Background
Supervisory work exists for centuries. It was lording over slaves and servants. That is completely different from management in companies.However, it was Peter Drucker that popularise the concept of management.
He never realized that one word could cause so much grieves to the human race.
In any organization that use levels of persons overlooking another persons, there is always opportunities for opporession and intimidation.
All That Glamour; It is A Lie
They call it the corporate ladder. The message companies sell you is: Work hard, be smart, adapt to the culture and you will be promoted to a higher level job. You have more authority (power and control) and more pay. You will have more people, who are doing smaller jobs, less well paid to do your bidding. This is the glamour that you are being sold and it is a lie. This send you studying, gaining work experience in order to apply for a manager’s job.
Pilots and Tuition Teachers Are Better Paid
Middle manager that are country managers are paid $6,000. Pilots and sometimes the really good tuition teachers are paid better, and they do not have to deal with all this shit.
What Does Managers Really Do?
Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell, in their book, Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions describes the functions of management:
Planning, organizing, staffing, directing, delegating and controlling. These concepts are far from the truth. These writers are just writing about functional behaviors that everyone else has and nothing special to people in management. They get paid for it but they did not tell you what kinds of things managers have to deal with.
The truth is managers either do nothing much or they do shit work.Do not imagine that the operations of a business to go on smoothly. The problems are mostly traceable to human behaviors.
For the harding working managers, here are some the trash they had to deal with:
Left behinds
Staff in the past encountered a problem, but they kept quiet about it either because they do not want additional work or they do not want to be responsible for it.
Projects in the past were not properly managed. Things went wrong, contractors buried the problem.
No policies or procedures.
The Shit Always Falls From the Top
Management shits comes from having too many layers of management.
Source: Unknown
Order the Change But Don’t Want to Be Accountable
In most organizations, proposals that managers submit goes through their bosses before reaching a committee or the senior management for evaluation and approval.
The bosses make the changes to the proposal but it is still in your name. If the proposal turns out well, they said that it was their ideas. If something went wrong, they are the first to run. Do not expect them to stand up for you. More likely they will push the blame to you.
Make Changes to Look Like Some Work Is Done
Top management today changes the structure often or buy equipment to show that things are done. Today they say that it is better is centralize. Tomorrow they say it is better to decentralize.
What a waste of money paying such people who does not know what the lowest level of the organization is doing.
It is Human Nature: Resistance to Change
As a managers, when you are tasked to make changes. However human nature is that they don’t like change because they also need to make changes themselves as they to adapt. So they put up resistance by questioning and by complaining.
Substandard Work Life
As you work longer in a profession, the more different work situations that you encounter, the more solutions that you have devised and tries over the years, the better should be your work.
However, if you are working for someone else that is not always true. Here are some situations:
You have learnt from a past situation. You then encountered a similar situation and gave both feedback and suggestions to your boss to avoid the situation; but he disagree and you get dragged into it.If it is a proposal, sometimes your boss changes your proposal.
Your management tired to save costs and un-wittedly buy a new system that is worst than the existing system. Then you have to go through the pain of using a system that gives you nightmares.
When you change your employer; you may land up requiring to fo fix the same problems that you encounter in your current job.
What Are The Lessons Learnt
For the person making a career choice, choose a vocation where you can first gain skills, later knowledge, to make or build something.
If you run a business, here are some thoughts:
- Keep the organization levels to maximum 4. Better still have a flat organization.by adopting roles rather than positions.
- Matrix is a lousy structure.
- Have as few managers as possible. It is possible to have none.
My Job Tips 