9 ms·

The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader

139 points by apress 9y ago

tabtab 9y ago
Organizations don't seek enough feedback from underlings about their bosses. They mostly use top-down feedback. Thus if boss X makes his/her boss happy, boss Y, boss Y then gives boss X good ratings even if Boss X does not treat his/her underlings well, which includes helping them be productive. The idea can be taken too far, but there is a nice balance in there. Feedback from both directions should affect a boss's performance rating.
- Zeta_Function 9y ago
  People at or near the top often have very different incentives from the rank and file. They want to stay afloat, or rise, and often that has little to do with their objective performance. Feedback from below is arguably one of the few things short of grossly obvious incompetence that can shake them from their perch. And then they have to be the ones to support the whole idea of that feedback in the first place!
  - ianmcgowan 9y ago
    And I'll add that at some big traditional companies, there's a surprising (to me at least) level of disdain for the individual "grunts" in the trenches actually doing the work. The attitude of some SVP's and up seems to be "why would I want the opinion of someone making $15/hour?". Forgetting that people who actually interact with your customers and processes frequently have insight that is useful, albeit not always very macro...
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's something I notice in my company too. The pure management types are often very dismissive of the people who actually do the work. I think this is part of the inequality trend. The ruling class disconnects more and more from the working class.
    - tabtab 9y ago
      One may end up having the choice of staying with an org who treats you poorly but pay you relatively well, or being treated well but being paid relatively poor. Personally, I'd choose the second; but if I were in dire straits (knock on wood), I would probably want the first.
  - daveguy 9y ago
    But they don't have to be the ones to support the whole idea of that feedback in the first place. I think gp is saying that part of managing and evaluating managers is to get results from the manager, but also get feedback from those they manage. If you're only getting results and not going one level deeper you aren't doing a good job as a manager. Of course the company structure / culture has to encourage that bottom up feedback (to two levels, not just one). A lot of organizations / managers consider that "going above their head" so that kind of communication really needs to be enforced / required from the next level up.
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      > from those they manage I think the idea of "they have to support that" isn't just about managers applying this to themselves, but not wanting to set the precedent elsewhere. If you've got 4 or more layers at your company, then there are multiple layers with both superiors and reports. If layer 3 says "hey, layer 1, tell us if layer 2 is doing well", then it's pretty obvious 4 should go ask 2 the same question. It can still happen, not everyone is opposed to feedback, but implementing something like this at any layer can get opposition from everyone anywhere in management who worries they'd get a bad review.
      - daveguy 9y ago
        Yeah, I agree it should happen throughout the layers and that it would likely get a lot if pushback if you tried to put it in place rather than having it part of the company culture from the beginning. I guess in the beginning there would never be that much hierarchy. Although a good web of feedback in a more flat structure could evolve into better feedback through the hierarchy.
primitur 9y ago
I just went through an episode with this kind of 'leader' - he basically demonstrated everything described in this article, with the end result being I no longer am employed at his company. Unfortunately, leadership is not something that younger (<30) generations of people are learning to embrace, or even understand. There is such a narcissistic bent going on in the modern, Western world, that this should be no surprise - but it is really shocking to be faced with a CTO who absolutely has no idea how to foment team spirit, how to motivate his juniors, how to get people to enjoy doing the often-times-mundane-inane, boring, work that has to be done in modern times. Perhaps it has always been that way, perhaps I - as a ~50 year old - am getting very jaded/off-my-lawn type, but I think there were definitely differences in the generations of managers that went through the hoops in the 80's, compared to all the new-school cargo-cult startup circus hijinks that pass as 'business' these days. I truly believe that if you can't do the job of the people below you: you're not qualified to lead them. If you can't motivate people to work harder to solve the issues that they're stumbling on: you don't deserve leadership. If you can't get your team together to coordinate their activities in a way that makes Russian ballet seem like a circus full of bears - you need to get out of the way and get someone in who can handle the machine-like precision needed to coordinate an organization and start making real headway to building the business. Alas, a lot of the startup-/venture- cult movements that are currently enjoying mainstream status don't really focus on this angle. We've become a selfish, materialistic, narcissistic species - at least in the tech world - which doesn't really pull much off except individual reward above all else. The desire to be 'new and not like our parents' is really getting in the way of civilization-building. At least, having just suffered immensely at the hands of an absolutely incompetent, dufus manager, whose company has far too much money to waste on the build-vs-buy equation of startup building .. I just feel like we're devolving, yo.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  I agree, but it has something to do with very basic differences between people, how they view business, how they understand its goals. Basically, in start-ups, the main goal and driving force is the desire to get rich, and this is how "success" is defined. Whereas for managers in bigger companies, especially more traditional ones, success is very much related with people, and especially workforce cuts are considered as a failure - of the company and of managers, regardless of the financial outcome for the shareholders.
tyingq 9y ago
This article resonated with me. Once, I had a leader that would question parts of my org, or budgeted projects, why they were needed, etc. Her real question was "I need to cut X dollars out of the budget". I could have immediately helped that goal if she asked that exact question. Instead, though, she was going about it in an oblique way, trying to figure out where I was being incompetent. Pretty embarrassed about our current state of leadership skills. In my current organization, we call this syndrome "bring me a rock". Like, I bring a rock, and she says "it's too big, or too brown, or whatever". Instead of outright saying, "I need a medium, smooth, grey, rock". I can deliver if you're explicit.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  What would have happened if you had said, “I think you’re trying to find some money in the budget, would you like some help?”?
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That's eventually how it worked out, but time and money were wasted in the process. Lots of man hours invested into justifying existing costs/orgs/projects. When I could have offered up lower lying fruit if exact cost was identified as the driver up front. The questions weren't easy to translate into actual intent at first. Leadership styles profoundly affect efficiency.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    It's also tough to be that honest at some organizations. Like if your manager said, I'm trying to reduce our costs by 10% so that I can get a big incentive bonus personally...
    - moate 9y ago
      Don't really see why motive matters in that case. The idea of misstating the problem doesn't exist (the bonus and the cost reductions are intrinsically tied to one another) and the additional clarity doesn't guarantee the desired behavior. It's possible a subordinate might not help you if they don't feel your personal gain is beneficial to them. If a manager says "I need to reduce costs by 10%", the specific desired business outcome is clear. Reminding your subordinates that your pay and continued employment is tied to you completely the tasks and requests of the people you answer to doesn't seem needed. This isn't about "some organizations", it's just about efficiency.
feelin_googley 9y ago
"Almost all of the shares [COB+CEO] controls get ten votes each, but public shareholders only get one vote per share. That gives [COB+CEO] over 50% of the voting power even though he only owns about 16% of the shares." Question: In this situation, if the person serving as COB+CEO is "incompetent" (e.g., "absentee"), what can shareholders do, besides divesting their holdings? Source: Todays Wall Street Journal Author: https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-ronald-c https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-ronald-c
- golergka 9y ago
  Sell.
thisismyusernam 9y ago
I'm afraid I have to admit that I am one of the leaders they speak about. I am the founder of my own company and have Aspergers, finding it difficult (among other things) to understand, relate to, or work with other people (much less lead them). I ended up in this position completely by accident and I don't know what to do about it. I hope I can find somebody else to take over from me and actually be a leader so that I can be less of a drain on my company's growth potential. I'm sure I'd enjoy my life a lot more if I wasn't in a leadership position at all.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  Read the E-Myth. Great book about management. I read the original, here's the newer one: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/ https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...
  - thisismyusernam 9y ago
    I'm working through it now actually thanks. Also similar but (IMHO) better-written is a new book I just started reading, called Finish Big by Bo Burlingham, which covers a lot of the same ground, with more case studies.
- moate 9y ago
  Best thing ANY founder can do is be self aware of their skills and find people who can do tasks better than them, and then promote those people. There's no shame in being a founder and CTO while handing of the CEO role to someone with better management skills.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  I've been diagnosed as likely having Asperger's, as a collateral observation when tested for something else. IMO there are a lot of problems with friends, teammates, etc. that suddenly make sense when viewed through the framework of oneself possibly having Asperger's. I haven't started it yet, but a supposedly helpful book on the topic is "Asperger's on the Job" by Rudy Simone.
olivermarks 9y ago
I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this 'leadership' topic. There is no formula and there are endless variables. Most larger organizations suspend management in a vacuum of lack of knowledge of decision making above them, which leads to a lack of trust from the people they are 'managing'. Add in politics and feifdoms, and the safest route to longevity for big corp mid managers is to camouflage themselves within the organization, not making any decisions unless and until it's clear which way the wind's blowing. Bravery around innovation and pushing better practices all too often results in punishment or worse, with most emphasis being on magically doing more with less while increasing revenue. Smaller business entities are far more human and real, and good 'leadership' in these environments is more sensitive to humans, effective innovation and growth ...
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  " I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this 'leadership' topic." Their business model is to make people into leaders in exchange for a big sum money...
  - candiodari 9y ago
    You mean make existing bad leaders feel good about themselves. Provide a trivial thing to "work on" on a weekly basis, so they can "do something". This article identifies the basic problem again: there is no way to manage like this without at the very least a good working knowledge of the jobs you're managing. If you can't simply take over for an employee, you shouldn't be allowed to manage them. And you can't : you can't tell when you're being bullshitted, and worse, you can't tell when a psychopath is really fucking with the organisation (maybe he's right and these other guys, who just happen to be in competition with him, are really the ones that are bad ?). A good leader needs to engage and provide feedback on the work done. Well, yes. A "manager", an MBA from any business school has no ability to do that. They just can't. That isn't what they trained for, unless you mean keeping cash registers in a store or perhaps basic logistics (advanced logistics requires knowing the math behind things like linear programming, so you can modify it for your exact situation AND being pretty good at writing predictive models). This is also the most common problem, and of course why management theory keeps "believing" that management is a job like others (and therefore doesn't require knowledge of other jobs). There's no money in telling a manager that they need actual, real knowledge, something that would take years to acquire. And you can't change that perception because the people who would have to do that are the ones who would never measure up.
tboyd47 9y ago
So employees are engaging in "rent-seeking behavior" against their companies, extracting value without contributing. The chickens have come home to roost. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-decline-since-the-1980s-has-given-corporate-management-a-free-hand-to-make-massive-permanent-layoffs/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-dec... http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-jordan-brennan/ http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-jord...
jarjoura 9y ago
Interesting article, I never really thought about a disengaged manager as being incompetent. Anecdotally, at the same company I had one manager who was completely hands off and free of any actionable feedback or advice. While it felt empowering to chart my own destiny, I also wouldn't have any insight into where my weaknesses were or if what I'm feeling about the project at that time was normal. Are others feeling the same way? Then when I transferred to a different manager they were very engaging, and would follow up with me outside of our 1 on 1s whenever there was a reason to check back in. The very first question I was asked, "how do you like to be recognized?" It certainly threw me off guard because I never really thought about it directly before. Also, they would give me hard feedback and help me course correct from their different vantage point in the moment, not later during a performance review. Needless to say, the first manager I consistently got a meets all rating, which was fine, but it was demotivating and I would have probably left, while the second, I did way better and fell in love with my job.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Managers manage and bosses react. If you're in management, manage. If you're not, and you have a boss, leave.
ewjordan 9y ago
Avoiding this kind of "leadership" is especially crucial for product owners on interdisciplinary teams, like game teams. There you might have 20-50+ people across engineering, design, planning, art, QA, analytics, and business development, all of whom have separate and conflicting goals and incentives. At bigger companies you'll also have partners and stakeholders outside the team. Balancing all of these interests means that you have to be saying "no" most of the time, and you have to be able to do so in a way that doesn't alienate people. Being wishy washy in those situations leads to an unfocused product that can't ship on time, and a team that becomes disengaged and increasingly bitter as conflicts begin happening one-on-one without any mediation. Being effective at that level is really difficult, and as easy as it may be to criticize leaders who are bad at it, it's really a rare leader that excels across the board. Keep that in mind when judging failures, it's always easy to point out when people mess up when you don't truly understand the scope of the problems they're facing. There's a reason good leaders are paid so well.
justherefortart 9y ago
I'm currently working with the worst manager and IT director of my ~25 year career. It's remarkable. I wouldn't hire our Director to be a noob IT guy and the manager doesn't know how to manage anything, nor does he want to (just wants to program and be left alone to complain about the shitty BA). All the while the C suite dbags keep trying to outsource everything to the tune of millions of dollars a year and it's failed for the last 12+ years running. The business world is hilarious sometimes. My wife's state job is even worse though. Her boss essentially has no boss. Is an alcoholic so doesn't work 2-3 days a week. Constantly is micromanaging the dept but also misses critical deadlines (federal funding). While her coworkers rarely show up at all. I don't know what happened to this world, but it's honestly as funny as it is sad now.
jondubois 9y ago
If a leader knows how to select the right company and the right people, then he doesn't need any leadership skills. You just have to wedge yourself between money and talent.
danieltillett 9y ago
The worst manager I ever had was one who couldn't fire anyone. We would go through the game of goal setting, performance review, feedback, etc., but it was all for nothing since my colleagues all knew he had no power so they just did what ever they wanted (which was nothing). Productivity ground to zero and most of my colleagues spent their time on various political games if they bothered to come in at all. The sad thing in all this if he could have fired the worst few he would have been a great leader.
jancsika 9y ago
In the open source world I feel like this type of leader is a strange kind of "final boss" which you can only defeat by forking the game.
inopinatus 9y ago
It's a common error to conflate management with leadership. So you're a manager. You are not a big deal. You are not the talent. Don't call yourself "Boss". You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. You are there to manage the affairs of the band. You are there to handle the shit they don't or can't deal with; there to mediate disputes, advocate for their interests and make sure, to the extent that you can, that they have the resources they need to execute on their goals. Your 1:1 meetings are all about enabling the person, both individually and as a team member. Ultimately your job is to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the team as a gestalt, which is why you are allowed to fire people and manage underperforming individuals. If you have authority it was allocated to you by the team who you serve, and it is because you acted on their behalf. Leadership is not management. Leadership takes many forms and can come from anyone. Whether you're the CEO or a middlerank or an individual contributor. The critical difference is that someone with resources at their disposition - a leader who is also a manager - will have a much easier time of executing on a vision.
- shanghaiaway 9y ago
  Why do you denigrate the job of management? Without it the organization doesn't function. Leadership without management is useless.
  - inopinatus 9y ago
    All the places I enjoyed working in the last thirty years enabled individual contributors to be highly regarded leaders.

139 points by apress 9y ago

Organizations don't seek enough feedback from underlings about their bosses. They mostly use top-down feedback. Thus if boss X makes his/her boss happy, boss Y, boss Y then gives boss X good ratings even if Boss X does not treat his/her underlings well, which includes helping them be productive. The idea can be taken too far, but there is a nice balance in there. Feedback from both directions should affect a boss's performance rating.

Zeta_Function 9y ago
People at or near the top often have very different incentives from the rank and file. They want to stay afloat, or rise, and often that has little to do with their objective performance. Feedback from below is arguably one of the few things short of grossly obvious incompetence that can shake them from their perch. And then they have to be the ones to support the whole idea of that feedback in the first place!
- ianmcgowan 9y ago
  And I'll add that at some big traditional companies, there's a surprising (to me at least) level of disdain for the individual "grunts" in the trenches actually doing the work. The attitude of some SVP's and up seems to be "why would I want the opinion of someone making $15/hour?". Forgetting that people who actually interact with your customers and processes frequently have insight that is useful, albeit not always very macro...
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's something I notice in my company too. The pure management types are often very dismissive of the people who actually do the work. I think this is part of the inequality trend. The ruling class disconnects more and more from the working class.
  - tabtab 9y ago
    One may end up having the choice of staying with an org who treats you poorly but pay you relatively well, or being treated well but being paid relatively poor. Personally, I'd choose the second; but if I were in dire straits (knock on wood), I would probably want the first.
- daveguy 9y ago
  But they don't have to be the ones to support the whole idea of that feedback in the first place. I think gp is saying that part of managing and evaluating managers is to get results from the manager, but also get feedback from those they manage. If you're only getting results and not going one level deeper you aren't doing a good job as a manager. Of course the company structure / culture has to encourage that bottom up feedback (to two levels, not just one). A lot of organizations / managers consider that "going above their head" so that kind of communication really needs to be enforced / required from the next level up.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > from those they manage I think the idea of "they have to support that" isn't just about managers applying this to themselves, but not wanting to set the precedent elsewhere. If you've got 4 or more layers at your company, then there are multiple layers with both superiors and reports. If layer 3 says "hey, layer 1, tell us if layer 2 is doing well", then it's pretty obvious 4 should go ask 2 the same question. It can still happen, not everyone is opposed to feedback, but implementing something like this at any layer can get opposition from everyone anywhere in management who worries they'd get a bad review.
    - daveguy 9y ago
      Yeah, I agree it should happen throughout the layers and that it would likely get a lot if pushback if you tried to put it in place rather than having it part of the company culture from the beginning. I guess in the beginning there would never be that much hierarchy. Although a good web of feedback in a more flat structure could evolve into better feedback through the hierarchy.

primitur 9y ago

I just went through an episode with this kind of 'leader' - he basically demonstrated everything described in this article, with the end result being I no longer am employed at his company. Unfortunately, leadership is not something that younger (<30) generations of people are learning to embrace, or even understand. There is such a narcissistic bent going on in the modern, Western world, that this should be no surprise - but it is really shocking to be faced with a CTO who absolutely has no idea how to foment team spirit, how to motivate his juniors, how to get people to enjoy doing the often-times-mundane-inane, boring, work that has to be done in modern times. Perhaps it has always been that way, perhaps I - as a ~50 year old - am getting very jaded/off-my-lawn type, but I think there were definitely differences in the generations of managers that went through the hoops in the 80's, compared to all the new-school cargo-cult startup circus hijinks that pass as 'business' these days. I truly believe that if you can't do the job of the people below you: you're not qualified to lead them. If you can't motivate people to work harder to solve the issues that they're stumbling on: you don't deserve leadership. If you can't get your team together to coordinate their activities in a way that makes Russian ballet seem like a circus full of bears - you need to get out of the way and get someone in who can handle the machine-like precision needed to coordinate an organization and start making real headway to building the business. Alas, a lot of the startup-/venture- cult movements that are currently enjoying mainstream status don't really focus on this angle. We've become a selfish, materialistic, narcissistic species - at least in the tech world - which doesn't really pull much off except individual reward above all else. The desire to be 'new and not like our parents' is really getting in the way of civilization-building. At least, having just suffered immensely at the hands of an absolutely incompetent, dufus manager, whose company has far too much money to waste on the build-vs-buy equation of startup building .. I just feel like we're devolving, yo.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
I agree, but it has something to do with very basic differences between people, how they view business, how they understand its goals. Basically, in start-ups, the main goal and driving force is the desire to get rich, and this is how "success" is defined. Whereas for managers in bigger companies, especially more traditional ones, success is very much related with people, and especially workforce cuts are considered as a failure - of the company and of managers, regardless of the financial outcome for the shareholders.

tyingq 9y ago

This article resonated with me. Once, I had a leader that would question parts of my org, or budgeted projects, why they were needed, etc. Her real question was "I need to cut X dollars out of the budget". I could have immediately helped that goal if she asked that exact question. Instead, though, she was going about it in an oblique way, trying to figure out where I was being incompetent. Pretty embarrassed about our current state of leadership skills. In my current organization, we call this syndrome "bring me a rock". Like, I bring a rock, and she says "it's too big, or too brown, or whatever". Instead of outright saying, "I need a medium, smooth, grey, rock". I can deliver if you're explicit.

lostlogin 9y ago
What would have happened if you had said, “I think you’re trying to find some money in the budget, would you like some help?”?
- tyingq 9y ago
  That's eventually how it worked out, but time and money were wasted in the process. Lots of man hours invested into justifying existing costs/orgs/projects. When I could have offered up lower lying fruit if exact cost was identified as the driver up front. The questions weren't easy to translate into actual intent at first. Leadership styles profoundly affect efficiency.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  It's also tough to be that honest at some organizations. Like if your manager said, I'm trying to reduce our costs by 10% so that I can get a big incentive bonus personally...
  - moate 9y ago
    Don't really see why motive matters in that case. The idea of misstating the problem doesn't exist (the bonus and the cost reductions are intrinsically tied to one another) and the additional clarity doesn't guarantee the desired behavior. It's possible a subordinate might not help you if they don't feel your personal gain is beneficial to them. If a manager says "I need to reduce costs by 10%", the specific desired business outcome is clear. Reminding your subordinates that your pay and continued employment is tied to you completely the tasks and requests of the people you answer to doesn't seem needed. This isn't about "some organizations", it's just about efficiency.

feelin_googley 9y ago

"Almost all of the shares [COB+CEO] controls get ten votes each, but public shareholders only get one vote per share. That gives [COB+CEO] over 50% of the voting power even though he only owns about 16% of the shares." Question: In this situation, if the person serving as COB+CEO is "incompetent" (e.g., "absentee"), what can shareholders do, besides divesting their holdings? Source: Todays Wall Street Journal Author: https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-ronald-c https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-ronald-c

golergka 9y ago
Sell.

thisismyusernam 9y ago

I'm afraid I have to admit that I am one of the leaders they speak about. I am the founder of my own company and have Aspergers, finding it difficult (among other things) to understand, relate to, or work with other people (much less lead them). I ended up in this position completely by accident and I don't know what to do about it. I hope I can find somebody else to take over from me and actually be a leader so that I can be less of a drain on my company's growth potential. I'm sure I'd enjoy my life a lot more if I wasn't in a leadership position at all.

justherefortart 9y ago
Read the E-Myth. Great book about management. I read the original, here's the newer one: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/ https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About...
- thisismyusernam 9y ago
  I'm working through it now actually thanks. Also similar but (IMHO) better-written is a new book I just started reading, called Finish Big by Bo Burlingham, which covers a lot of the same ground, with more case studies.
moate 9y ago
Best thing ANY founder can do is be self aware of their skills and find people who can do tasks better than them, and then promote those people. There's no shame in being a founder and CTO while handing of the CEO role to someone with better management skills.
DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
I've been diagnosed as likely having Asperger's, as a collateral observation when tested for something else. IMO there are a lot of problems with friends, teammates, etc. that suddenly make sense when viewed through the framework of oneself possibly having Asperger's. I haven't started it yet, but a supposedly helpful book on the topic is "Asperger's on the Job" by Rudy Simone.

olivermarks 9y ago

I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this 'leadership' topic. There is no formula and there are endless variables. Most larger organizations suspend management in a vacuum of lack of knowledge of decision making above them, which leads to a lack of trust from the people they are 'managing'. Add in politics and feifdoms, and the safest route to longevity for big corp mid managers is to camouflage themselves within the organization, not making any decisions unless and until it's clear which way the wind's blowing. Bravery around innovation and pushing better practices all too often results in punishment or worse, with most emphasis being on magically doing more with less while increasing revenue. Smaller business entities are far more human and real, and good 'leadership' in these environments is more sensitive to humans, effective innovation and growth ...

maxxxxx 9y ago
" I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this 'leadership' topic." Their business model is to make people into leaders in exchange for a big sum money...
- candiodari 9y ago
  You mean make existing bad leaders feel good about themselves. Provide a trivial thing to "work on" on a weekly basis, so they can "do something". This article identifies the basic problem again: there is no way to manage like this without at the very least a good working knowledge of the jobs you're managing. If you can't simply take over for an employee, you shouldn't be allowed to manage them. And you can't : you can't tell when you're being bullshitted, and worse, you can't tell when a psychopath is really fucking with the organisation (maybe he's right and these other guys, who just happen to be in competition with him, are really the ones that are bad ?). A good leader needs to engage and provide feedback on the work done. Well, yes. A "manager", an MBA from any business school has no ability to do that. They just can't. That isn't what they trained for, unless you mean keeping cash registers in a store or perhaps basic logistics (advanced logistics requires knowing the math behind things like linear programming, so you can modify it for your exact situation AND being pretty good at writing predictive models). This is also the most common problem, and of course why management theory keeps "believing" that management is a job like others (and therefore doesn't require knowledge of other jobs). There's no money in telling a manager that they need actual, real knowledge, something that would take years to acquire. And you can't change that perception because the people who would have to do that are the ones who would never measure up.

tboyd47 9y ago

So employees are engaging in "rent-seeking behavior" against their companies, extracting value without contributing. The chickens have come home to roost. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-decline-since-the-1980s-has-given-corporate-management-a-free-hand-to-make-massive-permanent-layoffs/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-dec... http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-jordan-brennan/ http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-jord...

jarjoura 9y ago

Interesting article, I never really thought about a disengaged manager as being incompetent. Anecdotally, at the same company I had one manager who was completely hands off and free of any actionable feedback or advice. While it felt empowering to chart my own destiny, I also wouldn't have any insight into where my weaknesses were or if what I'm feeling about the project at that time was normal. Are others feeling the same way? Then when I transferred to a different manager they were very engaging, and would follow up with me outside of our 1 on 1s whenever there was a reason to check back in. The very first question I was asked, "how do you like to be recognized?" It certainly threw me off guard because I never really thought about it directly before. Also, they would give me hard feedback and help me course correct from their different vantage point in the moment, not later during a performance review. Needless to say, the first manager I consistently got a meets all rating, which was fine, but it was demotivating and I would have probably left, while the second, I did way better and fell in love with my job.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

Managers manage and bosses react. If you're in management, manage. If you're not, and you have a boss, leave.

ewjordan 9y ago

Avoiding this kind of "leadership" is especially crucial for product owners on interdisciplinary teams, like game teams. There you might have 20-50+ people across engineering, design, planning, art, QA, analytics, and business development, all of whom have separate and conflicting goals and incentives. At bigger companies you'll also have partners and stakeholders outside the team. Balancing all of these interests means that you have to be saying "no" most of the time, and you have to be able to do so in a way that doesn't alienate people. Being wishy washy in those situations leads to an unfocused product that can't ship on time, and a team that becomes disengaged and increasingly bitter as conflicts begin happening one-on-one without any mediation. Being effective at that level is really difficult, and as easy as it may be to criticize leaders who are bad at it, it's really a rare leader that excels across the board. Keep that in mind when judging failures, it's always easy to point out when people mess up when you don't truly understand the scope of the problems they're facing. There's a reason good leaders are paid so well.

justherefortart 9y ago

I'm currently working with the worst manager and IT director of my ~25 year career. It's remarkable. I wouldn't hire our Director to be a noob IT guy and the manager doesn't know how to manage anything, nor does he want to (just wants to program and be left alone to complain about the shitty BA). All the while the C suite dbags keep trying to outsource everything to the tune of millions of dollars a year and it's failed for the last 12+ years running. The business world is hilarious sometimes. My wife's state job is even worse though. Her boss essentially has no boss. Is an alcoholic so doesn't work 2-3 days a week. Constantly is micromanaging the dept but also misses critical deadlines (federal funding). While her coworkers rarely show up at all. I don't know what happened to this world, but it's honestly as funny as it is sad now.

jondubois 9y ago

If a leader knows how to select the right company and the right people, then he doesn't need any leadership skills. You just have to wedge yourself between money and talent.

danieltillett 9y ago

The worst manager I ever had was one who couldn't fire anyone. We would go through the game of goal setting, performance review, feedback, etc., but it was all for nothing since my colleagues all knew he had no power so they just did what ever they wanted (which was nothing). Productivity ground to zero and most of my colleagues spent their time on various political games if they bothered to come in at all. The sad thing in all this if he could have fired the worst few he would have been a great leader.

jancsika 9y ago

In the open source world I feel like this type of leader is a strange kind of "final boss" which you can only defeat by forking the game.

inopinatus 9y ago

It's a common error to conflate management with leadership. So you're a manager. You are not a big deal. You are not the talent. Don't call yourself "Boss". You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. You are there to manage the affairs of the band. You are there to handle the shit they don't or can't deal with; there to mediate disputes, advocate for their interests and make sure, to the extent that you can, that they have the resources they need to execute on their goals. Your 1:1 meetings are all about enabling the person, both individually and as a team member. Ultimately your job is to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the team as a gestalt, which is why you are allowed to fire people and manage underperforming individuals. If you have authority it was allocated to you by the team who you serve, and it is because you acted on their behalf. Leadership is not management. Leadership takes many forms and can come from anyone. Whether you're the CEO or a middlerank or an individual contributor. The critical difference is that someone with resources at their disposition - a leader who is also a manager - will have a much easier time of executing on a vision.

shanghaiaway 9y ago
Why do you denigrate the job of management? Without it the organization doesn't function. Leadership without management is useless.
- inopinatus 9y ago
  All the places I enjoyed working in the last thirty years enabled individual contributors to be highly regarded leaders.