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I disagree with the base assumption that a manager's job is to make employees engaged or inspired. A manager's role is to cause work to be done (by other people

by lmkg 17y ago

I disagree with the base assumption that a manager's job is to make employees engaged or inspired. A manager's role is to cause work to be done (by other people). Effectiveness of management is measured by productivity, not surveys. More generally, there's a tendency to conflate management and leadership. Management is about operations and efficiency and production. Leadership is about inspiration and engagement. The two are related, to be sure, but distantly. Certainly, if I'm engaged, I'll work harder. But inspiration alone isn't going to streamline workflow, or increase accountability, or acquire the right tools, or choose the correct problem to be solving in the first place. It's not even going to do that great a job at keeping people on task and in scope. To be sure, engagement is a useful quality. But first, it's not a necessary one, and second, it's not the role of management. If it's anyone's role, it's the role of executives. The ones with vision making bold statements and sweeping changes, not the ones down in the weeds doing the tactical work of maintaining the metaphorical tubes of work in the plumbing of productivity.

alanthonyc 17y ago
I believe what you describe is the traditional view of management, one that is possibly on its way to being outdated. I think that going forward, management and leadership will have to be the same thing. If either one needs to drop by the wayside, it will be the management portion. In today's world of greater efficiencies and flow of information, the traditional "manager" becomes a bottleneck, in much the same way that traditional newspapers have become bottlenecks in the transmission of news.
wynand 17y ago
I strongly disagree. "Manager" is short for something longer like "Project Manager". It grates on my nerves when someone talks about their "boss", because that's exactly what a manager is not (although many happily exercise power that's not theirs to exercise). I agree though that it's dubious to think that a manager is going to inspire. The best a manager or executive can do is to refrain from exercising power (at least as long as we have pyramidal power structures), since a lot of damage is caused by people feeling intimidated or withholding opinions. Perhaps if a manager can be fired by non-managers as easily as a non-manager can be fired by a manager, things would be different. That's a world that I'd love to see.
Davertron 17y ago
I agree that a manager's role is to cause work to be done. I think the point of the article, though, is that there are different ways of accomplishing this. You can cause work to be done by inspiring your workers, giving them a comfortable, fun place to work where they feel free to experiment and do good work. You can also cause work to be done by telling people what to do, making it clear what the consequences are for not completing work, and restraining people. In the last year, I've basically worked under both types of managers, and I can say that, generally speaking, my productivity is much higher, and therefore more work gets done, when I feel engaged and that my thoughts and ideas are valued and that I'm helping drive the success of the company, vs. being told what to do and feeling like my opinions and ideas aren't very valuable. I think what's difficult is that this stuff isn't very cut-and-dry; there are times, as a manager, when it might be easy to give your workers a ton of freedom and to really trust them with responsibility. There are other times when it may not be a good idea. As a manager, you can't always be "inspiring"; sometimes you just need to get stuff done. Personally, I believe that if I'm involved and responsible for big decisions, I'm inherently more engaged because I'm directly involved with the success/failure of the decision.

by lmkg 17y ago

alanthonyc 17y ago

I believe what you describe is the traditional view of management, one that is possibly on its way to being outdated. I think that going forward, management and leadership will have to be the same thing. If either one needs to drop by the wayside, it will be the management portion. In today's world of greater efficiencies and flow of information, the traditional "manager" becomes a bottleneck, in much the same way that traditional newspapers have become bottlenecks in the transmission of news.

wynand 17y ago

I strongly disagree. "Manager" is short for something longer like "Project Manager". It grates on my nerves when someone talks about their "boss", because that's exactly what a manager is not (although many happily exercise power that's not theirs to exercise). I agree though that it's dubious to think that a manager is going to inspire. The best a manager or executive can do is to refrain from exercising power (at least as long as we have pyramidal power structures), since a lot of damage is caused by people feeling intimidated or withholding opinions. Perhaps if a manager can be fired by non-managers as easily as a non-manager can be fired by a manager, things would be different. That's a world that I'd love to see.

Davertron 17y ago

I agree that a manager's role is to cause work to be done. I think the point of the article, though, is that there are different ways of accomplishing this. You can cause work to be done by inspiring your workers, giving them a comfortable, fun place to work where they feel free to experiment and do good work. You can also cause work to be done by telling people what to do, making it clear what the consequences are for not completing work, and restraining people. In the last year, I've basically worked under both types of managers, and I can say that, generally speaking, my productivity is much higher, and therefore more work gets done, when I feel engaged and that my thoughts and ideas are valued and that I'm helping drive the success of the company, vs. being told what to do and feeling like my opinions and ideas aren't very valuable. I think what's difficult is that this stuff isn't very cut-and-dry; there are times, as a manager, when it might be easy to give your workers a ton of freedom and to really trust them with responsibility. There are other times when it may not be a good idea. As a manager, you can't always be "inspiring"; sometimes you just need to get stuff done. Personally, I believe that if I'm involved and responsible for big decisions, I'm inherently more engaged because I'm directly involved with the success/failure of the decision.