Being Effective When Management Isn't? 3

[joekm]

I recently came across a fairly astute observation about this paradigm where management is offered as a "reward" to engineers who have longevity and have performed well. The observation being that management is a skill set in and of itself and meerly being a good engineer - or even a great engineer - does not make you a good manager. This observation is extremely apropos to where I am currently working. Additionally, outside of flash animation on company policies, they don't train here...period. If you want to learn anything, you have to scrounge for it. So, by extension, I doubt managment receives any real training either.

Don't get me wrong, I think pulling managers from the engineering staff is a good idea - provided you pick people based upon managerial aptitude and are willing to really train them. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be happeing here.

So, I have two questions:

How can you effectively get things done in an ineffective managerial environment?

How can I learn the skill sets required to be a good manager?

--
Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
-- Albert Einstein

 

[kchayfie]

I was thinking something similar myself. Our company could use a better feedback system at the end of projects. As it is, we do the same things over again so if the design office gets it wrong, the site guys figure a way to fix it and we make a bit of money on that project. Then next time design do the same thing again, site figure a way to fix it again and we make a bit of money. With a bit of feedback from site, the design office could do better next time and we'd make a ton of money instead of a bit and we wouldn't have to work so hard to get it.

But at the end of the day, we're still making money so why bother?

Oh wait, that's another example where communication would improve things!

 

[zdas04]

There are as many management "styles" as there are managers. I've known many managers who had the interpersonal skills of an aardvark, personal hygiene of a slug, and charisma of a dish rag, but at the end of the day the operations they were responsible for made money so their management called them "good managers". Workers have to realize that "manager" is not a synonym for "coach".

It really doesn't matter if a particular manager doesn't run their operation in a way that their employees prefer. It doesn't even matter if they run it in a way that causes good people to be dissatisfied and leave. I've seen hundreds of people leave big companies, but I've rarely seen one leave that would be missed for more than a few months.

I did a business-school case study on Wal-Mart when I was an undergraduate in the '70's. I found it very interesting that their target GPA was 2.0, turnover for the new professionals in the first year (through "bad" management, meaning "non-nurturing" management) was approaching 60%. Everyone complained about crappy management. Whatever they were doing it seemed to be effective in total.

So, to recap, (1) management is a collection of skills that vary from person to person; (2) employee happiness is not a valid criteria for evaluating management; and (3) a management style that causes "good" people to go elsewhere is only a problem if it has a significant impact on the bottom line (and that is rarely the case).

David

 

[aardvarkdw]

I'm not saying anything about a person's personality, appearance, etc. I am specifically refering to their ability to MANAGE effectivly. I have known several "managers" that couldn't tell you what the project was let alone how anything was to be accomplished or why. Their value to the project was negetive due to their attempts causing confusion and disorganization. BUT, despite all that the people they had working for them knew what needed to be done and as long as they were left alone and not given poor direction they managed to produce satisfactory results. The company made money and looked good at the bottom line, consiquently the manager got praised for doing well. The point is the company would have done BETTER without the manager. By your measuring stick the manager was a good manager, I think that he prevented the company from doing as well as they could and therefore was a bad manager. You have to judge a person's worth based on their own actions and accomplishments not on the accomplishments of those that work under them.

David

 

[cvg]

holding up Walmart as an example of effective management is a bit silly. They are effective at making money because of their business plan which is to undercut all the competition, sell cheap merchandise and hire the cheapest labor they can. They make money in spite of their poor management policies. But as Aardvarkdw alluded, given a different business plan and some management training, they might expect to do even better.

 

[zdas04]

I guess we'll just have to disagree on that. There is simply no way to prove that the organization would have done a better job of meeting its goals with a different manager or management style.

I've had more than a few managers who had no idea what I did or what the appropriate priorities on my projects were. I always felt these were the best of all worlds--they assumed that the authority that they had delegated to me was being appropriately applied toward the appropriate goals.

I had a boss once that everyone (myself included) thought was the best manager ever. She cared about her folks, made sure that skills and capabilities were developed to the maximum extent possible. She took us to lunch on birthday's and anniversaries. She never interfered with delegated authority. She never gave poor direction. She made certain that each of us understood the company's goals and our role in them. We loved her (hell, she even reinstituted team building). Every one of us would have killed to make her look good. After a year, the profitability of the group was in the toilet and she got "promoted" to on-campus recruiting, where she did fabulously.

Management is not coaching, mentoring, or being a friend. It is making a group of people make progress toward the company's goals.

David

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

http://www.muleshoe-eng.com

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

The harder I work, the luckier I seem

 

[joekm]

Making money under a specific manager might be a valid measure of effectiveness of that manager, but profitability - I.e. - how *much* money he makes, is a better measure. Loosing talent will effect your bottom line, it's just not as visible. Just like driving your car with low tire pressure effects your gas milage. You're loosing money, you just don't know it.

zdas04 appears to be making the statements that effectiveness as a manager can only be measured by whether or not his group turned a profit and that "coaching" is irrelevant. To that, I suggest the words of Sun-Tzu:

"The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so they will share death and share life, without fear of danger"

Master Sun's advisors would comment on that as follows:

"This means guiding them by instruction and direction. Danger means distrust"

"If the people are treated with benevolence, faithfulness, and justice, then they will be of one mind, and will be glad to serve..."

"The Way, means humaneness and justice...When the government is carried out properly, people feel close to the leadership and think little of dying for it."

"If the leaders can be humane and just, sharing both the gains and the troubles of the people, then the troops will be loyal and naturally identify with the interest of the leadership."

How you treat people, the respect you show people, how well you communicate, and yes, even you're willingness to "coach", all effect your bottom line. An employee who shares your goals is more productive then a "headcount" that sits in a cubie and spits out data.

...but what does a Shogun who lived 2000 years ago know.

--
Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
-- Albert Einstein

 

[joekm]

One other thing zdas04, you said there was a manager that you once worked for that you all highly respected, but her group did not turn a profit. Are you saying that her people skills were the cause of the lack of profit? It seems to me that you are arguing your points by anecdotes.

--
Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
-- Albert Einstein

 

[zdas04]

I guess I stired up a hornt's nest here. The problem is definitions of "management effectiveness". My definition of an effective manager is someone who causes the people and resources in his control to be applied towards optimizing their impact on the company's goals. This is very different from the idea that a manager is someone who leads his people towards something or any of the other stuff that is mentioned above that particular managers do poorly.

When I was a manager my folks understood that if they felt they had to ask permission to do something within their delegation of authority (which was clearly deliniated) I was going to question their usefullness. 19 out of 20 of them thought that was pretty cool and did a great job--mostly without my knowing specifically what they were working on. The 20th hated it, hated me, hated my "style". I spent 70% of my time dealing with that one person's problems with delegated responsibilities. She thought I was a disaster as a manager, the rest of the group thought I was ok. The group had a list of goals and we exceeded all of them, so my boss thought I was pretty good too. After a couple of years we had effectively solved the "problem" that the group was created to solve and I was so fed up with dealing with the one person who wanted coaching that when we disbanded the group I went back to engineering (and all 19 of the people who liked my style quit the company within 2 years when they realized that they liked having a good balance of responsibility and authority).

cvg,
To say that a Wal-Mart would be more effective if they adopted the management style that Apple uses is just silly. They have a corporate style, management philosophy, pricing strategy, etc. that has been amazingly effective in the only terms that stockholders care about. You may call them exploitive, but I call them effective. I know a lot of folks who work for them that think the world of the company.

Joekm,
Read Sun-Tsu's statement carefully. He is saying exactly what I'm saying--good management is getting people to have the same goal as the organization. The advisor quotes are just style. Some managers are very effective managers while coaching and mentoring, more are very ineffective at managing while coaching and mentoring. There are a lot of ways to skin this chicken.

David

 

[cousink]

zdas04, you are right. Micromanagement persists because it is such a great tool to tweak the books, minimize the overhead and maximize the profit. I commend any worker who can tolerate it for a significant period of time, but that's me. And to some of the more seasoned engineers, ineffective management may be expected as part of life.

These days, ineffective management needs to be defined not just in terms of profit but also with the finer term of turnover, because it bears on profit. That is not just management style, that is management smarts. Some companies pride themselves with a low turnover ratio, and their impressive growth is driven by profit produced by a seasoned staff. They know projects lose money during transitions with the loss of staff, the hiring of replacements or the transfer of responsibility, however well documented the progress, and regardless of the level of the engineer lost. Effective managers are going to keep their support staff happy, while exceeding the expectations of their bosses.

 

[MedicineEng]

Just a small historical remark:
Sun Tzu was not a Shogun, he was Chinese and lived around 2500 years ago.
Shogun were the provincial lords of ancient Japan.

 

[flamby]

Managing and Leading are two different functions. Leader leads by example and knows what is to be done. It is not necessary for him to understand the strategy, reason and the cost of particular business. It is the management function to decide which projects to go for and the associated costs.

Ciao.

 

[joekm]

MedicineEng:

You are correct...my mistake, he was a general, but Shogun, of course, is Japanese.

--
Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
-- Albert Einstein

 

[aardvarkdw]

To me, the best type of manager is someone that can identify an employee's strengths and weaknesses and distribute the workload in such a way as to accomplish all of the department's assigned tasks thoroughly and completely. I think that is essentially what zdas04 is saying as well. What I don't agree with is measuring that effectiveness by profitability. You could easily have a manager that sits in his office and plays solitare all day, goes to meetings but doesn't diseminate the information to the group, and just sends a mass email once a week to tell people what the projects are that "someone" should be working on, and still show a profit if the people working under them do a good job. Whereas a manager that communicates well the plan, delegates specific authority, and holds others accountable for the assigned tasks, could still have a group of employee's that are substandard and fail to accomplish the work required thus casusing the company to suffer.

The manager is a catalyst, a facilitator, but it is ultimately the work done by those managed that determines the profitability of a company.



David

 

[zdas04]

aardvarkdw,
The first guy may be a perfect manager for his group. I've had bosses who were ghosts and I loved it (just like Congress, if they aren't in session the harm they can do is limited). The second guy should do a house cleaning if all his good work is wasted on slugs. What better measure is there than contribution to the company's goals (people seem to think that "profitibility" is to commercial)? You can't measure "management style" and efforts to quantify "personality" are fun, but pointless.

A jerk that accomplishes his goals through intimidation, brow beating, and fear may be hell to work for, but he may be exactly the right person in the right place for the specific goals he's been assigned.

David

 

[aardvarkdw]

I agree, a person that may be dificult to work for may still be the best manager for the job but that is not what I am adressing. If I sit on my backside all day and watch videos on the internet, but all of my work gets done, mostly because others do it for me in order to get their work done, and the company does great, does that make me a good employee? Just like individual employees can do jack crap and the company still prospers, managers can be nothing but a hinderance to productivity and the company still prosper. I just can't see how you can judge a manager's performance based on a profit margin. If group "productivity" is up, errors and overhead costs are down, and sales are up I would judge that to be a much better measureing stick than company profits alone.

David

 

[zdas04]

Two points; First, haven't you ever seen an employee who would improve the effectiveness of the group by watching porn all day? Second, If group "productivity" is up, errors and overhead costs are down, and sales are up, but the product being sold is not strategic (e.g., it might have a lower profit margin than another line or have environmental problems) then the group may not be contributing all that it can to the company's goals.

Before someone says "why don't you just fire the first guy" think of the old John Wayne move "Hell Fighter's" where if there isn't a fire the workers play pool, but when there is a fire you really want them available.

David

 

[aardvarkdw]

So are you saying that you would keep paying someone that does nothing substantial to help the business and justify it?

I agree, "...the group may still not be contributing all it can to the company's goals." I would not consider that person a good manager if they cannot take the company's goals into account in their planning. That being said, a group with good "leaders" and employees in it could just as easily take it upon themselves to see to it that the company's goals are met while the manager does nothing constructive to help. The company does well, everything looks good on paper but you have a complete slug of a manager that contributes nothing and you have employees that are wasting valuable time, which could be spent increasing the bottom line even more, doing his job.

David

 

[Comcokid]

aardvarkdw - "So are you saying that you would keep paying someone that does nothing substantial to help the business and justify it?"

There is a class of worker that fits this category. They're go by the job designation "CEO".