You, as managers, generally spend as much time “managing on the edges” – in other words out of your unit relating to other components of the organization and to the outside world – as you do inside the unit. Here we consider various roles related to this important work with a concentration on “buffering”: how to manage a delicate balance of outside forces coming into your unit.
The objectives for this topic are to:
- Appreciate that managing on the edges is as important to most managers as managing the unit itself.
- Understand the key roles by which managers do this.
- Probe into “buffering”: how can managers better protect their units from outside forces without completely disconnecting them?