Hartford Business Journal

20 Hartford Business Journal • August 24, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com MOVERS & SHAKERS Six Connecticut residents have been elected to the board of directors for the Connecticut Convention & Sports Bureau for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. They include: Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association; Peter Murphy, a partner at Shipman & Goodwin LLP; Julie Nash, director of economic and community development for the city of Milford; Alex Peterson, manager of government affairs and assistant to the executive director for the Connecticut Airport Authority; Mia Schipani, the chief marketing officer for RMS Cos. in Stamford; and Fletcher Williams, general manager of the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale. Lindsay Allen was hired as assistant vice president and branch manager at Westfield Bank's Bloomfield branch. Allen previously worked as assistant vice president and branch manager at Windsor Federal Savings & Loan Association in Granby. Gregory Deavens was named chairman of the Hartford HealthCare board of directors. Deavens is executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer of Independence Health Group, a health insurance provider in Pennsylvania. Scott Markovich was hired as general manager of Medicaid at CareCentrix Inc., a Hartford-based company that connects at-home care patients with healthcare providers. Markovich previously worked as regional vice president for the Midwest region and vice president of business development at Aetna Medicaid. The University of St. Joseph in West Hartford announced the addition of five members to its board of trustees. New members include Anthony Campbell, assistant chief of police at Yale; Maria Lino, principal and founder of The Latino Way Marketing; Mary Alice Synkewecz, a former director of the Collaborative Center for Justice; Thomas Weidman, a private investor and business owner; and Ann Welch, principal of St. Catharine Academy in Bronx, NY. George Arnold Jr. has been hired as general manager of The Town & County Club, a private member-owned women's social club in Hartford's West End. He will be responsible for growing membership and sales at the Club's fine-dining restaurant, while maximizing meeting and party rentals. Arnold most recently worked as a private club consultant with The Harvard Club in New York. Rolan Joni Young has joined the Hartford office of McCarter & English LLP in the firm's real estate practice group, and Christine Owens Morgan was hired as special counsel in the office. Young has more than 25 years of experience advancing significant real estate development projects in Connecticut. Morgan's experience includes structuring joint ventures, addressing easement issues, and providing local counsel opinions on vital real estate development projects. Dr. Kenneth Alleyne was elected chair of the board of directors at the Connecticut Health Foundation, an independent health philanthropy focused on health equity causes. Alleyne is a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, and co-founder of Zing Health, a Medicare Advantage plan, and HartHaven Partners, a healthcare investment firm. Kate Engler has joined Plainfield- based multi-disciplinary engineering firm Loureiro Engineering as an associate in its environmental assessment division. Engler previously worked as branch manager of the New England Division at Apex Companies LLC, where she was responsible for the financial performance and growth of the company's environmental program. Amy Lin Meyerson was named president of the Connecticut Bar Association. Lin Meyerson is a solo practitioner at The Law Office of Amy Lin Meyerson in Weston. Scott Dolch Lindsay Allen Rolan Joni Young Gregory Deavens BIZ BOOKS Assessing the role of a good manager By Jim Pawlak "Bedtime Stories for Managers — Read about managing with soul, organiz- ing like a cow, growing strategies likes weeds, being a keynote listener … and more" by Henry Mintzberg (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $19.95). Based on his blog's topics, Mintzberg offers insights on management. First, let's tackle the "Myth of the Maestro." We've all read books and articles liken- ing managers to orchestra maestros. Yet, when you watch a concert, the musicians rarely look at the conductor furiously waving a baton and peri- odically stabbing it at the air. They're playing their instruments based upon the notes on their music sheets; those notes dictate when to chime in. At the end of the concert, the orchestra takes a group bow but the audience reserves most of its applause for the conductor. So, if the players aren't paying much attention to the conductor dur- ing the performance what's the real role of the conductor? It's the behind- the-scenes work. The conductor looks at the music, decides how he/she will interpret it, and selects the musicians to play the various instruments. Once the music starts, the conductor's role becomes more ceremonial. A manager looks at the requirements and priorities of the tasks and selects people for various assignments based upon their skills. The manager, like a conductor, recognizes that an effective approach to doing the work requires a network of people doing their jobs col- laboratively. But, unlike a conductor, the role of manager becomes more impor- tant once a task begins. He/she must make decisions about actions/reactions because plans rarely go as planned. When it comes to decision-making, the standard template relies on "thinking first": diagnose the situa- tion, identify and assess alternatives, choose and implement. Often, this relies on what worked before. Mint- zberg believes that decision- makers should consider in- corporating a "doing first" (i.e. "try something in a limited way to see if it might work") approach because it involves thinking "what if." "Doing first" also creates a "grass- roots strategy for strategy formation" because it fosters curiosity at all levels. "What if" opens the door to "what's next." People see ideas not as weeds in the garden but as ways to open opportu- nity's door. Mintzberg also weighs in on the "tricky task of measuring managing." "Managers are not effective; matches are effective." When a manager's style doesn't mesh with that of his/her team, productivity will decline. Some teams succeed because of the manager; oth- ers despite the manager. When judging managerial effectiveness, it's impor- tant to assess the manager's contribu- tion to the team's results, how those results were produced and the effect on other areas of the organization. Now, let's look at "organizing like a cow." The typical organizational chart shows a hierarchy of boxes, solid and dotted lines and arrows pointing up, down and sideways. It can't recognize how the parts function together daily — or identify the most important parts. If you think of an organization as a cow, you'll see that each part has its specific function. The parts aren't interchangeable. Move/remove a part or a portion of a part and the cow no longer functions as intended. When a company reorganizes, it in- variably rearranges people, without a thought of the effect of workload, how they'll work together in the new environment, or how their skills will complement each other's. Mintzberg believes that "communityship" (i.e. current working relationships) must be considered when reorganizing. Why? It takes time to build a collab- orative team. Time spent developing a new team invariably means a near- term loss of productivity. Jim Pawlak

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