Group management made easy

Working in groups is different from working alone. Most groups are organized around a higher instance which is equal to the manager. The good news is, that the details of group working can be researched with a scientific method which is called Total customer orientation (TCO). TCO is often referenced as a management principle which has to be used in reality, but the more powerful scenario is to use TCO as a theoretical framework for explaining group working in general.

Let us describe a group situation. The manager gives the order to the subordinate to do a certain action. Why does the subordindate obey? What will happen, if not a manager but a different person gives the same order? Total customer orientation has the answer to all of these questions. The reason why groups are working is because a certain speech acts make sense or not. A group contains of the people in the circle plus an external customer. The customer can be an individual person or it can be the abstract market. The funny thing is, that the group will do everything what the customer want's. All what the manager has to do is translate from the customer to the needs of the subordinates in the group.

A typical example for a group coordination is given in the following example.

Customer to the manager: I'd like to buy a pair of shoes.

Manager to the group: My customer needs shoes.

Group to the manager: Which one, we have one in black or in white?

Manager to the customer: Which color do you like, black or white?

Customer to the Manager: The white one.

Manager to the group: give me the white shoes.

Group: Here, please.

And so on.

This kind of dialogue make sense. The best example is the direct order from the manager to the group (“Give me the white shoes”). The reason, why the group obeys, and the reason why the group likes to hear this order is because the speech act makes sense for the group. The group knows, that the manager is in a talk with the customer and if they provide the shoes in the white color, the chance is high, that the customer will buy the product at the end. That is the reason, why the group allows the manager to give them a direct order.

The simple explanation what management is, is that the manager is acting as an interface between a group and an external customer. What he is doing is not give orders by himself, but he translates speeches back and forth. He translates the group speech into the customer speech and the other way around. If a person likes to become a manager he has to identify this social role in reality. He has to put himself between an existing group and the environment. In that position he is allowed to give orders to the group.

A concrete example of an ancient bazar is given in the image. The merchant is trying to sell fish to the market. Two customers are at the desk already, they have management privileges. What does that means? It means, that customer1 is allowed to formulate a speech act which is:

“Give me the smooked eel and make me a good price.”

Customer 1 can give this statement as a direct order to the fishstand and for the other side this order makes sense. Sense is important because only commands which have a meaning can be fulfilled. In response to the command, the manager at the fishmonger has to translate this command into the language of the employee. He can formulate a statement like:

“Put the eel into a package and give it to me!”.

This order makes for the employee also sense. Because this kind of speech acts can be expected at the market. The chance is around 100% that the employee at the fishstand will obey. The general question is, why can give one person another person a command? Because he is higher at the hierarchy. Each customer request is started by a customer. That means, the customer sitts on top of the pyramid. From a macro economical perspective this is called a market driven economy. The manager in the fishstand sitts below the customer. He can only give an order to the employee if the order has something to do with the customer. Otherwise the employee will ask back why he should do something.

It's important to locate the position of the manager. He is the interface between the customer and the employee. He is talking to both sides. In contrast, the customer never talks to the employee within the company and Vice versa. The communication flow defines who is in the position of a manager and who not.

The drawing explains also who the manager can get more influence. He has to talk with the second customer as well. If he has collected to fish orders from the customers his authority is much higher than in the case before. Both customers together will pay 50US$ for the fish which is more than what a single customer will pay. As a result, the employee will obey more quicker to the manager needs, because the statement makes more sense to him.

Like i mentioned in the beginning Total customer orientation is not only a management principle but a theoretical framework for understanding group related actions. It can explain, how a fishmarket operates and who has to fulfill which order.