Management - blight or beneficial?

RedvGreenOLD

RedvGreenOLD

RedvGreenOLD

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Preface: I'd recommend OcUK staff or those with monitored networks don't comment negatively - out of protection of their jobs :D

Disclaimer: Managers may be offended or feel the need to justify themselves - please keep it civil on both sides!


Having worked in Secondary education, Academia and Law Enforcement, there are plenty of older people out there with far more wisdom and experience to reflect on changes within the workplace, however despite this, I am firm in my belief that a huge glut of Management across the country have certainly played a big part the downfall for many services, departments and businesses.

Let me elaborate:

1. Job protection

These are austere times in which people who were previously in highly secure jobs are at risk. If you analyse the severance lists and compulsory redundancy lists of your own workplace (or your family's), you may notice several trends.

These trends appear to be:
  • The lowest paid are usually the first out.
  • Managers will remain, even if they have no team. They will get protected salary and transferred to another team.
  • Management get priority over skilled workforce for lower jobs, even if they do not have the skillset.
  • Voluntary redundancy packages (I.e. Severance) are offered to everyone, yet management appear to get priority, leaving the lower workforce facing compulsory redundancy with no severance package.

Despite the manager not having a valid contribution to the 'front line operations', their jobs are far more secure, and will often axe those beneath them before themselves. A family member is an Assistant Director of a rather large NHS institution. He has axed all his team due to job cuts (approximately £65k of personnel), yet he is now without anyone or any services to manage, yet he remains (on £75kpa).



2. Metrics

Instead of knowing that you do a good job, or having recommendations, letters/emails/phonecalls/discussions of appreciation, management fallback onto 'metrics'.
If you want new equipment, you need to prove that you had a need for it. Typically in several workplaces, you needed to show results over a minimum of 6 months, after which time you may have been struggling along tearing your proverbial hair out with inferior equipment.

Appreciative words/letters are meaningless and all the management care about is % statistics. If you had 100% glowing KPI (Key Performance Indicator) in one area, yet 90% in another, that is a fail.

If you excel in your area, you will rarely receive praise, and instead you will receive negativity from management, telling you how to improve or where they think you went wrong, or that you should apply yourself in a new area.
If there was any element of negativity, even the smallest niggle will be blown up out of all proportion and the impetus is to make you feel inferior.



3. Disconnected from the team

Under military and enforcement hierarchy, the teams/squads are lead by a team leader or a Sergeant. This is someone who is on the proverbial firing line with you, leading from the front - almost one of the 'lads' but enough respect to influence the team and get them to obey.

Nowadays, in other work places, the influx of 'management' appears to attract somewhat brutal 'hatchet men'. These are disconnected people who make large decisions on areas that they don't know very much about, and rarely, even know the names of their team.




4. Accountability

This should be one familiar to us all. You do well, secure a good deal, deliver an excellent report, solve a crime or other attainment, and your manager gets praised and recognition for it. You get nothing more than a begrudging 'well done' from the manager. At the end of the month/year, that manager gets a bonus. You get nothing.

Flipside, a team member is floundering badly due to mismanagement, and instead of the manager being accountable for dealing with the situation poorly/not-at-all, the team as a whole gets chastised and blamed. When team stand up for their innocence, it forces them to out their colleague and blame them, openly causing animosity - the management have manipulated the situation and used peer pressure to create a situation where they have to do nothing, and virtually create a pseudo-constructive dismissal situation.


What are your thoughts on the increase in management across the workforce - is it positive, negative or neutral?
 
Here are my views:

1. Loyalty and dedication is critical. That tends to be more available in management-type staff.

2. Metrics and KPIs are useful tools to assess performance. Bad managers chase the numbers, good managers make sure the numbers are meaningful and then chase them.

3. Not knowing personally every individual within your team is not uncommon with larger teams, yet it's still perfectly possible to know what they do, and use information from 2 in combination with subjective measures to assess if they are any good.

4. I have seen this one fairly often. It mainly stems from the fact that the higher up the chain you go, the less precision is required/possible for any one topic. Therefore, while lower levels of management know very well the reality of the situation, they are relaying it back to people who may only know at a high-level what the operational unit does. That's a fairly easy situation to play for personal advancement.
 
Your post is more about good management vs bad management. As an independent contractor I have seen and experienced both. Management in and of its self is not a bad thing, it is the application that is important. The same can be said of workers you get a lot of good hard working one's but you also get a lot of victims who will always seek to blame others.

From my own experience I have seen more bad management than good management, however that does not mean good management doesn't exist.
 
Op I guess you are more talking about large companies rather than SME's. A lot of your comments are really the result of poor workplace culture, poor management structures and practises rather than the managers themselves, though there will always be bad managers as there are bad workers.

I work in an SME and we only have one level of management between the directors and the bottom level staff (well there is the odd 'team leader' on the shop floor but I wouldn't class them as managers). I think in large organisations the less flat management hierarchy gives rise to some of the problems you talk about
 
daver said:
Op I guess you are more talking about large companies rather than SME's. A lot of your comments are really the result of poor workplace culture, poor management structures and practises rather than the managers themselves, though there will always be bad managers as there are bad workers.

I work in an SME and we only have one level of management between the directors and the bottom level staff (well there is the odd 'team leader' on the shop floor but I wouldn't class them as managers). I think in large organisations the less flat management hierarchy gives rise to some of the problems you talk about
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Interesting but I disagree. I think half the problem nowadays with management is they either lack/cannot/or are fearful of showing leadership. I work in company, circa 1200 staff which is part of an even larger international organisation of some 25000+ staff. The problem with our management culture is a clear lack of leadership from the hierarchy, for the simple reason that they are scared to take on the middle management underneath them who in the most part are dead wood and offer no tangible skills to the business.

I work in a specialist role so have the luxury of dealing with staff from the lowest to the highest level.

I can usually tell a person who is doing a role they are unsuited for, i.e. a bad manager. If their best quality is their ability to know who knows how to solve a problem and they themselves offer no input then you can be pretty sure they are there because of some other reason rather than their knowledge, usually "croniism". And no, delegation as an end to itself is not a solely sufficient measure of a manager.
 
The majority of posters on GD are not managers so there will be a huge bias towards the "Hang 'em all" train of thought, having had no life experience in the role they are attacking. Having said that, even those of us who are or have been managers know that inneffectual management is not uncommon.

Bar said:
Management in and of its self is not a bad thing, it is the application that is important. The same can be said of workers you get a lot of good hard working one's but you also get a lot of victims who will always seek to blame others.
Click to expand...

Indeed.
 
Its easy to criticise. Human nature maybe but until you have actually had some managerial and leadership experience then I cannot see how you can make any sort of balanced arguement. There is of course quite a large distinction between "management" and "leadership". I don't have the time or inclination to elaborate further in what seems a bit of trolling thread.
 
Having had good and bad managers, I can say that a good manager is a critical aspect of most businesses. Bad managers therefore, are particularly harmful.

Currently, I have an okay manager. She really cares about us as a sales team and has secured us bonus every month, arguing our targets as unrealistic (we aren't hitting them). She gets no bonus however, because we aren't hitting targets. So it can be a thankless job with lots of responsibility and pressure, but little reward. Other good managers I have had offered positive feedback to help me improve, without putting me down, and motivated me. These have all been line managers. The "sergeants" of the OP's post

My manager's manager, however is very much the example of what the OP has highlighted as a bad manager. Pushing metrics, promising to watch the conditions we have to manage and failing to do so, and generally getting the overall strategy wrong. My last division manager was great as a person manager, but unfortunately failed to deliver the goods and so he lost 24 members of staff when they took the operation away from him. He got it wrong on a profound level, but his remaining team of 12 have allowed him to keep his job and payscale. I don't begrudge him this because I liked him and was happier working for him, but it does show something of an imbalance when 24 people are made redundant because of management getting it totally wrong, and they keep their jobs and pay.
 
Calpol said:
Its easy to criticise. Human nature maybe but until you have actually had some managerial and leadership experience then I cannot see how you can make any sort of balanced arguement. There is of course quite a large distinction between "management" and "leadership". I don't have the time or inclination to elaborate further in what seems a bit of trolling thread.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that not being a manager negates being able to hold an opinion on how managers should behave. Just like not being an artist does not mean people cannot hold an opinion on art.

We have expectations of what a good manager should be just as we hold opinions on what good art should be. Simply pointing out an opinion that the art lacks imagination or a manager lacks leadership skills is not necessarily unbalanced but simple a deviation from what would be preferred.

I think it's an interesting point by the OP.
 
Working in retail I can say that my Store Manager is incredibly hard working and understanding, and the supervisors are comprised of one or two diamonds, but largely jobsworths who are the reason why we can't have nice things.
 
Some very interesting point raised from most people.

I fully understand that good vs. bad can make or break a team, but I am pondering whether it is a modern thing (with influx of the MBA courses) that managers are appearing everywhere.

I see situations that make no sense; such as a Deputy Director post being created at £85k to eloquently axe a team of 4 x £21k. The justification being that the 4 people will have more holidays, sickness and pension costs than the one Deputy Director will.

Perhaps a biased and negative viewpoint, but given a few more years of recession, I fear that the UK would just be managers managing managers with no people actually doing the work.
 
It's late I'm messed up & I'm in GD - Shoot All the managers & give there wages to me is what I say, Well there is 1 I don't mind She can stay. :D
 
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