What Should a Manager be doing????

I'm sure that like me, you've looked at the useless protoplasm known as 'your boss' and wondered how the hell they ever got into that position. In some cases it's fairly obvious, like MacDonald's, the quickest way to get to be manager is just to be there for more than 6 months and not be blindingly stupid.

Let's consider what a manager is supposed to be. If you are going to criticize something, it's best to know why you are criticizing it.

The first step is to establish that management involves responsibility. The manager, essentially manages something or somebody. In a sense we all manage things in our lives from our time & money, up to our family. Now a family is not a good analog to a business. The family includes blood relationships which do not (or rather should not) impinge on the business atmosphere. However, a good analog is, essentially, the baseball team.

Consider a baseball team. Obviously the main focus of the baseball owner is to make money. While a team can make money without winning ('60's Mets), it doesn't generally happen. The fans come to see success. So as in business, success means money. The baseball team has it's upper management - Team manager, coaches, etc and it has it's workers - The players. Notice that, should we even consider the general management of the team, that the structure is quite flat. There are only 2 or 3 levels of management. This is important because communication is important. Frank Herbert in the novel 'God Emperor of Dune' put it very succintly "Sometimes the most important information is that something has gone wrong." So here we're already getting at part of the failure of American Business: They don't know when something has gone wrong. It will take a long time for that information, that something has gone wrong, to weasel it's way to the top, especially if you are considering the company with 5 or 6 levels of management.

Does that information actually need to go up all those levels? Actually not! If the managment is good, then someone along the line will make a decision. It's as simple as that, someone has to make a decision. That, given the poor quality of the people who generally rise to management positions, is very difficult. Frank Herbert again addressed that when the God Emperor himself said that bureaucrats will delay a decision (by asking for reports, etc) until the problem is uncorrectible. The American Management Association, back in the '70s, did a study on the most effective managers and discovered that effective managers only made the right decision 10% of the time. Do you know what that means? It means that all you have to do is make a decision and you can be effective! This also means that you can evaluate your decision and make another decision to correct it.

We'll get back to the baseball team in the next post.....