what_management_should_do

What Management Should Do

I have maintained for many years that a managers job consists solely of three things:
- A manager should provided direction and focus for his group, establishing priorities and objectives in accordance with the business objectives and resources of the group.
- A manager should provide the resources necessary to meet the objectives of the group whether they be training, time, tools, personnel, etc.
- A manager should remove obstacles which impede the ability of the group to meet these objectives, but only on request of the group.

There is no room in this philosophy of management for making either technical decisions or doing design work. It is completely appropriate for a manager to take on a technical role in the process, but too often that is at the expense of the primary objectives of management and is the result not of the desire to create, but of the desire to restrict the creative ability of the group. In my experience as a manager I found that I could best straddle this chasm of responsibility by only taking on technical tasks as a subordinate to a technical lead. This is an alien concept to most managers who seem to view their promotion as tacit approval of their inherent superiority and to acknowledge their right to demand obedience in a fascist or feudal management hierarchy. These are people who really need to spend time trying to understand The Peter Principle and Rhyzard Zadow's Cesspool Theory.

As a young engineer in the 1980's and 1990's I spent a great deal of time working with, understanding, and helping to create quality circles. Management in US companies often fought vigorously against these. The idea that someone who reports to you may actually be able to make a decision without your approval or might actually know something you don't know seems abhorrent to many. Regardless, in manufacturing the need to compete with imports from Asia trumped the need of small minded and petty men to maintain their fiefdoms of totalitarian control. The result has been a resurgence and rebirth in manufacturing that has allowed us to compete with any region in the world. Today, products manufactured in the US are of the same level of quality as (or better than) those manufactured anywhere in the world. This transformation has been accomplished almost solely through the introduction of the methods of Deming and Juran, specifically those of continuous improvement and quality circles. The agile methodologies are, in effect, a form of quality circle. If you don't understand that correlation immediately that's ok. Reread the wiki articles on Agile Software Development, Continuous Improvement, and Quality Circles. You'll get it. I promise you. I know you will because it is indisputably there to be read.

Management of non-manufacturing processes is one of the remaining safe harbors of the fascist or feudal model of management that was prominent during the majority of the last few centuries. Specifically in Information Technology management, the tenets of agile development have been adopted only as a facade for the totalitarian bureaucracy those in charge seek to perpete. That they are in charge only by way of "The Peter Principle" and "Rhyzard Zadow's Cesspool Theory" only serves to strengthen their resolve to harden their position, hiding their fears behind contempt of those who might point out that "the king has no clothes" and professing that only they, with their superior knowledge of the business, are qualified to determine whether F=ma or F=0.56ma.

I am no longer surprised when I am despised and condemned by those whose skills, talents, and experience are lesser than mine, yet I am always disappointed. I don't believe I am an arrogant woman; confident, yes; proud, yes; but arrogant, no. I rarely meet someone from whom I cannot learn, and I rarely meet someone with whom I am unwilling to share. Still I find myself all too often the target of an almost misogynistic hatred.

“Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own... They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear." Ayn Rand

I believe that I have reached my level of skill along with the development of my talents only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Those giants are sometimes Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Edward Lorenz, W.E. Deming, and J.M. Juran. More often they are the men and women that I have worked with, lived with, studied with, laughed with, cried with, failed with, and succeeded with. I learned patience and kindness from my father, that to teach from experience is preferable than to teach from dogma from my Mechanics professor at Texas A&M, to insist on understanding the opinions and comments of those on my team before taking action in the US Marine Corps, and to view all results through the filter of probability from my first colleague and subsequent supervisor at Colt Industries. I could go on. Every person I've ever worked with has taught me something and I am ever grateful that they have and that they continue to do so.

Beauty In Engineering

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copyright Katherine Elizabeth Lightsey 1959-2013 (aka; my life)

"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God." - Christopher Hitchens