold, aloof, and because they weren’t doing the job “in the way I saw
arrogant management style. The people she worked fit, even when their work was outstanding.” Accord-
with complained that she does “too much too fast,” ing to Richard Kilburg of Johns Hopkins University,
treats coworkers with “disdain,” “impairs teamwork,” when managers interfere with workers’ decisions,
“doesn’t always show her warm side,” and has “burned “You . . . have a tendency to lose your most creative
too many bridges.”68 people. They’re able to say, ‘Screw this. I’m not stay-
The third mistake made by derailers involved ing here.’”71 Indeed, one employee told Dowd that if
betraying a trust. Betraying a trust doesn’t mean be- he was going to do her job for her, she would quit.
ing dishonest. Instead, it means making others look Second, because they are trying to do their subordi-
bad by not doing what you said you would do when nates’ jobs in addition to their own, managers who
you said you would do it. That mistake, in itself, is fail to delegate will not have enough time to do much
not fatal because managers and their workers aren’t of anything well. An office assistant to a Washington
machines. Tasks go undone in every company every politician came in to work every day to find a long to-
single business day. There’s always too much to do and do list waiting on her desk, detailing everything she
not enough time, people, money, or resources to do it. was expected to get done that day, along with how to
The fatal betrayal of trust is failing to inform others do it, who to call, and when to give her boss updates
when things will not be done right or on time. This on her progress. She said, ”Sometimes, this list was
failure to admit mistakes, failure to quickly inform three or four pages long. It must have taken him at
others of the mistakes, failure to take responsibility least an hour to create.”72
for the mistakes, and failure to fix the mistakes with-
out blaming others clearly distinguished the behavior
of derailers from arrivers.
The fourth mistake was being overly political and    1-7 The Transition
ambitious. Managers who always have their eye on their
next job rarely establish more than superficial relation- to Management:
ships with peers and coworkers. In their haste to gain
credit for successes that would be noticed by upper The First Year
management, they make the fatal mistake of treating
people as though they don’t matter. An employee with In her book Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New
an overly ambitious boss described him this way: “He Identity, Harvard Business School professor Linda
treats employees coldly, even cruelly. He assigns blame Hill followed the development of nineteen people
without regard to responsibility, and takes all the credit in their first year as managers. Her study found that
for himself. I once had such a boss, and he gave me a becoming a manager produced a profound psycho-
new definition of shared risk: If something I did was logical transition that changed the way these managers
successful, he took the credit. If it wasn’t, I got the viewed themselves and others. As shown in Exhibit 1.6,
blame.”69 the evolution of the managers’ thoughts, expectations,
The fatal mistakes of being unable to delegate, and realities over the course of their first year in man-
build a team, and staff effectively indicate that many agement reveals the magnitude of the changes they
derailed managers were unable to make the most experienced.
basic transition to managerial work: to quit being Initially, the managers in Hill’s study believed
hands-on doers and get work done through others. that their job was to exercise formal authority and to
In fact, according to an article in Harvard Business manage tasks—basically being the boss, telling oth-
Review, up to 50 percent of new managers fail be- ers what to do, making decisions, and getting things
cause they cannot make the transition from producing done. One of the managers Hill interviewed said, “Be-
to managing.70 Two things go wrong when managers ing the manager means running my own office, using
make these mistakes. First, when managers meddle in my ideas and thoughts.” Another said, “[The office is]

CHAPTER 1: Management 17

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
Exhibit 1.6
Stages in the Transition to Management
MANAGERS’ INITIAL EXPECTATIONS AFTER SIX MONTHS AS A MANAGER AFTER A YEAR AS A MANAGER
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

Be the boss Initial expectations were wrong No longer a doer


Formal authority Fast pace Communication, listening, and positive
reinforcement
Manage tasks Heavy workload
Learning to adapt to and control stress
Job is not managing people Job is to be problem solver and
troubleshooter for subordinates Job is people development

Source: L.A. Hill, Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992).

my baby. It’s my job to make sure it works.”73 In fact, Informal descriptions like these are consistent with
most of the new managers were attracted to manage- studies indicating that the average first-line manager
ment positions because they wanted to be in charge. spends no more than two minutes on a task before
Surprisingly, the new managers did not believe that being interrupted by a request from a subordinate,
their job was to manage people. The only aspects of a phone call, or an email. The pace is somewhat less
people management mentioned by the new managers hurried for top managers, who spend an average of
were hiring and firing. approximately nine minutes on a task before having to
After six months, most of the new managers had switch to another. In practice, this means that su-
concluded that their initial expectations pervisors may perform thirty tasks per hour, while
about managerial work were wrong. Man- top managers perform seven tasks per
agement wasn’t just about being the hour, with each task typically different
boss, making decisions, and telling oth- from the one that preceded it. A man-
ers what to do. The first surprise was the ager described this frenetic level of
fast pace and heavy workload involved. activity by saying, “The only
Said one of Hill’s managers, “This job is time you are in control is
much harder than you think. It is 40 to when you shut your door,
50 percent more work than being a pro- and then I feel I am not
ducer! Who would have ever doing the job I’m sup-
guessed?” The pace of mana- posed to be doing,
gerial work was startling, too. which is being with
Another manager said, “You the people.”75
have eight or nine people The other major
looking for your time . . . surprise after six months
coming into and out on the job was that the
of your office all day managers’ expectations
IQoncept/Shutterstock.com

long.” A somewhat about what they should do as


frustrated manager managers were very differ-
declared that manage- ent from their subordinates’
ment was “a job that never expectations. Initially, the
ended . . . a job you couldn’t get managers defined their jobs as
your hands around.”74 helping their subordinates perform

18 PART one

Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-200-203
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Anne smiled absently.
“Yes. You’ll be glad to get home, I dare say Burks, and Paris is on
the way. Please give me my writing things. I must put off all my
engagements, and write a hundred letters, so I don’t want to be
disturbed this morning.”
Left alone, Anne re-read the letter which had prompted her
decision to leave Rome at once. Short, hurried as it was, it conveyed
the misery of the writer better than pages of outpouring, and Anne
did not need the supplication contained in the last lines to lead her to
any creature in distress.
“Poor little soul! Poor wretched little thing!” she thought, before
she forced herself to attend to the lengthy correspondence which in
view of her large circle of Roman friends, such a hurried leave-taking
entailed.
Unwilling to hinder Burks in her work of packing, she went herself
to post her letters, and to dispatch the telegram which warned
Madge Dakin of her arrival in Paris next day.
While she walked to the post-office, while she mingled with the
crowds in the street, and vaguely heard the cries of the flower
vendors, the cracking of whips, the babel of tongues, her thoughts
were far away. Her friend’s letter had told her nothing definite, but
Anne guessed the nature of her trouble.
Imperceptibly, from sadness and perplexity her expression
became stern. A passionate anger such as for years she had not
experienced, grew momentarily stronger.
“Always the same,” she repeated to herself. “Cruel, cynical. Too
light-minded to desire anything strongly. Selfish enough to gratify
every passing whim——” And then her thoughts received a sudden
disconcerting check.
What of the years of loyal friendship he had given her? How
could she forget his tenderness and sympathy at the bitterest
moment of her life? How ignore either, the many kindnesses difficult
for a man wholly cynical, impossible for one wholly selfish, which he
had shown to the down-trodden, the beaten, the unsuccessful in
life’s struggle?
Once again, for the thousandth time she recognized the
complexity of every human being. The baffling contradictions; good
interwoven with evil, nobility with meanness, honour with disloyalty. It
was the great intricate puzzle of human nature she was once more
considering; a tangle which nothing but the cloak of infinite charity
can cover. The only cloak which glorifies and reveals what is good
and strong, while in pity, in despairing tenderness it hides under its
ample folds, the shame, the weakness, the ugly scars of the form it
both shelters, and defines.
Anne sighed as she reached the top of the Spanish steps, and
leant on the wall to take a last look at the city she loved.
Overhead, that “great inverted bowl we call the sky,” here, deeply
blue, surpassingly beautiful. Beneath it, the dancing sunshine
playing alike on dome and pinnacle, roof and tree, and on the
thousands of men and women in the busy streets. Men and women
hiding within their breasts incalculable heights and depths of virtue
and vice, actual or potential. Men and women soon to be covered by
the earth on which they walked, to make place for another, yet
essentially the same swarm of human beings between the same
earth and sky, still asking the same questions under the same
sunshine, which laughed, and never replied.
It was the eternal puzzle, the old riddle to which through the ages
no solution has been found.
Anne sighed once more, and then smiled at the futility of
considering it again just now, when there was packing to be done.
He maketh His sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust.
The words slipped into her mind before she turned away, with a
momentary sensation of reassurance. At least the sunshine fell upon
every one alike. Perhaps it symbolized a cloak of charity wider and
larger than any woven by human minds.

“Will Madame come upstairs?”


The maid re-entered the room in which Anne had been waiting,
and then preceded her up the staircase to a door which she threw
open.
A little figure huddled over the fire, rose hastily as she entered,
and with incoherent words that sounded like a cry, threw herself into
her arms.
“Oh! You are good! You are good!” Madge repeated, hiding her
eyes like a child against the elder woman’s arm. “I should have died
if you hadn’t come.”
When at last she drew herself away, and looked at her visitor,
Anne had to suppress a start of dismay.
She scarcely recognized Madge Dakin.
Her cheeks were white and sunken, and swollen with much
crying. She was pitifully thin, and her nervous hands strayed
constantly about her face. Her pretty hair, generally so carefully
waved and tended, was screwed into an untidy knot at the back of
her head. She had evidently not troubled to dress all day, for she
wore a bedroom wrapper, whose pink ribbons she had forgotten to
tie and arrange.
“My dear child,” declared Anne, “you must give me some tea. I’m
dying for it, and I shall be speechless till I get it.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I make it myself generally. I—forgot it this
afternoon.”
Anne sat down in an armchair near the fire, and purposely
allowed her to put on the kettle, and make all the preparations alone.
A glance at the room, a fairly large one, from which a bedroom
opened, showed that her friend had probably done nothing but cry
over the fire for several days.
It was dusty, and littered with papers, books, working materials. It
looked untidy, and uncared for.
There were dead flowers in the vases, and the curtains half
drawn, obscured the already dying light of a dull day.
When the kettle began to boil, she rose, and gently pushed
Madge into a chair.
She made the tea herself, while in a sort of stupor of
wretchedness, Mrs. Dakin watched the movements of her white
fingers.
“Now drink that, my child,” she said, putting the cup and saucer
into her hand.
“Have you had any lunch?”
Madge shook her head.
“Then you must eat a plateful of these excellent biscuits, and you
must begin at once.”
She proceeded to drink her own tea, talking about her journey,
and the slowness of the trains, till watching the face opposite to her
she saw a trace of colour in the cheeks.
“And now what is it, my dear?” she asked very gently, as Mrs.
Dakin pushed the cup away from her.
For answer, Madge burst into a flood of hopeless tears.
Anne leant forward and took her hand. “It’s François Fontenelle,
isn’t it?” she inquired.
Mrs. Dakin raised her head, her lips parted like a baby’s.
“How did you guess?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve known him for a great many years—very well.”
There was the faintest trace of bitterness in Anne’s tone. The
sight of the miserable bowed figure had revived some of her
resentment.
With a quick movement, Madge left her chair, and knelt beside
her, hiding her face, with a childish gesture, while Anne’s arm went
round her as tenderly as a mother’s.
“I’m going to tell you everything,” she began in a half-choked
voice. “I’ve been so wicked, Miss Page, that I—I can’t believe it.
Every now and then I think it’s a dream.” She shivered in Anne’s
grasp, and sobbed a moment.
“It was my fault. I thought I was so bored. I thought I was tired of
Harry—of Harry who has always been a thousand times too good for
me. And so I—I flirted with him. Helen Didier says I threw myself at
his head. She’s a hateful woman, and I loathe her, but that’s true, I
did. He never cared for me. In my heart I knew he didn’t, even when
I led him on to make love to me. It was nothing but my wretched
wicked vanity. Just because I was bored. Just because——” Her
voice sank, and for a moment Anne heard nothing but the painful
catching of her breath in exhausted sobs.
“And the awful part was,” she stammered at last, “that I didn’t
care either. I never meant it to be more than a flirtation. At least I
think I didn’t,” she added with a pitiful attempt at perfect honesty.
“But——” She stopped short.
“But it became more than that. He was your lover?”
She nodded her head, and then suddenly clasped Anne with
convulsive strength.
“And Harry’s coming to-morrow. And I’m a vile woman!”
She cried the words aloud in a panic of horror.
“Oh, Miss Page, what shall I do. What will become of me? what
shall I say to Harry? I shall go mad!”
Anne laid her cheek on the head that rested against her shoulder,
and was silent.
She understood what was passing in the soul of the weak, terror-
struck little woman. The horror of outraged conventions, the
nightmare conviction that she, the descendant of generations of
respectable, honest women, she who had never heard of the sin she
had committed, except in accents of disdain or horror, had become
an abandoned creature, unfit for decent society, branded, defiled,
eternally lost.
Anne’s heart went out to her in passionate pity.
“Oh help me! Tell me what to do,” Madge wailed. “You’re the only
woman in the world I dared to tell, because——”
The abrupt pause, and a nervous gesture betrayed her, and Anne
started a little, overcome by a sudden conviction.
“Yes. Why did you tell me, my dear?” she asked quietly.
“Because,” began Madge hurriedly, “you are so kind, so sweet, I
felt——”
“That wasn’t the only reason.”
“No!” she cried with sudden recklessness. “It wasn’t. It’s because
I heard that you—that you—Helen Didier found it out. She never
rested. And then I asked—him, and he said I was never to mention
your name to her. But she found out all about it, on the pretence that
it was you who had corrupted my mind, and made me what she calls
fast. And so——”
“And so you thought you might confess to a fellow sinner?”
Anne’s cheek still rested on Madge’s hair, and over her head, her
eyes smiled very quietly into the fire.
Madge was silent.
“I knew you wouldn’t utterly despise me,” she murmured at last,
in a low voice.
“He has gone?” asked Anne after a moment. “You sent him
away?”
“He came on Monday—two or three days ago. I’ve forgotten
when.” She made a distracted gesture. “Until—until just lately, it was
all right. We were not—not——”
“Not lovers,” said Anne, finishing the sentence for her in an even
voice.
“Well, he came. And by that time I’d come to my senses, and to
all this awful misery. He’s very kind,” she went on with a sort of
surprise, as a child might speak of the unexpected clemency of
some grown-up person. “He said he didn’t want to make me
unhappy, and if I pleased it should all be at an end, and he would go
away. So he went. But Harry’s coming to-morrow, and I daren’t meet
him. I daren’t look at him. It’s awful—awful! I would kill myself,—but I
daren’t do that either.”
She rose from her knees, and sank back in her chair, exhausted
and shaking; her eyes fixed on Anne were the eyes of a little hunted
animal.
All the terror of the gulf she had put between herself and
respectable women, all the horror of feeling herself déclassée
outside the pale of moral virtue, filled her conventional little soul. It
outweighed the sense of her personal disloyalty; it was greater than
her sense of wanton treachery towards her husband. She was no
longer a respectable woman, and in that fact lay the sting.
Anne leant towards her. “You haven’t told Harry?”
She shook her head.
“Then don’t.”
Madge stared at her incredulously. “But—but look at me!” she
stammered. “He’ll see. He’d guess, even if I don’t tell him. I can’t
stop crying. I can’t—help it.”
While she spoke the tears were running down her cheeks.
“Yes, you can. You can pull yourself together. He expects to find
you ill, but you can meet him with a bright face—for his sake.”
“For his sake?” repeated Madge.
“Yes. Think of him a little, my dear, and forget yourself.”
“You mean he would never forgive me? Never take me back?”
“On the contrary, I know he would. He loves you. You would
never hear a word of reproach from his lips. Your husband is a fine
man, Madge, and a generous one—and a gentleman.”
“Yes, he is! He is!” she returned eagerly. “He would forgive me,
and I ought to tell him. I should never have a happy moment if I
didn’t. My life would be spoilt.”
“And what about his?” asked Anne quietly.
Madge gazed at her. “You mean he—he wouldn’t forget it?”
Anne answered with a curious smile.
“You don’t understand much about men, my little Madge,” she
said. “When they love, their instinct of possession is stronger than
anything you can guess. It’s bound up with a thousand forces from
primitive barbarous times. It may be unreasonable and savage, but
it’s there. A generous man forgives, and even tries to understand.
But the wound remains, and it rankles in spite of him. Have you the
right to inflict such a wound? The wrong is yours. You should be the
only one to suffer.”
“But I shall suffer,” broke in Madge. “And much more, if I feel I’m
deceiving him.”
“Then accept the extra suffering, and bear it alone,” returned
Anne quickly. “One pays for everything, Madge. Is it fair to call upon
some one else to share the expenses?”
There was silence for a moment.
“If you had married—afterwards, I mean,” said Madge
hesitatingly, “wouldn’t you have told your husband?”
“There was no question of my marriage,” answered Anne rather
painfully. “But if your circumstances were mine,” she added after a
moment, “I should act as I advise you to act.”
Madge’s grasp on her hand tightened, but she did not speak.
“Go back and be a good wife to him,” Anne went on. “My dear,”
she said sadly, “you don’t know your blessings. You have married a
man with a faithful steadfast nature. His love will never fail you, and
in that, thousands of women might envy you. All the material for
happiness is within your reach. Happiness for the lack of which many
women starve all their days. It never comes to them. It’s never
offered. And if they can’t bear to be utterly without the joy of love,
before the earth covers them, they have to take it at a great price.”
Her smile brought the tears again to Madge’s eyes.
“Such a price, my dear little Madge, as I’m glad you know nothing
about.”
“Dear Miss Page!” she whispered. A moment’s half-awed
revelation came to her of all that her friend’s words implied. In the
light of it, her own fears and regrets, her whole mental attitude
towards the past, later as well as immediate, seemed incredibly
petty, mean, and trivial. She was ashamed with a nobler less selfish
shame than she had ever experienced.
Her cheeks burnt, and her tears ceased to flow.
“Oh! I’ve been a beast!” she cried involuntarily. “I’ve always been
so selfish and hateful to Harry. I’ve taken everything as my right. I’ve
never thought of any one but myself. I’ve never thought of the lives
of other women. You are right. It would only be one more selfishness
to tell him. I won’t. I’ll love him instead.”
“Do that, my dear, and you’ll make him the happiest of men,”
returned Anne simply. “And don’t refuse him children, Madge,” she
added softly. “You owe him that. Besides, you’re refusing the
greatest happiness for yourself. The blessing that women—women
like me, can never have. That’s part of the price, you see. Not the
least part of the price,” she added as though to herself.
She rose, and Madge stood up too, still holding her hand.
The firelight fell on Anne’s face, and the younger woman looked
at her as though she had never seen her before,—with a tender
surprised admiration.
“You are so beautiful!” she exclaimed suddenly.
The first smile Anne had seen came to her lips.
“I shall pray that my first baby may have eyes just like yours,” she
said, almost gaily. “And hair like your lovely hair—when she’s a little
older.”
Anne laughed. “It used to be brown. It went white very quickly—in
three months.”
As she glanced into the mirror above the fireplace, she thought
suddenly of François’s portrait with its mass of soft fair hair, couleur
de miel; couleur de poussière dorée. She remembered the epithets
of the painters.
“I must go now,” she said. “To-morrow Harry will be here to take
care of you. Make yourself look pretty, Madge. Put on your nicest
frock, and do your hair the way he likes, high up, you know, with little
fluffy curls about. And make the room pretty, dear. I’ll order some
flowers to be sent round to-night. Lots of them, so you’ll have plenty
to do to arrange them. No more sitting by the fire and crying, mind!
No looking back. Only look forward.”
Madge held her tight. “Oh! you’ve given me so much courage!”
she exclaimed with a long sigh of relief. “You dearest of women. I’ll
do everything you tell me.”
XX
Outside, in the lighted street, Anne called a cab, and gave the
address of the nearest florist.
Her thoughts dwelt upon Madge, as the carriage rattled down the
boulevard.
“I’m scarcely sorry,” was the outcome of her grave reflection. “It
will make a woman of her. She needed a great shock, or a great
sorrow to take her out of herself, and make her realize what it would
mean to lose her husband.”
It was only while she was choosing flowers for her, that the part
of Madge’s confession which concerned herself, came back
confusedly to her mind. It gathered greater clearness as she drove
towards her hotel, and by the time she reached it, and was sitting by
her bedroom fire after dinner, she found herself wondering what
would be the outcome of the matter.
That she might be sure of Madge Dakin, her instinct satisfied her.
Yet the results of Madame Didier’s inquiries would in all probability,
from other sources, reach Dymfield. What then?
Anne’s thoughts flitted from Mrs. Carfax to Mrs. Willcox, the
solicitor’s wife, a lady who was interested in Church Missions, and
Rescue Homes for Fallen Women. The memory of Miss Goldie, a
maiden lady of substantial means, and views of life which even
Dymfield considered rigid, came to her, and forced a smile. She saw
her sitting in the front pew in church, her black bonnet with two
purple pansies upon it, tied tightly under her chin. She saw her
angular elbows, under the short mantle of black silk adorned with
bugle trimming. She heard her rasping voice, which seldom softened
even for Anne, who as a rule affected insensibly the voices of her
neighbours.
She remembered Mr. Willcox, stiff, erect, lean-faced Mr. Willcox,
loud in his denunciation of the present age, which he considered lax
and immoral to the last degree.
She thought of the Vicar, with his blustering attempts at
modernity, and his violently expressed scorn of everything but
muscular Christianity and common sense.
Dymfield was the typical English village, with its types indigenous
to the soil, firmly rooted, impervious to criticism, profoundly self-
satisfied.
Dymfield for Anne would be impossible.
But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was
inextricably linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that
was full of fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The
bare idea of leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart.
She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room.
The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her
with a pathetic desire to laugh.
“After all these years! At my age,” she murmured.
She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of
time which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered
pitifully why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she
shrank from the thought that people should talk about it. It had been
for so many years her secret possession, the memory that had
sweetened all her later days.
It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were
gossiping about her. About her and René.
A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire.
After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near.
She thought of the parting with René in the morning—the morning he
left her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau.
The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered
that he turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun
was on his hair, as he crossed the room.
Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken,
Anne put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice.
But she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he
was gone, her resolution wavered.
Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she
not stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the bonne
had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there
was one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month
they had been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day.
She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the
envelope at which she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her
preparations.
Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to betray
itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be stopped—
forcibly prevented from reaching her destination.
She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman
she half feared she might in fact have become.
Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused
nightmare impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange
voices. Of people who for some mad reason were going about as
usual, occupied with the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing,
eating and drinking, unmoved, unconcerned.
One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would
sit down anywhere with a Bradshaw before her, and at once,
mechanically plan her journey back to Paris.
Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections,
pictured the moment of her arrival.
It would be tea-time. The lamps just lit. René sitting by the fire—
René leaping to his feet to meet her.
Or it would be early morning. She would open his bedroom door
softly....
And then the realization of her madness; more sleepless nights,
fresh strange hotels, new cities up and down whose streets she
wandered wondering why she should be there, why she should enter
one building rather than another, why the day never passed, and
when the night came, thinking would God that it were morning.
So terribly near seemed her past torture, that with all her strength
Anne tried to stem the flood of reminiscence.
Thank God, little Madge Dakin had never known, would never
know, misery such as hers! In the midst of her whirl of memories
Anne gratefully considered this.
With an effort at diversion, she tried to recall the names of the
cities in which she stayed, through which she had passed during the
first few months of her exile.
In vain. She had only a confused impression of scorching streets,
of palm trees against a hot blue sky; of seas hatefully, mockingly
calm and blue.
She was in Athens when the news of his death reached her, and
with it a packet of letters written during the first few weeks after her
departure. They were letters from René, never sent, because she
had left no address. Letters written in the frenzied hope that some
day soon he must hear from her.
It was then that she tasted her first moment of peace.
She remembered sitting in a little walled garden somewhere
within the city, and for the first time seeing that the blue sky
overhead was beautiful.
She noticed the broad leaves of a fig-tree clambering upon the
wall opposite, and listened to the dripping of a little stream which
flowed from a stone trough into a well whose mouth was fringed
delicately with ferns and wild flowers. And for the first time came to
her a premonition of the calm and peace, and even happiness of her
later years.
Her emotional life was over. No man as a lover would ever exist
for her again. But she had experienced the love for which she had
been willing to pay. She had paid, and some day she would be
content.
René dead, had become hers once more—this time for ever.
Later in the year she met François at Antibes, and heard calmly,
with scarcely a stab of pain, what she was prepared to hear. She had
been right to go. But René had died before he ceased to love her.
Afterwards, her true wander years began. And then at last, the
thought of the house and the garden at Dymfield became dear to
her, and she went to them as a child goes home.
Anne let her mind dwell gratefully upon the quiet happy years she
had spent at Dymfield.
She thought of her work among her flowers, and the paradise of
beauty it had produced. She thought of the poorer village people
whose lives she knew, whose children she loved, to whom for years
she had been a friend. She remembered her little plans for their
welfare, all the pleasant trifles which made up the sum of her daily
existence.
And as she mused, came a wondering recognition of the healing
of time, the passing of all violent emotion, whether of joy or of
despair.
From some recess of her memory there sprang the words of an
Eastern sage, who as a motto true alike in times of sorrow and times
of delight, told his disciple to grave upon his signet ring, one
sentence—This too will pass.
XXI
Anne started for London next morning, intending to spend the
night in town, and devote the next day to her brother, and to Sylvia
Carfax, to whom she had not found time to write.
Early on Thursday morning she drove to Carlisle House.
The page boy who took her up in the lift, indicated a door at the
end of the corridor, and left her.
Anne knocked, and in response to a voice within, entered Sylvia’s
bedroom.
It was littered with cardboard boxes, open trunks, dresses, hats,
raiment of all sorts, and stumbling over the obstacles in her way,
Sylvia rushed towards her with a cry of joy.
Even before she kissed her, Anne had time to notice the worried
look on the girl’s face, which robbed it of its youthful prettiness.
“Oh!” she gasped. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come in time, and I
didn’t know what to do, or how to get out of it. Oh! I’m so thankful to
see you, Miss Page. Sit down. Do sit down—if you can find a place,”
she added, trying to laugh.
Anne chose the bed as the only available spot.
“My dear child, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed. “You’re
packing, I suppose. Where are you going?”
“To—America,” returned Sylvia, with a gulp.
Anne looked at her, and drew her down beside her on the bed.
“Tell me all about it from the very beginning,” she said, with quiet
insistence.
“Don’t be angry with me,” implored Sylvia, her lips trembling. “I
thought I’d been so clever to arrange it all myself, without saying a
word about it. But—but now I’m frightened. And my contract’s
signed, and I daren’t——”
“But what’s it all about? Tell me clearly, Sylvia.”
Sylvia made an effort to obey, and though lucidity was not the
strong part of her story, by the end of half an hour’s questioning and
explanation, Anne gathered that the girl had fallen into the hands of
the manager of a third-rate theatrical company. The man had
tempted her with the offer of a “star” part in a musical comedy, and
she had signed a contract with him for America.
“He said he would make my fortune,” she declared. “He praised
my voice so much, and told me I was wonderful, and that I should
make a great hit. But he made me promise not to tell any one I was
going. He said he wanted to have the credit of discovering me, and
all that sort of thing. I knew mother and father would be horrified, but
I thought it was too good a chance to lose, and that I’d risk their
anger. Because, if I turned out a success, and made a lot of money,
they would be very proud,” she added.
The instinctive knowledge of human nature shared by the pillars
of the Church, caused Anne despite her anxiety, a secret smile.
“I thought he was so kind,” Sylvia went on pitifully, “and he
seemed so nice at first, but lately he’s been different, and his manner
has been so funny. He—he looked at me in a horrid way yesterday,”
she confessed, “and held my hand tight, and when I tried to get
away, he laughed. But my contract’s signed,” she declared with a
wail of despair in her voice.
“Haven’t the principals of this place interfered?” Anne inquired.
“The matron, or whoever it is who’s supposed to look after you?”
“They think I’m going home,” confessed Sylvia in an abashed
voice. “I managed it so that they should think so.”
Anne rose, and with a terrified expression, the girl clung to her
hand.
“Oh! Miss Page,” she gasped. “You’re not going? I’m to sail to-
morrow night, and——”
“Don’t be frightened, you silly little thing. Of course you won’t sail
to-morrow, nor any other night. Give me the address of this man.”
Sylvia falteringly repeated it.
Anne wrote it down, and stooped to kiss her.
“Unpack all those things, and put them tidy,” she said. “I haven’t
time to scold you now, but I’ll come back and do it thoroughly this
afternoon.”
The girl’s look of relief touched her, but she could scarcely
repress a smile as she turned at the door, to see her standing like a
penitent baby amongst all her finery.
“I wonder what I should have done with daughters?” she asked
herself, half humorously, as she stepped into a cab, outside.
The question was answered by a smile and a sigh that were
almost simultaneous.
Anne spent a busy morning. She went first to her solicitor, and
after an hour’s colloquy with him on the case of Sylvia Carfax, she
drove on to her brother’s house in Kensington. It stood in a highly
respectable square, and was one of the hundreds of dull substantial
edifices which came into existence during the mid-Victorian era.
Anne rang the bell, and stood waiting rather excitedly under the
stucco canopy supported by pillars.
Her present meeting with Hugh was divided from the last, by a
period of twenty years. It was odd to remember how little she knew
of this brother, her only near relative in the world. He would be much
changed, of course.
A sudden vivid recollection of the last time she had met him,
swept through her mind, as she stood waiting admittance. How
desolate she had been. How shy. How filled with the sense of being
an outsider, a forgotten guest, unbidden to the banquet of life!
The door opened, and it was Hugh himself who drew her over the
threshold, and welcomed her in the loud, kind voice she
remembered.
“We’ve been waiting for you all the morning,” he declared, “and I
rushed down when I heard the bell. Come in and let me look at you!
It’s impossible to see anything in this wretched foggy atmosphere.”
With his arm still round her shoulder, he pushed open the door of
a large room on the right of the hall.
“Here she is, Alice!” he exclaimed, as his wife rose from a sofa
near the fire.
“Why Anne, what have you done to yourself?”
The words were uttered in amazement. Anne had slipped off her
heavy cloak, and stood laughing tremulously as she held her brother
by both hands, and noticed for the first time that his hair was white,
and his good-natured bronzed face lined and wrinkled. She turned
from him to greet her sister-in-law.
The slim little creature she remembered was a stout matron,
whose hair was just touched with grey.
Alice’s start of amazement as she gazed a moment before she
kissed her, was almost comic.
“Why, Anne, my dear, you’ve grown quite a beautiful woman!”
declared her brother, so simply that the tears sprang to Anne’s eyes.
“She’s grown younger, hasn’t she, Alice?” He looked at her with a
puzzled expression.
Anne laughed, and touched her hair. “But it’s your white hair that
—— And yet I don’t know. It’s you altogether! I never saw such a
change. You—— She looks like a great lady in a French picture,
doesn’t she, Alice? Court of one of the French kings. Louis the
Sixteenth, that sort of thing.”
Anne laughed again. “My dear boy. You make me embarrassed.
Don’t stare at me so,” she begged.
The pink colour sprang into her cheeks, and the shy deprecating
smile of François’ portrait crept for a moment to her lips.
“I’m just Anne—twenty years older than when you last saw me.”
“Well—it’s magic. I give it up,” declared Hugh.
“Where are the boys?” she asked, turning with a quick, eager
movement to her sister-in-law. “I want to see my nephews.”
“They’re out to-day. I’m so sorry. They’ve gone to lunch with
some relations of mine. But you’ll see them this evening. I let them
go because I knew that you would want to talk to Hugh,” Alice
answered. “You’ll excuse me a little while, won’t you? I must speak to
cook.”
Her voice—her tone of deference, marked Alice’s recognition of
the change in the woman she had once regarded as insignificant, a
poor meek creature to be treated with compassion and tolerance;
and her husband’s awkward laugh as she closed the door, was
sufficient indication that her altered attitude was not lost upon him.
“She can’t help fussing about the servants. Old habits, you know,”
he said, turning to his sister. “For years she did all the housework,
and she can’t give it up.”
“But you’ve finished with work now, haven’t you, dear?” Anne
asked, as she sat down beside her brother on the sofa.
“Thanks to you.” Hugh glanced at her gratefully.
“That money was just what I wanted, Anne. It made me. I only
needed capital to develop the farm, and it came just at the right
moment. We owe everything to your generosity, dear. And now we’re
going to talk business. You’ve put me off in every letter, but I must
insist——”
Anne laid her hand quickly on his lips. “I won’t hear a word about
it!” she declared. “You’re not going to rob me of one of the greatest
delights of my life, Hugh? The power I once had to help my only
brother? You can’t be so unkind!”
Her tone of pained entreaty made him laugh. He kissed her
again.
“You dear absurd woman! Why haven’t you married, Anne?” he
exclaimed suddenly. “Some man’s been robbed of a wonderful wife.
It’s not fair of you!”
She smiled. “Tell me about the boys,” she urged.
A maid entered to announce that lunch was served, and during
the meal, the boys and their prospects were the chief topic of
conversation.
“Alice thinks them both geniuses, of course,” laughed her
husband. “But they’re only ordinary youths. I shall be quite satisfied if
they can just jog along.”
“Rupert has great talent,” his mother assured Anne. “Don’t listen
to Hugh. I’m sure he’ll make a splendid architect.”
“I’m sure he will,” she agreed sympathetically.
“You know we lost our little girl?” said Alice softly, when they
returned to the drawing-room.
Her voice suddenly drew Anne’s heart.
“The boys are dears, of course,” she added. “But I should love to
have had a daughter.”
Anne was silent a moment. Then with a sudden inspiration, she
thought of Sylvia.
“Where’s your luggage?” inquired Hugh. “Bless my soul, I’d
forgotten it! You’re going to stay with us, Anne, of course?”
“Your room is all ready,” Alice assured her rather timidly.
“I was going back to-day, and coming to you later. But if I may
send for my things from the hotel, I should like to stay a little while.
There’s a child I know, a girl I must help out of a difficulty, and I find it
will take a little time.”
She told them Sylvia’s story, and noticed with satisfaction that
Alice seemed interested.
“Poor silly child!” she exclaimed. “She ought to be taken care of.
She ought to live in some nice family.”
Anne made a mental note, but at the moment said nothing.

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