Being social animals, we humans cannot live alone. We derive strength & pleasure from those around us and want others to do so from ourselves. Managers are no exception. Usually they tend to consolidate their position in the organizations that they work and for those who have reached their level of inefficiency, this becomes the sole objective of their remaining professional life. Is this good for them?

Leave alone managers, everyone tries to increase the actual or perceived importance of their positions in the group they operate from. This is normal human tendency. I have yet to meet a person who does not want to feel important in a given situation. I would even venture to say that it is usually the aim of all of us to become as indispensable as possible, (as a direct measure of increasing our own worth). Is this a good objective for a manager?

Let us analyze what it means to be indispensable in an organization and then see if it is something which managers should aspire for; but before that, let me share with you the results of an interesting survey which was carried out amongst practising managers. This survey was restricted to manufacturing organizations with at least fifty employees on rolls and was done to find out the basic functional expertise of the managers who rose in their careers to become chief executives officers. An interesting hypothesis was suggested. "Since technical people involved in the production of the product or the service being offered, were really the "crucial" assets of any organization, they would rise faster than other functional managers (like accountants or marketing guys or the HRD experts) in the organizational hierarchy, to eventually head the companies".

The survey rightly started working backwards from those who had already become chief executive officers and tried to find out their functional expertise in order to assess the validity of the hypothesis. The results were contrary to expectations when it was found that very few "technical" guys managed to reach the top. A disproportionately high percentage of marketing and finance guys were becoming CEOs while the techies kept languishing lower down the order. It was not as if these techies were not earning enough - they were and even had fancy designations but when it came to the numero uno position, there were few that made the grade. Why were more and more of the peripheral breed of managers beating these techies to the finishing line? The survey did venture into finding the reasons behind this but we will talk about them, later.

Who does not want a super status in the hierarchy?
Even CEOs are properly deferential towards these "indispensable managers" without whom everything seems to come to a halt, in their departments. This actually gives them a much higher status than their designations otherwise suggest. These managers bask in the glory of reflected power. Who wouldn't, if the Managing Director himself was a little "scared" of them?? There is a special aura around them, which far outweighs the sometimes routine but important tasks that they perform. Remember the role of a mother in a house. Everyone likes that particular "taste" of a favorite dish that she prepares, which others, though they use the same ingredients, cannot match. I don't have to tell you how indispensable mothers are in a house.

Managers who are indispensable are highly paid.
This is a natural corollary of becoming indispensable. If the company believes that it cannot do without a particular manager, it will do its best to see that he is paid well. Such managers are therefore financially quite satisfied.

These managers are usually the ones who guard "secret recipes".
They do not part with this knowledge and thereby add to their importance. They like people dancing around them and enjoy the role of a "super advisor". Most employees are unwilling to bell the cat and many inefficiencies of theirs are conveniently ignored lest they be "offended". In short, they command respect far in excess of what their designation suggests or implies.

Indispensable managers tend to be cranky and short-tempered.
Like a pampered child learns to expect the moon every time, this breed of managers (since they are after all, humans) are irritated at the slightest sign of resistance or someone trying to voice ideas which are novel. Like a bully, they want to protect their "turf" and are suspicious of a new "dada" usurping the unhindered reign in their territory.

Soon, they become obsolete.
In this fast changing, ever improving environment, guardians of knowledge, especially those who do not share it with anyone, are bound to become obsolete sooner than others who keep their channels of communication open by constantly interacting and absorbing the developments that are taking place. By their very nature, indispensable managers are stiff upper lippish persons who would rather build a halo around themselves than mix with the "commoners" (read other ordinary managers). Indispensable managers present a pathetic sight towards the evening of their career- they are more "archaeological ruins" than managers.

Sure enough, they are not able to digest the fall from their pedestal.
Like it happened in case of Gavaskar, or later Kapil Dev and now Azharuddin, it is very difficult to digest the fall from the captains' position that they once enjoyed (and the irrelevance that befalls them within the organization, once their days are numbered). Many an enemy who had stalked them during their hey days, utterly jealous of their super-status, now come out sharpening their knives, to deliver the coup de grace. A normal manager might see the writing on the wall and quit gracefully, when the going is good (like Pataudi did) but these species are so enamored of their exploits and blinded by their successful past that they refuse to see what clearly stares them in the face.

That brings us back to the question we started off with - should a manager aspire to becoming indispensable or not?? Let me first give you the results of the survey that I shared with you in the beginning. Why did the techies fail to match the performance of the peripheral managers in the race for the top positions?

Many of these technical managers firmly believed that what they had learnt after years of laborious hard work could not be handed over on a platter to their deputies. They wanted their assistants to spend those many years to "earn" this knowledge. Why should they part with this expertise easily, they thought? The results were for all to see. A manager who will not train his deputies by opening up his vast reservoir of experience and knowledge is destined to become an "indispensable manager". How will the top management then promote them to higher responsibilities if there was no one to replace them? In return of this indispensability, they had inadvertently "bought" stagnation in the organizational hierarchy. Do you know now, why the techies lagged behind in the race?

Dear readers, this is a dilemma for each one of us to solve for ourselves. Do we want indispensability and the accompanying stagnation or a rapid climb up the corporate ladder? There are no easy answers to this one but who said corporate life is "a bed of roses"?

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page."