You mean one with endless layers of bureaucracy consisting of one person being the sole report to their supervisor? Or some sort of pagan worship ritual? We are heading towards the former, having initially had a very flat management structure. We have not gotten to the latter, not yet anyway.
Do you mean the kind of totem pole that has a lot of heads and is generally wooden for which a lot of indians dance around while the pole does nothing much except get a lot of attention. Who doesn't.
Maybe its better than "Matrix Management"?
Come to think of it, are there any really good "Management Styles" anyone would care to endorse or do we just accept that bad managers will deliver bad management whatever the system?
The real question might be to ask under which system do good managers deliver good management?
A "Totem Pole managment system should at least puts some sacraficial "middle managers" into the queue for redundancies... so it can't be all bad.
I tend to find that a flat management structure works well:
[ul disc]
[li]Those at the top are not too remote from those nearer the bottom, so they are less likely to be spoon fed the 'right' answer by sycophants looking for their next promotion.[/li]
[li]The top brass have a very good idea of the general mood of the workforce.[/li]
[li]There is less space for the inept and the incapable to hide.[/li]
[/ul]
The problem with a flat structure is that it requires a small number of good managers with substantial experience of their industry who are dedicated and prepared to work hard. It is all to easy to add another subordinate level and divest some of the work onto them. When that is allowed to happen, bureaucracy emerges.
Anyway, what do you imagine a dog would do when confronted with a totem pole?
well i guess i'm new at all this, i've never really worked at a big company, only small shops...there are rumors circulating that in the very near future our managment will be totem poling everyone...
i read a bit about some of the bigger corps doing this, wasnt sure if anyone out there had any good or bad experiences with the totem pole employee ranking system(?)...
Anybody else think that something else is going on at nadam35's company?
Sounds to me as if your company is headed for mass lay-offs; what better way to 'objectively' justify laying off people than to totem pole them? Just start from the bottom in every pay grade and work your way up until you've laid off enough people.
Or start at the top and get rid of 4 VPs, that would be an easy $500,000 to the bottom line. Then promote from within.
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Did anyone yet explain in this thread exactly what a totem pole management system is? Is it what ScottyUK said in the second post? (I like corus's explanation in the 3rd post.)
Totem-poling, as alluded to nadam's last posting is simply a term for ranking-ordering employees as to utility and cost. Frankly, regardless of whether it's called anything at all, every manager who's half-way doing his job does that on every job assignment and every performance review. A really good manager will make the most of the crew he has and perhaps attempt to bring up the stragglers through training or mentoring.
As for contracting, how is that any different? If anything, the totem-poling results in more drastic behavior with a contractor, since a low-performer is simply let go and there is no incentive to help or mentor him, since there is no long-term benefit.
well, contracting may not be any different at all, but i envision a contractor's work-life a little less involved with whatever the managerial 'knee-jerk reaction of the quarter' may be...
if a contractor cant/doesnt do his job- he's run off, easy enough
if a contractor performs- he gets paid, no attaboy's, no promotions, etc...
i dunno, i dont want this to turn into a 'what is and what isnt contracting debate', but it seems like contracting might be a sidestep to beauracracy- if i spelled that right
so far we are slated to be totem pole ranked employees by job description- (mfg eng, tool design, nc prog, etc..)
so if there are 5 mfg engineers, they will be ranked by performance (i guess at yearly eval meetings or something)
anyone have any positive or negative experience with a similar-type management system?
nadam35,
It is not really a management style, but rather a HR syle for determining who to keep and who to let go when times get lean. It is also a method for determining merit increases. The company I work for used to do totem polling, where they literally had names and placed them vertically (by department and labor grade). It can get ugly, when two managers are trying to sponser their employee.
Now we just do forced distribution with a nudge up or down in the distribution.
I contracted for over ten years, and what you say is true. You may not have the job security, but the politics can roll off of your back like water off of a duck. No personal or emotional investment in your "customer" is needed. Do a good job, and the chances are very good that you will be able to return if they need you in the future. Do a poor job, and you are out the door with hardly a moments notice.
Our company used to hire lots of contractors specifically so that they would not incur unemployment insurance issues in downturns, they'd simply dump the contractors.
I worked a direct job and the management gathered everyone and announce layoffs. Then they said contractors are not affected, go back to work. I guess the totem pole was too tall? (they always hack away at the bottom) When i left the job to go contracting HR said, "contracting is good money but not much job security." That's when I told them about the above meeting. Ahhh life is beautiful at times!
Contracting at another company, management laid off all the directs except one. All the contractors were upset because they should have sent us packing. The reason was budget issues. hmmmmmm
