COVERT LEADERSHIP: NOTESKnowledge workers respond to inspiration, not supervision.

BRAMWELL TovEY, artistic director and con-ductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra,may not seem like your typical manager. In-

deed, in comparison with, say, the usual New Yorkercartoon of the nicely manicured executive sur-rounded hy performance charts sitting in a corneroffice, orchestra conducting may seem like a ratherquirky form of management. Yet as knowledgework has grown in importance - and as more andmore work is done hy trained and trusted profes-sionals-the way Bramwell leads his orchestra mayillustrate a good deal of what today's managing isall about.

I have heen studying the work of managers onand off throughout my career, more recently spend-ing days with a wide variety of managers. Because

the metaphor of the orchestra leader is so often usedto represent what business leaders do, I thoughtthat spending time with a conductor might proveinstructive. The day with Bramwell was intendedto explore, and perhaps explode, the myth of themanager as the great conductor at the podium - theleader in complete control.

When you reflect on it, the symphony orchestrais like many other professional organizations-forexample, consulting firms and hospitals-in thatit is structured around the work of highly trainedindividuals who know what they have to do andjust do it. Such professionals hardly need in-houseprocedures or time-study analysts to tell them howto do their johs. That fundamental reality chal-lenges many preconceptions that we have about

140 ARTWORK BY DAVID JOHNSON

ON MANAGING PROFESSIONALSHENRY MINTZBERG

management and leadership. Indeed, in sueh envi-ronments, covert leadership may matter more thanovert leadership.

Who Controls?When the maestro v^alks up to the podium and rais-es his baton, tbe musicians respond in unison. An-other motion, and they all stop. It's the image of ab-solute control-management captured perfectly incaricature. And yet it is all a great myth.

What does Bnimwell Tovey reaily control? Whatchoices does he really have? Bramwell says his jobconsists of selecting the program, determining howthe pieces are played, choosing guest artists, staff-ing the orchestra, and managing some external rela-

tions. (Conduetors apparently vary in their propen-sity to engage in external work. Bramwell enjoysit.) The administrative and finanee side of the or-chestra is handled by an executive director-at thetime. Max Tapper, who comanaged the orchestrawith Bramwell.

So much of the classic literature on managementhas been about the need for controlling, which isabout designing systems, creating structures, andmaking ehoices. There arc systems galore in sym-

Henry Mintzberg is the Cleghorn Professor of Man-agement Studies at McGill University in Montreal.Canada, and a professor of organization at INSEAD inFontainebJeau. France. He is the director of the Interna-tional Masters Program for Practicing Managers, a part-nership of five business schools around the world.

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A MODEL OF MANAGERIAL WORK

Over the years, I have grown increasingly dissat-isfied with managerial roles as they are discussedin almost all the classic literature on manage-ment. In such literature, roles are almost alwayspresented as a disconnected list rather than anintegrated model. So a few years ago, I returnedto the study of managerial work that I had begun30 years ago. Based on my own and other pub-lished descriptions, I developed a model inwhich managerial roles unfold on three succes-sive levels, all of them both inside and outsidethe unit. There is an information level (closest tothe managers), a people level, and an action level(closest to the unit and the world around it). Themanager can intervene on any level hut thenmust work through all the remaining levels.

Managerial behavior can he based on informa-tion, but it only has meaning if it influences peo-ple to take action. Or, managerial behavior canfocus on people, but to be successful it muststimulate action. Managerial behavior can alsoinfluence action directly. All the roles discussedin this article-controlling and communicating,leading and linking, doing and dealing-are laidout in this framework.' (See the chart below,)Although almost all well-known writers on thetopic of management have suggested that man-

agers focus on one of these roles to the exclusionof others, I helieve that all managers must applyall six roles to their work.

After building the model, I undertook re-search to see how it looked in very differentmanagerial situations. In particular, 1 wanted tosee how managers differ in focus and style. Ispent a day with each manager, not hecause I be-lieved that a single day reveals all hut because Ibelieved that this approach would maximize myexposure to different managers. To date, I haveobserved 29 individuals, which migln be thoughtof as a sample of 29 managerial days. The rangehas heen vast: the head of the National HealthService of England (with almost a million em-ployees), the heads of a small film company andof a retail chain, the CEO of the Royal Bank ofCanada, the manager of a Red Cross delegationfor a set of refugee camps in Tanzania, the front-country manager in Canada's Banff NationalPark, and others. Because the metaphor of theorchestra leader is so frequently used to describewhat business leaders do, I found the idea ofspending a day with an orchestra conductor ir-resistible.

L See Henry Mintzberg, "Rounding Out the Manager's fob,"Sloan Management Review. Fall 1994.

INSIDE THE UNIT OUTSIDE THE UNIT

Managing by Information

Controlling and Communicating Communicating

Managing Through People

Leading Linking

Managing Action

Doing Dealing

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phony orchestras, all meant to control the work.But they are systems inherent to the profession, notto management. Bramwell inherited them all. Thesame can be said about structures; in fact, evenmore so. Just look at how everyone sits, in pre-arranged rows, according to a very strict and exter-nally imposed pecking order; how they tune theirinstruments before playing and stomp their feetafter a good solo rehearsal. These rituals imply ahigh degree of structure, and yet they all come withthe job.

The profession itself, not the manager, suppliesmuch of the structure and coordination. While thework of some experts takes place in small teamsand task forces with a great deal of informal com-munication, professional work here consists of ap-plying standard operating routines: the composerstarted work with a blank sheet of paper, but themusicians start with the composer's score. The oh-ject is to play it well-interpreting it but hardly in-venting something new. Indeed, the work, theworkers, their tools-almost everything in a sym-phony is highly standardized. One person I met onmy visit with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestratold me about how he had conducted a universityorchestra, where the players tended to show up spo-radically for rehearsals. At times, he said, he foundhimself meeting the whole orchestra for the firsttime at the performanee!

In organizations where standard operating rou-tines are applied, the experts work largely on theirown, free of the need to coordinate with their col-leagues. This happens almost automatically. A doc-toral student of mine, for example, once sat in on afive-hour open-heart surgical operation duringwhich the surgeon and anesthesiologist exchangedhardly a word. They were able to coordinate theirefforts because of the standardization of their skillsand by what they were trained to expect from eachother. Similarly, in the orchestra, even though themusicians play together, eaeh and every one of themplays alone. They each follow a score and know pre-cisely when to contribute. The instrument not onlyidentifies eaeh player but also distinguishes him orher from the other musicians.

Most professional workers require little directsupervision from managers. Indeed, many hospitalphysicians and university professors like to de-scribe their structures as upside down, with them-selves in charge at the top and with the managerson the bottom to serve them. This description isoverstated, but hardly more so than the ubiquitousone of "top" management. I have been teaching ata university for three decades, yet I can rememberno dean ever coming into my classrtHJm. Surgeons,

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likewise, hardly expect a medical chief or a hospitaldirector to appear, let alone set the pace for one oftheir operations. That observation may not seem tohold for a symphony orchestra, where the conduc-tor certainly sets the pace. But it is a lot more rele-vant than it might at first appear.

Along with controlling and coordinating, direct-ing is one of the oldest and most common wordsused to describe managerial work. Among otherthings, directing means issuing directives, delegat-ing tasks, and authorizing decisions. Yet despite hisdesignation as orchestra director, Bramwell's actual"directing" is highly circumscribed. The day I waswith him, he hardly ran around giving orders. In-deed, he explained that even comments made dur-ing rehearsals have to be aimed at sections ratherthan at individuals. In fact, Bramwell says that sin-gling out individuals is forbidden in certain unioncontracts (although not in Winnipeg). In his case,Bramwell makes such comments maybe "two orthree times a year-if someone doesn't get the over-all message." But conducting has changed consider-ably, Bramwell points out, since the days of thegreat autocrats like Toscanini.

A great deal of the conventional manager's con-trol is exercised through formal information. Suchinformation plays a rather limited role for the or-chestra conductor. When Bramwell reads or pro-cesses information on the job, it is more aboutscores than about budgets. For him, musical infor-mation provides a much more relevant and directway of judging performance. Just by listening witha trained ear, the conductor knows immediatelyhow well the orchestra has done. Nothing needs tobe measured. How could it be? One is led to wonderhow much of the music of more conventional man-aging gets drowned out by the numbers. Of course,there is a need to count here, too-for example, thenumber of seats occupied in the hall. But by makingthat the job of the executive director, Bramwell isleft free to focus his attention on the real music ofmanaging.

What, then, do conductors control? Althoughthey choose the program and decide how the scoreshould be played, they are constrained by the musicthat has been written, by the degree to which it canbe interpreted, by the sounds the audience will bereceptive to, and by the ability and willingness ofthe orchestra to produce the music. I mentioned toBramwell a passage I had read about musicians be-ing trained as soloists only to find themselves sub-ordinated to the demands of an orchestra. He added,"You have to suhordinate yourself to the composer,too." Being part of an orchestra is "just anotherkind of subordination." On this particular day,

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Hindemith and Stravinsky were pulling the strings -of the conductor no less than of the violinists.

Leonard Sayles, who has written extensively onmiddle management, once reversed the myth ofmanager as magisterial conductor. In his hook Man-agerial Behavior: Administration in ComplexOrganizations (McGraw-Hill, 1964], Sayles wrote,"(The manager] is like a symphony orchestra con-ductor, endeavoring to maintain a melodious per-formance...while the orchestra members are hav-ing various personal difficulties, stage hands aremoving music stands, alternating excessive heatand cold are creating audience and instrumentprohlems, and the sponsor of the concert is insist-ing on irrational changes in the program." When Iread this to Bramwell, he laughed. All of this hadhappened to him. In fact, there was currently a riftbetween two of the symphony's key players. If onepreferred that a note be played long and the othershort, then a simple suggestion made by Bramwellto play the note one way could be seen as "awardingpoints." In a similar vein, Bramwell said he cannotsocialize with the musicians outside of work.There are too many agendas.

Taken together, the various constraints withinwhich the orchestra conductor works describe a verycommon condition among managers-not being inabsolute control of others nor being completelypowerless, but functioning somewhere in hetween.

Leading Is CovertWhen someone asked Indian-born Zubin Mehtaabout the difficulties of conducting the Israel Phil-harmonic, where everyone is said to consider himor herself a soloist, he reportedly replied, "I'm theonly Indian; they're all the chiefs!" Leadership isclearly a tricky business in professional organiza-tions. It was very much on Bramwell's mind in ourdiscussions. He pointed out the qualifications ofmany of the players-some trained atJuilliard and Curtis, many of themwith doctorates in music-and he ex-pressed his discomfort in having tobe a leader among ostensible equals."I think of myself as a soccer coachwho plays," he said, adding that "thereare moments when I have to exert myauthority in a fairly robust fashion...although it always puzzles me why I have to."

Watching Bramwell in a day of rehearsals, I saw alot more doing than what we conventionally thinkof as leading. (See the insert "A Model of ManagerialWork.") More like a first-line supervisor than ahands-off executive, Bramwell was taking direct

and personal charge of what was getting done. Re-hearsals themselves are about results-about pace,pattern, tempo, and about smoothing, harmoniz-ing, perfecting. The preparation for a concert coulditself be described as a project, with the conductoras a hands-on project manager. This, if you like, isorchestra operating, not orchestra leading, let alonediiecting.

In the course of my day with BramwcU, which in-volved many hours of rehearsal, I saw only oneovert act of leadership. As the afternoon wore on,Bramwell was dissatisfied. "Come on guys-you'reall asleep. You need to do this. It's not goodenough." Later, he told me if he had to do that allthe time, it would be intrusive. Fortunately, hedoes not. The fear of censure by the conductor isvery powerful, he explained, because "instrumentsare the extensions of their souls!"

In conducting an orchestra, it seems that covertleadership - to use Bramwell's own phrase - may befar more important than overt leadership. Leader-ship infused everything Bramwell did, however in-visibly. His "doing," in other words, was influencedby all the interpersonal concerns in the back of hismind: players' sensitivities, union contracts, andso on. Perhaps we need a greater appreciation in allmanagerial work of this kind of covert leadership:not leadership actions in and of themselves-moti-vating, coaching, and all that-but rather unobtru-sive actions that infuse all the other things a man-ager does.

Bramwell, in fact, expressed discomfort withovert leadership. After all, the players are there be-cause they are excellent performers - they all knowthe score, so to speak. Anyone who cannot playproperly can be replaced. Rehearsals are not ahoutenhancing skills hut about coordinating the skillsthat are present.

Nevertheless, a symphony orchestra is not a jazzquartet any more than a racing scull is a canoe.

Watching Bramwell at rehearsals, Isaw a lot more doing than what weconventionally think of as leading.

With a large numher of people, soineonc has to takethe lead, set the pace, call the stroke. The Russianstried to achieve a leaderless orchestra in the headydays after the revolution, but all they succeeded indoing was relabelling the conductor. Given that allthe musicians have to play in perfect harmony, the

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role of conductor emerges naturally. "I completelycontrol the orchestra's timing-and timing is every-thing," Bramwell said, maybe because timing isone of the few things he can completely control.

Hence, a good symphony orchestra requires bothhighly trained professionals and clear personal lead-ership. And that has the potential toproduce cleavage along the line wherethose two centers of power meet. Ifthe players do not accept the conduc-tor's authority or if the conductor doesnot accept the players' expertise, thewhole system breaks down.

Bramwell's deepest concerns seemto focus precisely on this potentialfault hne. How can he remain true to his profes-sion, which is music, while properly performing hisjob, which is management? He seems to find littlecomfort in that tension. Indeed, he appears mostcomfortable when he retreats back into the profes-sion. Bramwell loves to play the piano by himself;he also composes music. Both of those activities, itshould be noted, are pointedly free of the need tomanage or be managed.

The Culture Is in the SystemLeadership is generally exercised on three differentlevels. At the individual level, leaders mentor,coach, and motivate; at the group level, they buildteams and resolve conflicts; at the organizationallevel, leaders build culture. In most organizations,these three levels are discrete and easily identifiahle.

Not so in the symphony orchestra. Here we havea most curious phenomenon: one great hig teamwith approximately 70 people and a single leader.(There are sections, but they have no levels of su-pervision.) The members of this team sit together,in one space, to be heard at one time. How often docustomers see the whole product being delivered bythe entire operating core of the organization?

As already noted, leadership at the individual levelis highly circumscribed. Empowerment is a sillynotion here. Musicians hardly need to be empow-ered by conductors. Inspired maybe-infused withfeeling and energy-but not empowered. Leadersenergize people by treating them not as detachable"human resources" (probably the most offensiveterm ever coined in management) but as respectedmembers of a cohesive social system. When peopleare trusted, they do not have to be empowered.

Furthermore, in an orchestra, all these peoplecome together for rehearsals and then disperse.How and where is the culture to be built up? Theanswers take us back to an earlier point: culture

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building, too, is covert, infused in everything theconductor does. Moreover, much of this culture isalready built into the system. This is a culture ofsymphony orchestras-not just the Winnipeg Sym-phony Orchestra. A new player can to a large extentjoin days before a concert and still harmonize, so-

Conductors hardly need toempower musicians. Inspire,

maybe, but not empower.

cially as well as musically. This is not to deny theeffects of the conductor's charisma or the effectthat Bramwell Tovey can have on the culture of theWinnipeg Symphony Orchestra. It is only to arguethat any conductor begins with several centuries ofestahlished cultural tradition.

This reality should make the joh of leading at thecultural level that much easier. Culture does nothave to be created so much as enhanced. Peoplecome together knowing what to expect and howthey have to work. The leader has to use this cul-ture to define the uniqueness of the group and itsspirit in comparison with other orchestras. Indeed,maybe the culture, and not the personal chemistry,is the key to the ostensible "charisma" of all thosefamous conductors-and perhaps many other man-agers as well.

This point is reinforced by the fact that about halfthe time, symphony orchestras are not even led bytheir own conductors. An outsider comes in to per-form the job-a so-called guest conductor. Imaginea "guest manager" almost anywhere else. Yet hereit works-sometimes remarkably well-preciselybecause everything is so programmed by both thecomposer and the profession. That leaves the con-ductor free to inject his or her style and energy intothe system.

Managing All AroundAs noted above, Bramwell Tovey is a doer, rightthere on the floor. He doesn't read reports in somecorner office. (Indeed, he took almost i8 months togive me feedback on my report.) He doesn't take histeam off to some distant retreat to climb ropes sothat they will come to trust one another. He simplyensures that a group of talented people come to-gether to make beautiful music. In that sense, he islike a first-line supervisor, like a foreman in a fac-tory or a head nurse of a hospital ward.

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Yet at the end of our day together, Bramwell alsoturned around to maintain personal relationshipswith key stakeholders of the organization, the eliteof the symphony's municipal society. In otherwords, the foreman acting on the factory fioor byday becomes the statesman out networking in the

Professionals require Httle directionand supervision. What they dorequire is protection and support.

Maestro's Circle-a group of the orchestra's mostgenerous supporters-hy night. The whole hierar-chy gets compressed into the job of just one person.

Connecting to important outsiders-what iscalled linking-is an important aspect of all man-agerial work. There are always people to be con-vinced so that deals can be done. In Bramwell'scase, this involves networking to represent the or-chestra in the community to help it gain legitimacyand support. The other side of the linking role isserving as the conduit for social pressures on the or-ganization. As we have seen, professionals requirelittle direetion and supervision. What they do re-quire is protection and support. And so their man-agers have to pay a lot of attention to managing theboundary condition of the organization. In consult-ing firms, for example, it is top management thatdoes the selling.

I have spent other days observing the executivedirector of a hospital and the head nurse of a surgi-cal ward. The latter, like Bramwell, certainly kepther ward humming; she was the aetion-orientedfront-line manager with a vengeance. She was onthe floor most of the day. But unlike Bramwell, sheexpressed a dislike for what she called "the wholePR thing"-the linking role. The hospital directorcame out in quite the opposite way. He cherishedwhat he called the "advocacy" role-dealing withgovernment officials, negotiating with colleaguesat other hospitals, working with prestigious boardmembers, and so on. He put his greatest efforts intogetting the most for his hospital from the outsideworld. The trouble was that when he turnedaround, he did not face professionals ready to har-monize but physicians and medical chiefs of staffdemanding more resources.

This created a cleavage different from that notedbefore: between what could be called the managingup and out of the senior managers and the manag-ing down and in of the operating managers. In hos-

pitals, this is represented by a sort of concrete floortbat blocks the downward exercise of authority. Be-neath it, the clinicians work away, delivering theirservices, driven primarily hy professional special-izations, which are in turn driven by sophisticatedtechnologies. Above it, senior managers advocate

out, negotiate with one another, andmanage the nonclinical operationswhen they are not, of course, engagedin one of their perpetual - and often-times fruitless-reorganizations.

The concrete floor, like the glassceiling, is common in many of today'sorganizations, increasingly so as theygrow bigger, as their hierarchies ex-

tend [despite so-called dclayering), and as theirmanagement becomes more "professional," that is,more detached. Managing without an intimate un-derstanding of what is being managed is an invita-tion to disharmony. External linking and dealingcannot be dissociated from internal leading and do-ing. Just consider how much money has heensquandered on corporate acquisitions that havebeen managed in this way. You can't just "do thedeal" and then drop it in the laps of others for im-plementation. Managing comes in a single pill;every manager, or well-coordinated managementteam, has to swallow all the roles we have been dis-cussing-internal and external.

Bramwell Tovey does play all these roles-with aremarkable ability to turn from concerns on the in-side to those on the outside. He directs the re-hearsal and then turns to the Maestro's Circle, ineffect, breaking through that concrete floor.

It should be noted here that the division of workbetween Bramwell and Max was not one of insideand outside but of artisan and administrator. Thefact that they formed a harmonious comanagementteam contrasts in an interesting way with a recom-mendation I once made as a consultant to a hospi-tal. Since the executive director was more comfort-ahle being an external advocate, while internallythere was a great need for a mediator, I suggestedthat the hospital adopt a form of comanagement.A businessman who was a member of the board,horrified at any breach of the sanctified chain ofcommand, insisted that the word be purged frommy report. Too bad he had never spent a day withBramwell and Max.

CodaSo what kind of organization is this in which oneIndian has to put up with all those chiefs and some-one like Bramwell Tovey can be so reticent about

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having to exercise leadership? More specifically,can we really call Bramwell a manager? Does heeven want to he? Will the musicians let him he?

The answer has to he yes.Uncomfortahle as it may be to manage a group of

such talented people, I helieve Bramwell loves it.After all, he still gets to play often, and, when hedoes, no one is waving a haton at him. He is able toeonduet the pieces he likes best, at least much of thetime, and he experiences the extraordinary joy of see-ing the work of the organization all come togetherat the wave of his hand-even if the composer isreally pulling the strings. How many managers getthis kind of satisfaction from their work?

And not only do the musicians let him do this,they actually encourage him, no matter how dis-agreeahle some of them may find it. After all, theyneed him as much as he needs them. Bramwellcommented, "I don't see myself as a manager. I con-sider myself more of a lion tamer." It is a good line,

always likely to get a good laugh, and it echoes thepopular description of managing professionals as"herding cats." But it hardly captures the image of70 rather tame people sitting in neatly ordered rowsready to play together at the flick of a wand.

So even if he does not see his joh as a manager,which I doubt, I certainly do. Get past the myth ofthe conductor in complete control and you maylearn from this example what a good deal of today'smanaging is all about. Not obedience and harmony,hut nuances and constraints. So mayhe it is time forconventional managers to step down from theirpodiums, get rid of their budgeting batons, and seethe conductor for who he or she really is. Only thenean anyone appreciate the myth of the manager upthere as well as the reality of the conductor downhere. Perhaps that is how the manager and the orga-nization can make beautiful music together. ^

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