I’ve been reading John Ralston Saul’s The Collapse of Globalism. Among the secondary themes in the book Saul talks about management practices:
On a less grandiose scale, you can see the destructive effect of managerial dominance in the gradual growth of detail as the mainstay of the employee’s life. The effect of new technology has been to draw even senior managers into minutiae. People paid to think and lead now spend much of their time typing and responding to or sending an endless stream of unnecessary messages, simply because communications technology invades every second and every corner of their lives. This bureaucratization of both the leadership and the creative process makes thought seem irresponsible and clear action seem unprofessional. It provides a sensation of activity while creating a broader sense of powerlessness. This is what used to be called being nibbled to death by ducks.
Saul, in my experience, has nailed it in regards to the problems with modern management practices. This was the case with my previous employer where minutiae overruled common sense. It destroys morale and creates a climate where everyone is afraid to do anything productive.
I did move on and found a company where there is strong leadership as well as good management. However, in the context of IR reform, it reminds me of nagging doubts about how employer/employee behaviour is modelled.
It’s taken for granted that if an employee is unhappy in their current job they will simply move to another job. Even faced with poor working conditions there are many social and economic reasons why employees will not move to another job. As with my previous employer I knew people, unhappy with the situation, who stayed simply for financial security (myself included) Also, given most were IT professionals, job mobility is nowhere near as fluid than the years of plenty back in the late 90s. A few of us eventually found jobs but it took a good 6-12 months of selective searching.
Of course, my evidence is anecdotal so the usual caveats apply. However I would be interested fostering a discussion on a number of issues:
1. What constitutes good management?
2. Is bad management as great as impact on productivity in the workplace as bad employees?
3. If you have experienced being unhappy in a job did you stay for various reasons and tough it out or did you quickly change?
4. Are the assumptions about employee/employer behaviour as modelled in justifications regarding industrial relations reform realistic or a case of irrational economics?
In my very first job out of uni, I worked for a man who resembled the Ricky Gervais character in the office. As many people have had. Except he wasn’t funny, he was just a bully. I used to become so agitated on Sunday nights I’d often start crying at about 9pm.
Anyway, I couldn’t just walk away because I was young, inexperienced and working in a field where jobs are scarce and competition for positions is fierce. After about two years of fairly punishing unpleasantness that verged, occasionally, on low-level psychological abuse, as well as being royally taken advantage of in terms of hours worked and pay, I got another job.
I’m a bit older and wiser now and if it happened again, I wouldn’t stick around. But at the time I had no choice… I had to work. Many young people, it seems, find themselves in similar positions.
The power imbalance between employer and employee in my experience was utterly huge. I had no rights, no say, no voice. I felt I was utterly replaceable and that if I walked away from that job I’d never be able get another. My boss knew people in the industry I wanted to work in and at one point he threatened to send emails to everyone he knew in the industry warning them not to employ me.
As it turned out, his power was purely in his own head. But it was terrifying to be 22 and in that position.
Anyway, to answer your questions:
1. Good management, to me, involves my managers having faith in me, but also providing support, back-up and a sense that my contribution is appreciated.
2. Yes. For previous boss I would do the bare minimum, and I was always so scared about stuffing up I was terrified to do anything even remotely interesting or innovative.
3. As I said, I toughed it out for two years until I got another job. I had nowhere else to go…
4. I think it depends on the industry, the people involved and their particular situations. My partner works in an industry with a huge skill shortage and employees there have a huge degree of bargaining power. Alternatively, for many workers, that isn ‘t the case. It seems the relationship between employers and employees in terms of the industrial relations changes put forward by the government assumes that my boyfriend’s case is more common than my case as a 22 year old graduate.
A very good post, Irant. One quibble:
Is bad management as great as impact on productivity in the workplace as alleged bad employees?
This question is unbalanced because of the word “alleged” appearing once, when it should appear twice or not at all.
I[t’]s taken for granted that if an employee is unhappy in their current job they will simply move to another job.
Unless you are the prime minister, who can simply extort millions from taxpayers if he doesn’t like having to live where his job is in Canberra.
More on topic, I agree that JRS is often at his best on management, which I suspect has less to do with his research and more with him being a former oil executive.
Talk about quibbling!
I did say I saw virtue in the whole posting, with one small but significant exception which demonstrated bias.
Then Naomi to made a sexist remark about “men making useless and pedantic corrections”.
Quite a telling piece of misandry — projecting imaginary flaws on men as a whole. Another piece of evidence proving that feminists are, at heart, man-haters.
CS,
You may think JRS is often “at his best” on management, but it’s based on extremely limited first-hand knowledge. His corporate/managerial experience is comprised solely of the three years he spent as “Special Assistant and Policy Advisor to the founding Chairman of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1979″. As with so many subjects he’s more dilettante than expert.
Ok, fixed the typo and took out the word “alleged” as EP is correct.
To echo Kate’s post, I was in a similar situation with my previous job. I would become noticeably depressed on Sunday afternoons.
My experience is that when people are treated as being capable then they will do a good job without the need for constant supervision or control. Naomi’s experience is worth noting in that I have worked with similar bosses. Those that give you give you a nudge when you are doing wrong but also show the way.
And that to me is part of the problem. Lack of leadership. In the business world I think leadership is mistakenly equated with making bucket loads of money. This can be done without showing in real leadership skills whatsoever. Then again I have never done any management course. If anyone has I’d be interested to know of the idea of leadership is covered and how.
So Fydor, three years isn’t long enough for you! Glad I don’t have to supervise your PhD.
Me too.
irant - despite an emormous amount of highly paid circulating bullshit I’m of the belief that leadership can’t be taught. Bits of management perhaps. It’s a bit like the old saying. “If you aren’t very bright it’s a good idea to get a good education. Most people you meet confuse the two.”
I hear you Frankie.
My own experiences as employee, employer and now manager incline me to the view that innate people skills take all concerned a hell of lot further than any Commerce BA or MBA.
Yep, there’s a cheap shot in there, but no one who has ever worked for me has resigned. Mind you I’ve sacked a few people in my time. The trick there is to make it clear their ineffable talents are wasted in the current set up and why don’t they aim for the stars instead.
Except of course if you caught ‘em seriously thieving, which has happened to me twice. My policy there is how much you pay back determines the head start I’ll give you before I pick up the phone and call in the cops, or even worse the ATO. I mean I used thieve a bit when doing shit scullion and factory jobs for multinationals - and it caused far less damage to the bottom line than all the executive excesses at the other end. But nicking from a owner-operator SME is really crossing the line. Unless of course they crossed it first. But then if it gets to that point you don’t really have a functional business anyway.
Basically, inverting Tolstoy’s old saw, I’d say bad managers are all alike; every good manager is good in his or her own way.
What works is what yer smart or worldly enough to work out that works. Management tools are great as long as you remember they are there to wielded by you when needed and not the other way around.
Or to look at it another way, asking your very competent and very corporate culture-wise sysops about updating his KPIs now when he’s just broken up with his boyfriend is the kind of shit they don’t teach at B-School. Just like they don’t teach you how to give him a simpatico yet forceful boot up the bum when he’s still moping around a week later.
Naomi’s story above has a certain resonance here. I doubt what she described is taught in any course, but it apparently it worked.
Incidentally, while I’ve never been assaulted by ducks looking for snacks, I was once seriously menaced by swans. Don’t laugh. They’re big pushy fearless fowl and foul fuckers. Kinda like generously built ballerinas on speed. Or Darcy Bussell on crack.
Apparently we’d strayed too close to their nests. But the gamekeeper guy showed us how to drive them back. Stamp on the ground and rattle the reeds. They don’t like vibrations through the earth.
I feel there’s a management metaphor in there somewhere.
Naomi, I wouldn’t want to see John Howard unfairly dismissed. Because the definition in the Act is “harsh, unjust and unreasonable”. If the electorate were to dismiss Howard, it may be harsh, but it would certainly be just and reasonable.
Chris, you should be gladder that you don’t have to supervise my PhD I suspect. I had a dream about my PhD supervisor last night which cannot be a good sign.
Switching hats to my BComm(Hons) (without mentioning my postgraduate theological study and Business School academic capacities, Saul is good on corporate culture as a populiser, as with most of what he writes. To get a grip on why bad management is far too frequent, one should study the sociological classics such as Weber and particularly the chapter on the eclipse of liberalism by corporatism in the American political theorist Sheldon Wolin’s Politics and Vision.
A good manager works for the team they manage, not their boss. The team as a whole of course works for the manager’s boss and is responsible for whatever it is they are meant to be doing.
Like most people I have had good managers and bad. I believe that a bad manager can do much more damage to a company than a bad employee - it stands to reason, given that a manager is responsible for many more people and has a larger area of decision making. A really bad employee might be able to disrupt a whole team and reduce its productivity to zero, but a really bad manager will probably induce negative productivity of some kind through massive dysfunction.
Thanks for the book tip, Mark.
I was wandering through the Greenwood Mall in North Sydney and stopped into a local bookshop and had a look through the management books. It seems that all you need to do is bottle up some common sense in feel good langauge and you have a book on management/leadership.
FXH is right.
Irant, I did some management studies over 20 years ago as part of a B.Ed.St. but I’ve forgotten most of it.
You make a distinction between leadership and management. On that basis management would refer to the down-the-line functions, whereas leadership would refer to the directions, framework, the scope and style of the organisation, how it targets its products/services, how it relates to other organisations and the world at large.
I would prefer to see leadership as one function of management, the other three being:
1. Technical management. Concerns the quality of products and/or services.
2. Financial management. Finding the funds, keeping the books straight, operating at a profit etc.
3. Personnel management. Hiring the right people, encouraging, training and supporting them.
It has been my impression that Australian managers are OK at technical and financial management, are a very mixed on personnel management and seriously underpeform in leadership.
Today, on queue, there is an article in the AFR entitled ‘Current account is a management deficit’ by a Graham Kenny, Managing Director of Strategic Factors.
He fingers our lousy management performance as the main cause of our current account deficit. Our industries are not competitive on a global scale in goods and services. He writes:
He then gets stuck into the business schools.
You would have to look at Kenny’s sample, but on balance I’m inclined to think there is a problem. There are well-managed Australian businesses - the Lowy’s at Westfield, Michael Chaney (just departed) at Wesfarmers, Graham (’Skroo’) Turner at Flight Centre come to mind. But there are too many of the other kind (including Telstra under Siggy) and many that are OK here in Oz but can’t cut it when the firm tries to expand overseas.
But as to bad management v bad employees I think the case is clear. The quality of employees is ultimately a management responsibility.
Interesting comment Brian and thanks. I do agree. One thing I have found is that there are many managers who are brilliant on the technical side but have no concept of the human side. They try to apply technical management concepts to personnel management and forget that humans can’t simply be treated as a economic variable (which is where I think some of the callous management behaviour comes from).
I think also the short term focus of results to please shareholders detracts from long term goals. Dump a few employees and cut services and your share price rises. Doesn’t say much about how the company is going to perform over a longer period or the effect it has on the remaining employees.
Also just finished reading Dirt Cheap on Australia’s working poor. Interesting though depressing book. Well worth reading in light of the debate over IR reform. I would like to blog more on John Ralston Saul’s book on Globalism first though will try to find time amongst all the sport this weekend to do both.
Bugger the AFR pay for view. I’d like to read Kenney’s article.