When I’m Where They Are, What I Won’t Do
The one thing that is like the central theme for all my angst at work lately is simply: I see no value in my immediate leadership and management.
And this, according to them, is a virtue of our project.
I don’t get it. I don’t appreciate essentially making up work and doing said work while they loom over my shoulder and waiting to decide when they are going to step in and take over or take “corrective action.” I know it sounds crazy – especially making up work – but that’s more or less what I’ve been doing of late.
Management, in my view, is very much a flow down activity. You work with customers, you identify requirements, you identify design needs, you work the design, then you pass off to developers but hang around to monitor the situation, and eventually take back to work things through verification/validation/QA. Nearing the end of design and preparing to hand off is when the full team begins to get engaged – this is what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing it, this is how we plan to do it … any questions? anything people think we’ve missed? lets do it then.
The dynamics of my current project is such that the developers get dragged into meetings with customers, listen to what customers say, and pretty much do all the systems engineering on our own even though our leadership/management state they are to be doing these things … and get all in a tiff when they realize they are behind or cut out.
Over the past 3 days, I’ve talked with different people on the systems engineering/leadership/management team of my project, and I’ve been overly blunt and probably disrespectful about all of this. Do I think it will change anything? … no, not really. yet here I am, with this small core of hope deep inside that won’t give up.
So, when I’m where they are, the people underneath me will know how I’m working for them. They will know – even if it is just a high level – what I’m doing and how I impact them and the value I provide them. I do not want to ever engender this feeling of being left to figure it out alone while also being responsible to some nebulous, unidentified higher standard that no one cares to share until after the fact. My people have a right to self confidence, empowerment, and assurance that their leader is working in their best interest and how he does that.
Quick question for all you management types out there: is that really too much to do/expect/ask?
Well, a manager can’t always be the sole interface, because at that point, you become a choke on the information flow. But is it good practice to be the primary interface in such situations? You bet your ass it is.
That said, that’s a lot of work, and few managers have the technical chops to know what everyone’s doing [or they would have never been allowed to go into management in the first place, being more valuable in doing the technical stuff anyway].
Right, I don’t expect a manager to be aware of everything … but he should be setting the vision and cognizant of the momentum of the team towards that vision. As it is, we have a systems engineering team that can’t even collectively do that much.
It’s like I’m in the inverse situation. The engineers create the vision, start driving, and management is trying to keep up – occasionally creating ‘situations’ because they realize they’re behind on the vision and information curve. It makes me wonder if I really am working for the WORST.MANAGEMENT.EVER. Certainly in my work history of 10 years, I’d say yes.
these kind of issues are what drove me back to business school. (and just for the record…i don’t think that good leaders NEED the technical skills at the level of the producers. they just need to know what good work looks like, and they need to know how to delegate and motivate and empower people) when we ask the first years at the beginning of their time here who’s had a good manager/leader/boss maybe 10% of the hands go up. When we ask them who’s had a bad one it’s nearly everyone. So, I think what seems like common sense is a lot harder to make happen. and i think it’s another reason we need people who live out their faith in the business world at leadership levels.