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The Management Mentality
Monday, January 10th, 2011 01:03 pmWith a title like The Management Mentality, you might think that what follows will be a rant about managers. This is almost true, but I should state that some managers are lovely people; in fact, some of my best friends are managers. I am a firm believer in the Christian ethic* of "love the manager, hate the management." To show how much I care about managers, for each of the errors of the management mentality, I have provided a mantra they can use to counter it.
1. For everything that can be done, there is a right way to do it.
On its own, this is a truism; the problem comes with the assumption that "a right way" means "only one right way" and the corollary that it is the task of management to find this way and make sure everybody follows it. The motto of Perl, "There's more than one way to do it,"** goes down well with programmers but not so well with managers, hence their obsession with standardisation. If it turns out that everyone has been standardised into doing the wrong thing, then the answer is not to stop standardising them, but to find a different target behaviour. Letting people find their own way to do things not only improves creativity (something even managers reluctantly agree is a good thing) but allows for the fact that the best way for one person might not be a good way for someone else. For example, I love playing with computers, which means that I use them in my teaching as much as I can. I'm a member of the university's educational technology group. I collect and give feedback on work electronically. I use Moodle to provide content and facilitate communication. I've even tried meeting up with students in Second Life. But that's me. I have colleagues who can crash a computer just by looking at it, and I think they should be allowed to use computers for nothing more than entering grades (preferably with someone looking over their shoulder while they're doing it). Conversely, I'll admit that detailed lesson plans with every activity timed to the minute are a great thing — but not for me.
Mantra: "Tim Toady" (=TMTOWTDI=There's more than one way to do it)
2. Managers serve those who manage them and lead those they manage.
Most managers like to think of what they do in terms of leadership, not service. This is unfortunate, because leadership is hard to pin down and depends on personal qualities which are rarer than attending a leadership seminar would lead you to think. If you want to be a leader, join a political movement, write a book full of Great Ideas or volunteer for the Scouts. Otherwise, concentrate on what you are here to do, which is service. This, however, brings its own problem, which is when managers do think of what they do in terms of service, they see it as service to those above them in the management chain (usually a couple of links up in the chain, since few like to think of themselves as serving their line manager). This is completely the wrong way round. Shop assistants serve customers, not store managers. As a teacher, I think of myself as serving students, and I think of management as serving me, because it is their job to help me do my job. Iain Banks wrote a novel called The Business in which managers were appointed by those who they were going to manage, not by those who were going to manage them. Excellent idea.
Mantra: "Serving is the supreme art. God is the first servant." (Life Is Beautiful)
3. No one must ever be allowed to buck the system
Imagine a series of lunch-time chamber music concerts. Why not? It's a soothing thought. These concerts have a low budget, so it is suggested that instead of printing tickets or taking money at the door, there is a donation box where people can deposit money as they leave. This will mean, of course, that some people won't pay, but on the other hand, some people may put in quite a lot. The only way to find out if it works is to try it for a while and see if you break even. Unless, of course, you have the management mentality, in which case you find the idea that some people are getting away without paying so infuriating that you print tickets and pay someone to sit at the door checking them, even if it results in lower takings than the donation box. (Incidentally, this is the same mentality that has led to predictions that music would be killed first by pirate radio, then by home taping, and now by file sharing.) There always have been and always will be free-riders: people who buck the system, don't leave money in the coffee jar, take three-hour lunch breaks, print out 300-page game manuals on the office printer, blog when they're supposed to be working (oops) and so on. Unless they are causing serious problems, the best thing to do is ignore them. (Well the best thing to do is not hire people like that in the first place, but they are hard to spot in interviews, since practice in cheating brings proficiency in lying.) If they are causing serious problems, deal with them, one-to-one, in whatever way works best. The thing not to do is to change the whole system because someone is bucking it. This links back to the problem of standardisation. On several occasions I have queried a new and dubious standard procedure and got the reply: "But some people are [insert horrendous thing here]." OK, so find those people and deal with them; don't make life harder for the rest of us by implementing yet another silly procedure. In any case, whatever new procedure you implement, someone will find a way round it.
Mantra: "Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos." (Principia Discordia)
4. Action is always better than inaction
Tasks. Goals. Projects. Agendas. Action items. Managers love these things. This is largely because, despite their bad reputation, most managers are actually well-meaning, conscientious, hard-working people, and as such feel that they should be doing something to earn their salary. (Some of them may also be neurotic workaholics, but let's not jump to conclusions.) The problem is that if you are always running around doing things, you may not realise that there is something better you could be doing, and in many situations, the best thing to do is nothing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and all that. As I just said, managers are there to help other people do their jobs, and sometimes those people don't need any help.
Mantra: "Do nothing, and things will return to their natural order." (Lao Tsu)
5. The Bottom Line
Let me tell you a secret. A secret so profound that it makes that silly book The Secret look like, well, The Secret. The secret is this: There is no bottom line. The phrase "the bottom line" has been bandied about so much that we almost forget that it is just a metaphor derived from book-keeping conventions. Outside ledgers and spreadsheets, there is no such thing as a bottom line. There are at least two reasons why this is so. The first is that not everything is quantifiable (except perhaps by some kind of Maxwell's Demon). As Tom Shippey said, "Managerial programs work best where there is a clear and quantifiable outcome and an easy way of checking what the work-force is doing. Neither of these apply to teaching, or research." You can probably think of a lot of other things they don't apply to either. This leads to the second reason, which is that the idea of the bottom line presupposes that of all the things an organisation does, there is only one (usually making a profit) that really matters; the others are either means to that end or fluff. But of course in reality, organisations (like non-psychopathic people) have lots of different aims, whether official or just assumed. Keeping your workforce happy should not be valuable to you because it increases productivity, but because you are a person, and making other people happy is the most important thing you are here on earth to do. (Unless you're evil, of course.) Talking about "the bottom line" is a great way to sound macho in meetings, but usually it means nothing, and when it does mean something, it means something bad.
Mantra: You guessed it—"There is no bottom line."
"But what about the good managers?" you may ask. It is true, there are good managers. I've even met a couple. They are the people who take the principles I've listed above and stand them on their head.
* There is some debate as to whether "Love the sinner, hate the sin" (or "Hate the sin, love the sinner") is a Christian saying, since it, or something like it, is attributed to Gandhi. On the other hand, St. Augustine said something very similar, though not as snappy: "Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum."
** Actually, Perl has more than one motto. Of course.
1. For everything that can be done, there is a right way to do it.
On its own, this is a truism; the problem comes with the assumption that "a right way" means "only one right way" and the corollary that it is the task of management to find this way and make sure everybody follows it. The motto of Perl, "There's more than one way to do it,"** goes down well with programmers but not so well with managers, hence their obsession with standardisation. If it turns out that everyone has been standardised into doing the wrong thing, then the answer is not to stop standardising them, but to find a different target behaviour. Letting people find their own way to do things not only improves creativity (something even managers reluctantly agree is a good thing) but allows for the fact that the best way for one person might not be a good way for someone else. For example, I love playing with computers, which means that I use them in my teaching as much as I can. I'm a member of the university's educational technology group. I collect and give feedback on work electronically. I use Moodle to provide content and facilitate communication. I've even tried meeting up with students in Second Life. But that's me. I have colleagues who can crash a computer just by looking at it, and I think they should be allowed to use computers for nothing more than entering grades (preferably with someone looking over their shoulder while they're doing it). Conversely, I'll admit that detailed lesson plans with every activity timed to the minute are a great thing — but not for me.
Mantra: "Tim Toady" (=TMTOWTDI=There's more than one way to do it)
2. Managers serve those who manage them and lead those they manage.
Most managers like to think of what they do in terms of leadership, not service. This is unfortunate, because leadership is hard to pin down and depends on personal qualities which are rarer than attending a leadership seminar would lead you to think. If you want to be a leader, join a political movement, write a book full of Great Ideas or volunteer for the Scouts. Otherwise, concentrate on what you are here to do, which is service. This, however, brings its own problem, which is when managers do think of what they do in terms of service, they see it as service to those above them in the management chain (usually a couple of links up in the chain, since few like to think of themselves as serving their line manager). This is completely the wrong way round. Shop assistants serve customers, not store managers. As a teacher, I think of myself as serving students, and I think of management as serving me, because it is their job to help me do my job. Iain Banks wrote a novel called The Business in which managers were appointed by those who they were going to manage, not by those who were going to manage them. Excellent idea.
Mantra: "Serving is the supreme art. God is the first servant." (Life Is Beautiful)
3. No one must ever be allowed to buck the system
Imagine a series of lunch-time chamber music concerts. Why not? It's a soothing thought. These concerts have a low budget, so it is suggested that instead of printing tickets or taking money at the door, there is a donation box where people can deposit money as they leave. This will mean, of course, that some people won't pay, but on the other hand, some people may put in quite a lot. The only way to find out if it works is to try it for a while and see if you break even. Unless, of course, you have the management mentality, in which case you find the idea that some people are getting away without paying so infuriating that you print tickets and pay someone to sit at the door checking them, even if it results in lower takings than the donation box. (Incidentally, this is the same mentality that has led to predictions that music would be killed first by pirate radio, then by home taping, and now by file sharing.) There always have been and always will be free-riders: people who buck the system, don't leave money in the coffee jar, take three-hour lunch breaks, print out 300-page game manuals on the office printer, blog when they're supposed to be working (oops) and so on. Unless they are causing serious problems, the best thing to do is ignore them. (Well the best thing to do is not hire people like that in the first place, but they are hard to spot in interviews, since practice in cheating brings proficiency in lying.) If they are causing serious problems, deal with them, one-to-one, in whatever way works best. The thing not to do is to change the whole system because someone is bucking it. This links back to the problem of standardisation. On several occasions I have queried a new and dubious standard procedure and got the reply: "But some people are [insert horrendous thing here]." OK, so find those people and deal with them; don't make life harder for the rest of us by implementing yet another silly procedure. In any case, whatever new procedure you implement, someone will find a way round it.
Mantra: "Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos." (Principia Discordia)
4. Action is always better than inaction
Tasks. Goals. Projects. Agendas. Action items. Managers love these things. This is largely because, despite their bad reputation, most managers are actually well-meaning, conscientious, hard-working people, and as such feel that they should be doing something to earn their salary. (Some of them may also be neurotic workaholics, but let's not jump to conclusions.) The problem is that if you are always running around doing things, you may not realise that there is something better you could be doing, and in many situations, the best thing to do is nothing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and all that. As I just said, managers are there to help other people do their jobs, and sometimes those people don't need any help.
Mantra: "Do nothing, and things will return to their natural order." (Lao Tsu)
5. The Bottom Line
Let me tell you a secret. A secret so profound that it makes that silly book The Secret look like, well, The Secret. The secret is this: There is no bottom line. The phrase "the bottom line" has been bandied about so much that we almost forget that it is just a metaphor derived from book-keeping conventions. Outside ledgers and spreadsheets, there is no such thing as a bottom line. There are at least two reasons why this is so. The first is that not everything is quantifiable (except perhaps by some kind of Maxwell's Demon). As Tom Shippey said, "Managerial programs work best where there is a clear and quantifiable outcome and an easy way of checking what the work-force is doing. Neither of these apply to teaching, or research." You can probably think of a lot of other things they don't apply to either. This leads to the second reason, which is that the idea of the bottom line presupposes that of all the things an organisation does, there is only one (usually making a profit) that really matters; the others are either means to that end or fluff. But of course in reality, organisations (like non-psychopathic people) have lots of different aims, whether official or just assumed. Keeping your workforce happy should not be valuable to you because it increases productivity, but because you are a person, and making other people happy is the most important thing you are here on earth to do. (Unless you're evil, of course.) Talking about "the bottom line" is a great way to sound macho in meetings, but usually it means nothing, and when it does mean something, it means something bad.
Mantra: You guessed it—"There is no bottom line."
"But what about the good managers?" you may ask. It is true, there are good managers. I've even met a couple. They are the people who take the principles I've listed above and stand them on their head.
* There is some debate as to whether "Love the sinner, hate the sin" (or "Hate the sin, love the sinner") is a Christian saying, since it, or something like it, is attributed to Gandhi. On the other hand, St. Augustine said something very similar, though not as snappy: "Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum."
** Actually, Perl has more than one motto. Of course.
