Managerial Incompetence: How common is it?

[DanS]

Good management is the exception to the rule. But I think you can teach people to be good managers.

[Asher]

as a 15 year veteran of retail i can say that you must go to work EXPECTING managerial failures, not daily cooperation.

I have been put into situations that today can be considered downright criminal, but just remember you are highly expendable and the moar pay you make the moar they will WANT to actually get rid of you to replace you with somebody who's dumb enough to take your job with half the pay and none of the quirks. Ive outlasted CEO's, entire "rosters" of employees including shift managers, and best of all I've built up large and loyal followings of actual CUSTOMERS... you know, the ones that pay your companies bills.

If you are flexible with your hours (meaning any day any time,) know at least 3 "departments" or separate areas of the workplace, and consistently save your bosses incompetent asses on a daily basis then you have your job on lockdown.

So if you don't think i know what im talking about just remember I beat the recession, sun.

AAHZ, minimum wage retail workers are the easiest kind of people to keep in a recession.

[Asher]

When I worked for the air force I had to take a 30-minute Foreign Object Damage training course every six months or so. Foreign Object Damage training basically says "don't leave wrenches in airplane engines." I was a computer scientist - my job never brought me within a mile of an airplane engine. Hell, there weren't even any functional aircraft or runways on the part of base on which I worked.

I also had to take Anti-Terrorism Training every six months or so. My favorite question was: Your flight has just landed, and you need directions to your hotel. Which payphone should you use? Three or four payphone locations were then given. Not listed: the option saying "who the hell uses a payphone anymore?"

We had a Big ****ing Deal inspection that cost millions of dollars in lost productivity as we labeled everything that could be labeled and stacked everything that could be stacked (we were literally told to stack unused equipment in a Tetris-like arrangement). I personally spent two days shredding Fortran 77 compiler manuals and VAX operating system manuals, because apparently the terrorists would have won if they'd gotten their hands on our obsolete mountain of paper. The director or the 2-star (I forget who) said that heads would roll if we failed this inspection. The offices I worked in essentially shut down for three to six months and passed the inspection. Some offices in another state said "screw the inspection," got some actual work done during that three to six months, failed the inspection, and suffered no ill consequences.

The only managers better than business managers are government managers. Spectacular.

[Wezil]

Who's better - the average manager or the average employee?

[DanS]

IMO, the average employee.

[Asher]

For the first six months at my current job I was technically part of Marketing. My direct manager was a very tech-savvy guy, but his manager was most certainly not. That was incredibly frustrating for the first couple months as the Liberal Arts ( ) educated manager tried to manage us doing tech development that he didn't comprehend. And he was a micromanager. It was a cluster**** til we finally escaped the clutches of the tyranny of the marketers and finally got placed in the proper department (IT), and now directly report to the CTO.

The ***** of this all was we had to fight tooth and nail to do it. Marketing wouldn't let us go even though we weren't able to do much of anything under them.

[DanS]

That's really a shame, because you probably would have been better funded as part of a profit center instead of an overhead center.

[Asher]

Marketing is not a profit centre. They're 100% sunk cost. We get much more funding as part of IT as the new upper management at the company has finally decided that the company needs to be transformed into an Information company, not just a 'Directory publisher'. We're officially the R&D arm of the company now, which means much better funding opportunities. And we're not making stupid little marketing gimicks at their whim anymore...

It also doesn't help that they're basically in the process of shutting down the Toronto marketing office. The Quebec government is giving massive tax benefits to consolidate jobs in Montreal, so the anglophones are on the chopping block. The marketing staff here now are skeleton and their days are numbered.

[KrazyHorse]

I thought AAHZ claimed to have gotten his first job like a year ago?

[loinburger]

I'm not convinced that he can distinguish between fantasy and reality.

[-Jrabbit]

The biggest core problem with management is that they have all learned to focus on maximizing their measurables, always with an eye on the next promotion, and the actual success of the company/work at hand takes a back seat. They're more concerned with empire-building, creating and growing their little fiefdom within the organization.

Get promoted to manager, you want to be senior manager, from there to director, etc. It's all about profit-sharing, bonuses and, of course, pay grade. The brass ring (the board room) colors all their actions. All those bright young managers going for their MBAs are NOT trying to make the company more successful. They are trying to enhance their own careers. If the company somehow gets better along the way, that's a bonus they will gladly take credit for, but in no way do they actually care -- as long as they are shielded from blame in the event of failure.

We're coming into one of my favorite cycles now: As the economy recovers and sales return to normal, armies of managers will claim credit for XXX% increase over the past year's depressed sales numbers and see what they can get for it.

Not that I blame them. It's just the nature of the beast.

[loinburger]

.

[Japher]

My class is not that way. Though, you can see the merit of firing someone who is not open to criticism or others opinions. However, this is generally a product of the culture that has been created. The young executive should be concerned about what kind of place he's gotten himself into. Also, he should phrase criticism in the form of questions and lead with compliments of the place. Having worked in a plant for many years myself, I can see how the older dude would assume this youngin' doesn't know crap. Most of the times there is a method to the madness, and you need to work a plant for a while before you can be sure that any change will be an improvement.

[Flubber]

A young new executive is visiting a plant for the first time, and after a tour he says to the 20-year veteran plant manager "I have some suggestions for how you can improve this plant," to which the 20-year veteran plant manager says "You don't know ****." How should this conflict best be resolved?

At least half of the class said that the young new executive should fire the veteran plant manager for being disrespectful. The professor said that the correct answer was for the executive to shut up and learn some humility. I doubt any of the students were paying attention, though.
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Fire a 20 year experienced person over an offhand comment that is likely also true?? NO way. But it might be the course for an inexperienced manager that doesn't have the confidence to handle themselves.

But after a first tour of the plant, it was incredibly premature for the "young buck' to be talking about changes. Also that manager needs to learn a little bit about managing people. Better would be to

1. Engage the exisiting manager and ask him about any particular problems or issues that (s)he sees

2. After some time to absorb things more and understand the plant better, only then raise things. Hell, something I do lots when dealing with experienced folks when I have ideas is say something like "I'm new to x or y so I have a couple of questions and hoped you could help me" Then what were suggestions/changes in the previous scenario become questions from the person who is presenting it as their own lack of knowledge. I find I get way more credibility when I acknowledge things I don't know.

So instead of "I want to impose Process X" it becomes " I toured two other plants that use Process X while this one uses Process Y. What is the upside and downside of that?"

If the 20 year manager is at all amiable and competent they will like appearing all knowledgeable to some HQ "suit"and you will get a good explanation on most issues. In some cases they might even adopt your ideas based on your questions without you ever having suggested it

[Ben Kenobi]

When I worked in the store the owner wanted someone who was an 'outsider' to try to sort things out. Predictable results, the staff liked me, and most of the middle management hated me with a passion. The staff loved pointing out the crap that was wrong so I could fix it. That I liked, since they made my job about 10 times easier. Middle manager gave me crap, although the lady that ran the book department liked me for whatever reason.

Fixed up about half the store by the time my contract ran out which was a shame. I was hoping to have everything sorted out by then!

As for managers, I have seen really good ones, and terrible ones. One of the best managers I had was my treeplanting boss. He paid me to do his reports for him, so that he could do the stuff he enjoyed. That lasted half the year, until his bosses finally caught on, and then I got bumped down in the pay scale. He still made sure that I got to help him out, just he had to find another way for me to get paid.