Too Many Managers and Too Few Workers
This article complains about companies and their over-supply of useless pointless managers.
Corporations that don't value the staff who produce product, look after customers or run the nuts and bolts of a business.
Managers straight out of Business School with a worthless degree from people who teach because they failed at business.
This is not a balanced or fair view of management and their value to staff or company. It does not consider how companies try to stay competitive in a global world. It does not care about stressed middle management and their efforts to build a career with a company that will outsource them too the first chance it gets.
It is possible to make arguments from the corporate angle. You can read that on Forbes.
You can enjoy the middle management view on LinkedIn. "I am a recently graduated expert in the field of incompetence with three months experience of sending pointless emails".
This article is a simple moan from a hacked off worker about over management, cost cutting and the endless frustration of fighting through bureaucracy to do a productive days work.
You can read it during a meeting or presentation sometime. Your time will be productively wasted and you can keep an ear out for the One Important Fact from the meeting. If indeed there is one.
Corporations that don't value the staff who produce product, look after customers or run the nuts and bolts of a business.
Managers straight out of Business School with a worthless degree from people who teach because they failed at business.
This is not a balanced or fair view of management and their value to staff or company. It does not consider how companies try to stay competitive in a global world. It does not care about stressed middle management and their efforts to build a career with a company that will outsource them too the first chance it gets.
It is possible to make arguments from the corporate angle. You can read that on Forbes.
You can enjoy the middle management view on LinkedIn. "I am a recently graduated expert in the field of incompetence with three months experience of sending pointless emails".
This article is a simple moan from a hacked off worker about over management, cost cutting and the endless frustration of fighting through bureaucracy to do a productive days work.
You can read it during a meeting or presentation sometime. Your time will be productively wasted and you can keep an ear out for the One Important Fact from the meeting. If indeed there is one.
Short Term Thinking
The company I work for uses outsourced labour in the Philippines. They have drastically cut the inhouse workforce and placed more reliance on our overseas 'partners'. This was a high-level management decision.
Everyone who works with this resource knows they are not great quality. Sure they are cheap but you cannot throw endless cheap against problems because it will never supply a solution.
There is no arguing against the decision. Management cannot see it because they do not work with them.
Companies replace valuable local knowledge and loyal staff with less competent outsourced workforces. These short term savings lead to long-term problems. Take a look at the standards of service now enjoyed by banking and airline customers where the old systems have been 'improved'.
Everyone who works with this resource knows they are not great quality. Sure they are cheap but you cannot throw endless cheap against problems because it will never supply a solution.
There is no arguing against the decision. Management cannot see it because they do not work with them.
Companies replace valuable local knowledge and loyal staff with less competent outsourced workforces. These short term savings lead to long-term problems. Take a look at the standards of service now enjoyed by banking and airline customers where the old systems have been 'improved'.
Why So Negative?
I particularly remember listening to a loyal thirty years of service worker crying at her desk one morning. She had been 'let go' with two years remaining before her pension date. They could not wait two more years to let her leave with dignity and compassion.
There is an increasing occurrence of friends and colleagues being made redundant, outsourced and offshored, by management with a blind attitude of short-term thinking. These managers don't know what people do or how they do it. They don't value qualities like knowledge, experience and loyalty.
The new breed of managers have rarely worked a real day in their lives. They read about the theory of work from college books and are brought into companies by their older peers who were also parachuted in.
There was a time when you could start at the bottom and work your way up. Work hard, acquire knowledge, gain trust and get promoted. The management degree racket means no one needs to learn the job before they arrive at the company over the heads of the workers.
There is an increasing occurrence of friends and colleagues being made redundant, outsourced and offshored, by management with a blind attitude of short-term thinking. These managers don't know what people do or how they do it. They don't value qualities like knowledge, experience and loyalty.
The new breed of managers have rarely worked a real day in their lives. They read about the theory of work from college books and are brought into companies by their older peers who were also parachuted in.
There was a time when you could start at the bottom and work your way up. Work hard, acquire knowledge, gain trust and get promoted. The management degree racket means no one needs to learn the job before they arrive at the company over the heads of the workers.
Lots of Important Managing
My work is very well managed by an excess of managers.
All tasks are determined, analysed, planned, costed, budgeted, scheduled, discussed and documented.
The process that is part of the preparation for doing anything remotely useful comes with reams of documentation, schedules and plans to be filed away in folders and emailed to hundreds of people.
No one reads this. But they are all part of the incredibly large team that is required because God forbid anyone should have time to actually do anything.
All tasks are determined, analysed, planned, costed, budgeted, scheduled, discussed and documented.
The process that is part of the preparation for doing anything remotely useful comes with reams of documentation, schedules and plans to be filed away in folders and emailed to hundreds of people.
No one reads this. But they are all part of the incredibly large team that is required because God forbid anyone should have time to actually do anything.
Know Nothing Management
It is important when you are a manager to have no idea of what it is that you are managing. This frees your mind for blue sky thinking and ensures there is no danger of accidentally doing some work and interfering with the process.
If there is a real task that needs doing they can use the art of delegation and move the request along to a sub manager.
This breaking up of the process into small chunks is essential to ensure that no one has an overall idea of what they are doing. It also requires additional management which is important to build up that cushion of resource beneath you.
When the corporate cost cutter starts you need plenty of fat on the bone to cover your own position.
If there is a real task that needs doing they can use the art of delegation and move the request along to a sub manager.
This breaking up of the process into small chunks is essential to ensure that no one has an overall idea of what they are doing. It also requires additional management which is important to build up that cushion of resource beneath you.
When the corporate cost cutter starts you need plenty of fat on the bone to cover your own position.
Managing the Managers
In an old style model you might expect one manager to manage perhaps ten people, who in turn manage ten each. This builds into a pyramid where an army of well managed worker ants and worker managers scurry about.
Not any more. For one thing there is a lot more specialization these days. Now everyone needs a degree to tell them which way is up. Better still they can call on someone to tell them so a host of different job titles has appeared.
These specialisations become ever more incomprehensible but they all sound very important.
It is likely that a manager will be co managing an area with other managers. These people are equipped with things called soft skill sets. They will have a vocabulary of meaningless words which sound good and normal people are slightly afraid of.
It is about ensuring the survival of the management pool. Workers, work and profit come a distant second in their thinking.
Not any more. For one thing there is a lot more specialization these days. Now everyone needs a degree to tell them which way is up. Better still they can call on someone to tell them so a host of different job titles has appeared.
These specialisations become ever more incomprehensible but they all sound very important.
It is likely that a manager will be co managing an area with other managers. These people are equipped with things called soft skill sets. They will have a vocabulary of meaningless words which sound good and normal people are slightly afraid of.
It is about ensuring the survival of the management pool. Workers, work and profit come a distant second in their thinking.
What Happened to the Pyramid?
The old-fashioned way to run a company has a few managers at the top, everyone else underneath. Lots of workers being productive.
The problem with modern management is that it has become a bloated self fuelling drain on resource. Each manager will bring their favourite initiatives. The latest fashionable ideas for wasting time which they half learnt at college.
These initiatives will need even more managers.
Meanwhile, thanks to the increasing need for cost control, the original productive workers gradually shrink. They are downsized and outsourced until the company becomes a hollow shell of over-management and zero productivity.
Management will present this as an achievement. The people above them know nothing and those underneath have long gone.
Oddly, despite the obvious success in outsourcing your product and your profits, the management pool never seems to shrink. Everyone is a manager of something and boy do they need to look busy. So many plans, documentation, presentations and charts are created that new roles for managing it all are required.
If only companies would hire a single consultant to come in for half an hour and simply say “You have too many management levels and not enough workers”.
Then we might have companies that actually make stuff rather than white collar wastes of space. Obviously that is a terrible idea. It would never get past the management team.
The problem with modern management is that it has become a bloated self fuelling drain on resource. Each manager will bring their favourite initiatives. The latest fashionable ideas for wasting time which they half learnt at college.
These initiatives will need even more managers.
Meanwhile, thanks to the increasing need for cost control, the original productive workers gradually shrink. They are downsized and outsourced until the company becomes a hollow shell of over-management and zero productivity.
Management will present this as an achievement. The people above them know nothing and those underneath have long gone.
Oddly, despite the obvious success in outsourcing your product and your profits, the management pool never seems to shrink. Everyone is a manager of something and boy do they need to look busy. So many plans, documentation, presentations and charts are created that new roles for managing it all are required.
If only companies would hire a single consultant to come in for half an hour and simply say “You have too many management levels and not enough workers”.
Then we might have companies that actually make stuff rather than white collar wastes of space. Obviously that is a terrible idea. It would never get past the management team.
Example of Pointless Over Management
I was given an insignificant and easily achievable task, not rocket science or open-heart surgery.
Last week a meeting was called at five minutes notice to spend an hour discussing this work with two people. A project manager and my immediate line manager.
That is one worker, two managers and an hour of productive time wasted. Fortunately their time is not missed by the company because they do not actually do anything.
The following day I had another hour long meeting with one of the same managers to discuss the SAME thing as the day before.
In a day or so he wants ANOTHER meeting to discuss it all again.
Here is a silly idea.
Instead of endless meetings to talk about working how about rolling up your sleeves and doing a bit? Learn some skills and make things happen.
Or leave the worker to get on with it.
Last week a meeting was called at five minutes notice to spend an hour discussing this work with two people. A project manager and my immediate line manager.
That is one worker, two managers and an hour of productive time wasted. Fortunately their time is not missed by the company because they do not actually do anything.
The following day I had another hour long meeting with one of the same managers to discuss the SAME thing as the day before.
In a day or so he wants ANOTHER meeting to discuss it all again.
Here is a silly idea.
Instead of endless meetings to talk about working how about rolling up your sleeves and doing a bit? Learn some skills and make things happen.
Or leave the worker to get on with it.
Project Management Tools
There are fads and fashions, methodologies, the latest thinking from management gurus. Meetings and seminars to attend, stays in hotels and expense account lunches.
Waterfall one day, Agile the next and all involving the same set of people keen to show they have adopted the current business thinking. They are on-board, in tune and part of the team that manages to plan, talk and discuss work without ever doing any.
Looking at overblown spreadsheets, incoherent project plans and idiotic Power Points. Another couple of hours of meeting time well spent. Must be time for lunch.
Waterfall one day, Agile the next and all involving the same set of people keen to show they have adopted the current business thinking. They are on-board, in tune and part of the team that manages to plan, talk and discuss work without ever doing any.
Looking at overblown spreadsheets, incoherent project plans and idiotic Power Points. Another couple of hours of meeting time well spent. Must be time for lunch.
Management Gurus
People who make money from selling ridiculous theories and ideas to senior management who pretend to understand.
Shortly after a top guy read something by a guru we had a meeting. Each of us was presented with a piece of paper that had two circles on it. The outer circle labelled "Concern" and the inner circle "Influence".
We looked at this with puzzlement. Some of the brighter ones checked if there was anything on the other side of the paper. There was not.
During the next hour we learned that by increasing our "Influence" we could reduce our "Concern".
In the follow-up meeting we might learn how to colour in and get to play with the Lego for a while.
Shortly after a top guy read something by a guru we had a meeting. Each of us was presented with a piece of paper that had two circles on it. The outer circle labelled "Concern" and the inner circle "Influence".
We looked at this with puzzlement. Some of the brighter ones checked if there was anything on the other side of the paper. There was not.
During the next hour we learned that by increasing our "Influence" we could reduce our "Concern".
In the follow-up meeting we might learn how to colour in and get to play with the Lego for a while.
Meetings Are NOT Work
Meetings are not work. They are an excuse to sit around chatting, snoozing, dreaming and talking bull. They are the opposite of work.
That is why management have lots of meetings and workers have very few.
The professional meeting attendees spend all their time in meetings, complain about how busy they are, claim overtime or time off as recompense for all that 'effort'.
If the CEO had the remotest clue about his company he might calculate the cost of these meetings and think about replacing these wastes of space with a few real workers.
That is why management have lots of meetings and workers have very few.
The professional meeting attendees spend all their time in meetings, complain about how busy they are, claim overtime or time off as recompense for all that 'effort'.
If the CEO had the remotest clue about his company he might calculate the cost of these meetings and think about replacing these wastes of space with a few real workers.
Emails Are NOT Work
Meetings and emails are what managers do. They forward emails, loop people in, make sure they are NOT responsible and consider themselves to have worked hard at the end of the day.
Sending an email achieves nothing. It does not manufacture a product or make a sale. It stops other people working because they have to read the stupid email and make sure their own back is covered. A game of office politics can waste a serious number of hours from the working day.
Our mythical company boss who cares about his company could monitor the email offenders and ask them what the hell they think they are playing at. "If you send this many mails - how do you ever find time to work?" he could ask.
Sending an email achieves nothing. It does not manufacture a product or make a sale. It stops other people working because they have to read the stupid email and make sure their own back is covered. A game of office politics can waste a serious number of hours from the working day.
Our mythical company boss who cares about his company could monitor the email offenders and ask them what the hell they think they are playing at. "If you send this many mails - how do you ever find time to work?" he could ask.
Scared Managers
The old fashioned manager ruled the roost. He or she knew the task and requirement and told the workers to do it. Mostly it was done, and done right.
One reason why there is so much fluff, meetings, emails, paperwork is the fear by management of making a decision. They might get it wrong. They might be outsourced themselves. They might fail.
To cope with this fear they spend more time covering themselves, delegating, sharing responsibility than actually managing the requirement. It is this fear of failure that ties companies up in knots and slows everything down.
We all make mistakes. Make one. Admit it. Move on.
So much better than wading through the treacle of decisions slowly made by Teflon committee men and women.
One reason why there is so much fluff, meetings, emails, paperwork is the fear by management of making a decision. They might get it wrong. They might be outsourced themselves. They might fail.
To cope with this fear they spend more time covering themselves, delegating, sharing responsibility than actually managing the requirement. It is this fear of failure that ties companies up in knots and slows everything down.
We all make mistakes. Make one. Admit it. Move on.
So much better than wading through the treacle of decisions slowly made by Teflon committee men and women.
The Unfinished Project
Unfortunately I ran out of time.
It seems I wasn't managed properly. Had I been briefed at the meetings, and added my thoughts to the project spreadsheet I would have been better able to complete my tasks. If I had spent several hours discussing the aims with consultants and being managed by the SWAT team this page would have reached a far more useful outcome.
See you at the next meeting where we can discuss the Kanban board and what part of the project manager's body it will fit into.
It seems I wasn't managed properly. Had I been briefed at the meetings, and added my thoughts to the project spreadsheet I would have been better able to complete my tasks. If I had spent several hours discussing the aims with consultants and being managed by the SWAT team this page would have reached a far more useful outcome.
See you at the next meeting where we can discuss the Kanban board and what part of the project manager's body it will fit into.