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So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set

So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vision, or seek to empower people to change things up to deliver on the vision, they'll instead choose to get involved. This despite not really having the details of why things are working or not working; this is where micromanagement comes in, daily status reports and other time sucks, etc. But staying strategic and unblocking people below them can look like doing little. Inaction in the face of delays and things, even when warranted, may still look and feel bad to them, and so rather than have an org wide retro or similar to figure out what happened and if/how to avoid it in the future, they'll instead reason "something must be done!" at which point anything counts as something. Remote work is an easy target; it was an unplanned change forced upon them, so blaming issues on it means no one actually gets blamed.

jollybean 5y ago
" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership. The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard. Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always. Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making. Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly. I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture. 2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing. Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out? Musk? Ford? Bezos? Not really. There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication. The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products. Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough. In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively. That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare. Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree. If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious or boring.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Sorry, but not quite, your own example demonstrates that. So who built the first smartphone? It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them? BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone? Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product? Almost none. 'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself. The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology. 'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      It was probably IBM; the Simon Personal Communicator in '92. Depends how you define smartphone, but it could take/make calls, send/receive emails and faxes, and had some apps like a calulator and an alarm clock. All for the low low price of $1100 1992 dollars, and rockin' a fat 1 hour worth of battery life.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Apple didn't build the first smartphone; they made it mass market because the technology (which Apple did not invent) had gotten to where bundling it into a smartphone would provide sufficient value to a consumer to be worth paying for. There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hiring Jony Ive) and an app store (so kudos for Jobs either for recognizing the benefit of allowing others to do the work to extend the iphone's software capabilities, or for hiring someone who did).
dcolkitt 5y ago
I like to say that a lot of mediocre managers kludge through with "management-by-osmosis". They kinda just stand around their direct reports, occasionally making chit chat, and hope that's enough to get a sense of what's going on and convey upstream priorities downstream.
papito 5y ago
Most work happens despite the managers - not because of them. The overzealous workaholic bees can be safely expected to perform heroics to get things done, ad astra per aspera. For a manager - it's a safe bet. Only rarely that gambit doesn't work, the sacrifice ritual is performed, and the manager gets a new, even better gig elsewhere.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Most work happens despite the managers because most managers are bad managers. I've had my manager change out above me, and the difference has been night and day. The good ones gave me a defined goal, then stayed out of my way, yes, but they also listened when I raised concerns, and brought me answers and solutions, and provided cover when I needed it. They made my job easier. The bad ones made my job harder.
spfzero 5y ago
One thing I learned when climbing up that ladder. Not only do you not get to start making strategic decisions, the person above you is also not doing that, nor is the person above them. Everyone, no matter how many "executives" or "vices" in their title, is simply reacting to what the person above them is on about that day. Everyone is reacting. No one is planning, unless they've just been asked for a plan to present "next week". Then they will have a portion of the plan to assign you, but it will already be narrowly defined per what the boss's boss has already indicated they're expecting to see. And you'll need to complete it in two days, so there are a few days to make changes. I was never privy to any long range planning, and I came to realize that's because if there was any of that happening (I'm very skeptical) it had to be happening at the board of directors level.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  Yea, that’s not how my company works. At mine, strategy is not all top down.

jollybean 5y ago

" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership. The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard. Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always. Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making. Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly. I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture. 2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing. Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out? Musk? Ford? Bezos? Not really. There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication. The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products. Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough. In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively. That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare. Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.

andreilys 5y ago
Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree. If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious or boring.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Sorry, but not quite, your own example demonstrates that. So who built the first smartphone? It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them? BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone? Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product? Almost none. 'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself. The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology. 'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    It was probably IBM; the Simon Personal Communicator in '92. Depends how you define smartphone, but it could take/make calls, send/receive emails and faxes, and had some apps like a calulator and an alarm clock. All for the low low price of $1100 1992 dollars, and rockin' a fat 1 hour worth of battery life.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Apple didn't build the first smartphone; they made it mass market because the technology (which Apple did not invent) had gotten to where bundling it into a smartphone would provide sufficient value to a consumer to be worth paying for. There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hiring Jony Ive) and an app store (so kudos for Jobs either for recognizing the benefit of allowing others to do the work to extend the iphone's software capabilities, or for hiring someone who did).

dcolkitt 5y ago

I like to say that a lot of mediocre managers kludge through with "management-by-osmosis". They kinda just stand around their direct reports, occasionally making chit chat, and hope that's enough to get a sense of what's going on and convey upstream priorities downstream.

papito 5y ago

Most work happens despite the managers - not because of them. The overzealous workaholic bees can be safely expected to perform heroics to get things done, ad astra per aspera. For a manager - it's a safe bet. Only rarely that gambit doesn't work, the sacrifice ritual is performed, and the manager gets a new, even better gig elsewhere.

lostcolony 5y ago
Most work happens despite the managers because most managers are bad managers. I've had my manager change out above me, and the difference has been night and day. The good ones gave me a defined goal, then stayed out of my way, yes, but they also listened when I raised concerns, and brought me answers and solutions, and provided cover when I needed it. They made my job easier. The bad ones made my job harder.

spfzero 5y ago

One thing I learned when climbing up that ladder. Not only do you not get to start making strategic decisions, the person above you is also not doing that, nor is the person above them. Everyone, no matter how many "executives" or "vices" in their title, is simply reacting to what the person above them is on about that day. Everyone is reacting. No one is planning, unless they've just been asked for a plan to present "next week". Then they will have a portion of the plan to assign you, but it will already be narrowly defined per what the boss's boss has already indicated they're expecting to see. And you'll need to complete it in two days, so there are a few days to make changes. I was never privy to any long range planning, and I came to realize that's because if there was any of that happening (I'm very skeptical) it had to be happening at the board of directors level.

ViViDboarder 5y ago
Yea, that’s not how my company works. At mine, strategy is not all top down.