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That seems extreme. Managers have to lead and make decisions. If they don't then you rapidly end up with chaos. That's how some firms end up with 10 different l

That seems extreme. Managers have to lead and make decisions. If they don't then you rapidly end up with chaos. That's how some firms end up with 10 different languages being used, where no engineer can work on anyone else's codebase because there's no consistency about anything, where progress is minimal because decisions don't get made due to some people disagreeing with each other and having no way to break the deadlock, etc. I think it's become sort of fashionable to claim bosses are always clueless or shouldn't actually try to manage because their employees are always smarter than they are. The "servant manager" idea. That is dead wrong in my experience. Or rather, if the manager has no idea how to do the work their employees are doing and just sits out that part of their role, the team has much bigger problems.

neatze 6y ago
Concept of empowerment within a context of mission command and science of control, arguably, is by far the most complex matter in humans. > Managers have to lead and make decisions. If they don't then you rapidly end up with chaos. That's how ... I thought I made this point clear in terms of inefficiencies example. While it is oversimplification I attempt to exemplify this using spatial navigation analogy. Owners select area and resources. Managers of Managers who make decisions on approach to area and to a degree by what resources. Operational Manager make decision on routes way points a given resources. Workers will make decisions in between way points. With such example: one can argue this should be top down one way hierarchical approach, the old school inefficient approach. (eg. Direct Control) In my perspective, modern approach is to utilize indirect control by establishing conditional triggers (eg. only specifying limitations on areas, approaches, routes, and way points) based on horizontal feedback (top/down or down/up hierarchy) and vertical feedback (side way communication).
- hitekker 6y ago
  Have you formally managed people before?
  - neatze 6y ago
    Throughout life in small business environments 2-50 people and multiple times in emergency management exercises up to ~100 people.
dilyevsky 6y ago
In any innovative field if a manager is a full time manager (not a tlm) then after rather short amount of time they really have no idea beyond some universal process/common sense things. This is not the same thing as “clueless” provided he/shes realizes this and goes to sr engineers for council.
marcinzm 6y ago
>Managers have to lead and make decisions. No, managers have to create the processes by which decisions are made and then make sure the processes are followed. One way of doing that is to make the process be to do whatever they say but it's not the only way. A manager being the single point of final decision making doesn't scale since they will eventually not be knowledgeable enough to make a good decision and be bottleneck to any decisions being made. The only manager who is smarter than their team in regards to every decision is one who hires only idiots.
- neatze 6y ago
  > The only manager who is smarter than their team in regards to every decision is one who hires only idiots. Reading this reminded me of quote from Skunkworks PM (if I recall correctly); "I only want to hire people who are smarter then me."
- thu2111 6y ago
  If that were true choice of CEO would be irrelevant or pointless as long as they had some sort of generic manager training. But in reality CEOs can make enormous differences. The textbook example of a non servant manager being Steve Jobs of course but most successful tech CEOs are famous for micro-managing some aspects of the business.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    You seem to be really underestimating the difficulty of what I wrote. First of all, workable processes differ based on industry and the strategic goals of the company. If you apply the Google way of doing things to Pepsi you won't have a good time. Second of all, ensuring processes are followed when you have very intelligent managers under you trying to bypass them for their own benefit is amazingly difficult. Third of all, managers are also in charge of hiring and firing which ties into all of this.

neatze 6y ago

Concept of empowerment within a context of mission command and science of control, arguably, is by far the most complex matter in humans. > Managers have to lead and make decisions. If they don't then you rapidly end up with chaos. That's how ... I thought I made this point clear in terms of inefficiencies example. While it is oversimplification I attempt to exemplify this using spatial navigation analogy. Owners select area and resources. Managers of Managers who make decisions on approach to area and to a degree by what resources. Operational Manager make decision on routes way points a given resources. Workers will make decisions in between way points. With such example: one can argue this should be top down one way hierarchical approach, the old school inefficient approach. (eg. Direct Control) In my perspective, modern approach is to utilize indirect control by establishing conditional triggers (eg. only specifying limitations on areas, approaches, routes, and way points) based on horizontal feedback (top/down or down/up hierarchy) and vertical feedback (side way communication).

hitekker 6y ago
Have you formally managed people before?
- neatze 6y ago
  Throughout life in small business environments 2-50 people and multiple times in emergency management exercises up to ~100 people.

dilyevsky 6y ago

In any innovative field if a manager is a full time manager (not a tlm) then after rather short amount of time they really have no idea beyond some universal process/common sense things. This is not the same thing as “clueless” provided he/shes realizes this and goes to sr engineers for council.

marcinzm 6y ago

>Managers have to lead and make decisions. No, managers have to create the processes by which decisions are made and then make sure the processes are followed. One way of doing that is to make the process be to do whatever they say but it's not the only way. A manager being the single point of final decision making doesn't scale since they will eventually not be knowledgeable enough to make a good decision and be bottleneck to any decisions being made. The only manager who is smarter than their team in regards to every decision is one who hires only idiots.

neatze 6y ago
> The only manager who is smarter than their team in regards to every decision is one who hires only idiots. Reading this reminded me of quote from Skunkworks PM (if I recall correctly); "I only want to hire people who are smarter then me."
thu2111 6y ago
If that were true choice of CEO would be irrelevant or pointless as long as they had some sort of generic manager training. But in reality CEOs can make enormous differences. The textbook example of a non servant manager being Steve Jobs of course but most successful tech CEOs are famous for micro-managing some aspects of the business.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  You seem to be really underestimating the difficulty of what I wrote. First of all, workable processes differ based on industry and the strategic goals of the company. If you apply the Google way of doing things to Pepsi you won't have a good time. Second of all, ensuring processes are followed when you have very intelligent managers under you trying to bypass them for their own benefit is amazingly difficult. Third of all, managers are also in charge of hiring and firing which ties into all of this.