About the harm of silence 3: responses of managers

Of great interest was the post Pro harm of silence , in which the author from the position of the manager called on the performers to voice the problems to their superiors more often and more confidently.

There was a logical answer about the harm of silence 2 , in which the author, from the perspective of a subordinate employee, lucidly explained that the managers themselves are to blame.

We continue the week of management on Habré and try to figure out why there are so few good managers and how can we live with it?

About the subject

I adhere to the classic idea of ​​management, as a craft of managing people and organizations, therefore we will immediately exclude “clean managers” and other “customer call managers” from the discussion.
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Managing people is a humanitarian (from the word humanitas - human) science. This means that in this area of ​​knowledge everything is subjective. What seems good for one person may be bad for another with a different point of view.

I'll tell you an army bike. The young officer was given the task of putting a new anti-aircraft gun into service, but they didn’t want to take it to the military unit - all the time there were excuses not to do it. Then the old experienced warrant officer revealed the secret: “You wrote that for servicing the installation it takes 3 liters of alcohol per quarter, write 30 liters and everything will go like clockwork”. The officer corrected the terms of service, and the installation was immediately accepted into service.

In this example, several important thoughts:

• The tasks of management are universal, and are not a feature of commercial companies.
• Common sense and logic are not always suitable for solving management problems.
• An effective way to train managers is mentoring and personal experience.
• The army is an organization where people management methods must be effective, otherwise it is simply impossible to give orders that require the death of performers

The last point is only an ideal target for a winning army, and not a statement about a specific army. In the army, the commander either sees the target, or has an order, on the basis of which he sends soldiers to the attack. A soldier may not know the meaning of the whole maneuver at the front (often a military secret). In business, exactly the same thing, only the measure of success or failure is money. In financial and analytical programs, any payment, even a bonus to the most outstanding employee, is marked in red and comes with a minus sign, and the smallest sale to the most cheesy customer is marked with a plus sign.

Ask the main question

I ventured to summarize the main question posed by performers and commentators who sympathize with them. It sounds like this: “ Why are people - good / smart / respected specialists, becoming managers turn into assholes? ” The answer to the question was given - incompetence! But where to get competent managers? Where do they come from, these managers?

From my point of view (I emphasize this once again, despite the fact that at first I already said about the complete subjectivity of any statements on the topic) the new managers are taken from three sources:

• Our people
• Grown up good performers
• Hired professionals

A function called “learning” is independently superimposed on these three categories above.
I believe that for education bydlokodera-programmer-pro in a particular industry from a competent graduate, on average, a cycle of 3 months - 1 year - 2 years is enough. If in the same subject industry to prepare a manager, it will take 1 year to study the subject, 2 years to get a novice manager and 3-7 years for the pros. An efficient manager comes out for at least 3 years, and a fit one for all 6-10 years (the army and this issue has long been calculated). To become a real manager, you need to a) start a project or ruin a team, b) fire an innocent person, c) hire a useless person, d) fire a useless person, e) and finally execute the project to become just a good manager. Then repeat the cycle a couple of times with the complexity of the tasks and the improvement of the results in order to become a management guru.

Tell me, how many companies, employers, there are 10 years? And how many companies purposefully prepare the specialists that they will need in 5-10 years? The answers will be sad and tell us that in the coming decades the situation will not change and the performers will be a training ground for training managers. Those. managers will remain assholes.

However, a look from the performers will be incomplete. Let's look through the eyes of managers who could speak like this:

Most techie artists are confident that money comes out of the cash register on payday. They are right under the usual social contract in which brains for hire change for money. They are right exactly until the moment when it dawns on a wonderful idea to ask for a raise. In fact, money (more precisely, profit) in a normal normal business appears in two ways - either from an increase in income (sales growth, customer acquisition), or from a decrease in expenses. Any increase in salary instantly affects profits, but does not necessarily lead to an increase in income. Because of the competition, in order to simply keep the profit you have to work better and better. Therefore, any manager (regardless of whether he is good or bad) always reluctantly discusses the issue of gain with subordinates and with managers.

Among other things, in most companies there is such a tough thing as a budget, which (as it happened) is approved once a year. In Russia, grassroots management of budget allocation is particularly ridiculous (one of the reasons is the increased thievery of top managers). The budget is essentially a law in which there may not be a place, thereby $ 200, due to which the performer is ready to change jobs. (And tea can be easily forgotten!)

But I will express an unpopular idea among hired employees - to have such a law correctly! Because I have never seen in my life that because of the departure of a key executor, the firm’s business would have completely collapsed (with the exception of startups of 3-5 people), but I know a lot of cases when the lack of budget control in a matter of weeks stoked very large and relatively successful the company.

Therefore, when managers are accused of not wanting to do something, they actually cannot use words more correctly, because these are the rules of a tough game called business.

A little speech about learning

As already mentioned, an effective growth path for managers is mentoring. A mentor should be trained by another mentor. Following this recursion we come to the head of the company - the director (founder), who must give an initial impulse to the whole process. Unfortunately, in the Russian business, high starting positions were not received by those who “inspire” people well, but those who “squeeze” people well or know how to throw lenders. Such, alas, are the costs of the transition to capitalism. Such leaders through their fingers look at the “increased stealing” of their tops, bringing up the ability to squeeze, make connections and remain faithful. This is bad for business as a whole, lowering the moral bar. It takes decades to take the lead in people creating a business from scratch.

Consider a particular

Request performer:

I want to increase $ 200!

At such a request, “one’s own person” will refuse and say, “I’m boss, you are a fool” because he protects the interests of those who “put forward” him, i.e. top management.

“A good employee” will be confused and will pull back with an answer, because it will also be difficult for him to go to the boss and ask for a raise.

The “professional boss” has probably already professionally pressed the entire budget for his salary and can really influence the decision only after a year.

Other request:

I grew up professionally and want to be promoted!

“Own man” will fear that he will be hooked up and may begin to intrigue, for he knows that he is incompetent.

“A good employee” seeing that a vacancy in another division will fight for “his good employee” just to not give it to other “bad” people. Alas, personal relationships in this matter conflict with development objectives.

And only the “Professional Manager” knows the truism that the main task of the manager is to develop people, and the most valuable quality for a career is the ability to grow a replacement.

What to do?

If you are unlucky with the boss, then try creating the perfect boss for yourself. Listen to what your unit lives, the company as a whole. Take a look at your work through the eyes of your boss. And write yourself a 2-year development plan, for example:

• After 6 months, I plan to explore framework X, where more and more of our clients want to see their projects lately.
• In a year, I plan to learn the language Y, which our development director wants to switch to.
• After learning this language, I plan to be engaged in projects on it for another 6-12 months. If there are no projects in the company, then I will work at home on opensource projects in the evenings.
• After completing my plan, my market value as a specialist will increase by 50%, but I’m happy to continue working at the company if I get 35%

It seems to me that any boss in any normal company will react positively to such a “development plan”, and if not, then it's time to look for a new job, and make a plan for your presentation at the interview.

Another option is possible, do nothing, and just complain about life in some kind of forum. And what is interesting, I can not say in any way that this is the wrong option. Humanities! Chinese wisdom says:

If you sit on the bank of the river for a long time, you can see how the corpse of your enemy is swimming by.
Sun Tzu, Art of War.

By the way, this is the first book in the world on management and a mandatory part of the library manager.