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Crazy idea: what if management was a licensed, regulated career, like traditional engineering, or being a nurse. Like if you have more than 5 "direct reports",

Crazy idea: what if management was a licensed, regulated career, like traditional engineering, or being a nurse. Like if you have more than 5 "direct reports", you need to get a certification?

besulzbach 8y ago
I think it is mostly an issue caused by how managers are evaluated. Do the teams you supervise outperform (in a short-term metric set) the other teams? If so, you are deemed a good manager. Upper management usually does not seem to care whether the people you manage leave the company eventually or try to change teams to get away from you.
Negitivefrags 8y ago
Are you suggesting that people with management training generally have happier workers? I would be interested to know if that is actually the case.
sarcasmOrTears 8y ago
Yeah let's further reduce the ability to switch job, there are already so many opportunities...
aynsof 8y ago
I don't think there's any link between certification and competency. Here in Australia we're going mad for certifications. I had a friend who looked after kids in an after school program. A minimum wage job, but one that she loved. She'd been doing it for nearly 20 years. The government mandated that she needed a $2500 certificate in order to continue to do the job she'd been doing for two decades. I don't believe there was anything that this certification could have taught her that she didn't already know. Heck, she should have been the one teaching the course. Instead it was being run by an organisation that specialised in running these kinds of certification programs, but certainly didn't specialise in the subject matter. If we were to mandate certification for managers, my concern would be that - at best - it would end up as just another piece of paper. At worst, it would actively exclude the people who were most qualified and competent, like it did with my friend.
- mb_72 8y ago
  Your friend sounds like an outlier in these circumstances; the certification is more likely to be of benefit to those fresh to the field, and in the field of child-care (and aged care also), I think some bare minimum requirement of capability is warranted. Professional training organisations may not have direct experience with the subject matter, but given a good curriculum prepared by someone who DOES have experience, I don't see why they couldn't deliver a reasonable result. I agree that any "Q and A" sessions, or questions along the lines of "What is it really like working as a..." would not be that useful, though.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    Certification is just a moat to protect jobs and stave off regulation.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Something like that happened to my mother. She is a teacher in HS. She also happens to teach some courses for teachers in training that are going to teach the same courses she teaches herself. But now, since new decree/law, she can't teach in HS anymore. She still teaches to teachers though. So she's seeing younger teachers she teaches taking her job. Teaches everywhere.
FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
Crazier idea: don’t make management the only route to higher salary, pushing loads of incompetent people into it for purely monetary reasons. Reward highly skilled employees for their skill set and experience.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  The thing is, highly skilled employees are only effective if they work in a coordinated manner towards a common goal, and the people in charge of coordinating the teams are... Managers. To put it differently, in a 6-man team each employee is responsible and held accountable for around 1/6th of the productivity, but the team manager is responsible and accountable for 100% of the effort. Hence managers earning higher salaries.
  - thatcat 8y ago
    The manager is not responsible for doing any work, only meta work. The metric of work output measures mgmt value input indirectly. You need to look at their actual interaction and analyse the meta work they do directly to get a true account of the value a manager provides.

Crazy idea: what if management was a licensed, regulated career, like traditional engineering, or being a nurse. Like if you have more than 5 "direct reports", you need to get a certification?

besulzbach 8y ago

I think it is mostly an issue caused by how managers are evaluated. Do the teams you supervise outperform (in a short-term metric set) the other teams? If so, you are deemed a good manager. Upper management usually does not seem to care whether the people you manage leave the company eventually or try to change teams to get away from you.

Negitivefrags 8y ago

Are you suggesting that people with management training generally have happier workers? I would be interested to know if that is actually the case.

sarcasmOrTears 8y ago

Yeah let's further reduce the ability to switch job, there are already so many opportunities...

aynsof 8y ago

I don't think there's any link between certification and competency. Here in Australia we're going mad for certifications. I had a friend who looked after kids in an after school program. A minimum wage job, but one that she loved. She'd been doing it for nearly 20 years. The government mandated that she needed a $2500 certificate in order to continue to do the job she'd been doing for two decades. I don't believe there was anything that this certification could have taught her that she didn't already know. Heck, she should have been the one teaching the course. Instead it was being run by an organisation that specialised in running these kinds of certification programs, but certainly didn't specialise in the subject matter. If we were to mandate certification for managers, my concern would be that - at best - it would end up as just another piece of paper. At worst, it would actively exclude the people who were most qualified and competent, like it did with my friend.

mb_72 8y ago
Your friend sounds like an outlier in these circumstances; the certification is more likely to be of benefit to those fresh to the field, and in the field of child-care (and aged care also), I think some bare minimum requirement of capability is warranted. Professional training organisations may not have direct experience with the subject matter, but given a good curriculum prepared by someone who DOES have experience, I don't see why they couldn't deliver a reasonable result. I agree that any "Q and A" sessions, or questions along the lines of "What is it really like working as a..." would not be that useful, though.
- jammygit 8y ago
  Certification is just a moat to protect jobs and stave off regulation.
johnchristopher 8y ago
Something like that happened to my mother. She is a teacher in HS. She also happens to teach some courses for teachers in training that are going to teach the same courses she teaches herself. But now, since new decree/law, she can't teach in HS anymore. She still teaches to teachers though. So she's seeing younger teachers she teaches taking her job. Teaches everywhere.

FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago

Crazier idea: don’t make management the only route to higher salary, pushing loads of incompetent people into it for purely monetary reasons. Reward highly skilled employees for their skill set and experience.

geezerjay 8y ago
The thing is, highly skilled employees are only effective if they work in a coordinated manner towards a common goal, and the people in charge of coordinating the teams are... Managers. To put it differently, in a 6-man team each employee is responsible and held accountable for around 1/6th of the productivity, but the team manager is responsible and accountable for 100% of the effort. Hence managers earning higher salaries.
- thatcat 8y ago
  The manager is not responsible for doing any work, only meta work. The metric of work output measures mgmt value input indirectly. You need to look at their actual interaction and analyse the meta work they do directly to get a true account of the value a manager provides.