Today I had a conversation with a friend about something in which I strongly believe: to be a good manager you need to have deep knowledge not only about managing people, tracking processes, auditing systems and so on.
It is require to have a technical knowledge about how, technically, your product is created, which are the characteristic of the materials, where they come from, how are they used and transformed to produce your goods. The same for a software company, you need to know what technologies you are using and why.
Moreover, you need to know how the consumers utilizes the products your company develop, what is the marketing strategy and what is the customer segmentation.
This is true for all the managerial roles, with something more important in some position and something less. It is so important because to be a good manager you need to act proactively, market is changing, pace of technologies change is overwhelming in most businesses and evaluating new business opportunities in the right way is more and more difficult.
This kind of knowledge should not be extremely specific, but you don’t need to be an engineer to have a common ground of knowledge to speak with an engineer. Managing people without knowing what they do and how they do it is like walking keeping your eyes firmly closed.
And trying to understand how a company work without actually go in the factory or in the research and development center is the same as travelling to an amazing location only reading the travel guide. Explicit knowledge do not tell all the truth.
Having this kind of knowledge is a requirement to develop an holistic approach.
A last hint: this kind of manager do not need a lot of consultant and external advise
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