Bosses do, but the article does not necessarily provide any real solutions. The only clear thing to take away is "be aware that you may be causing a vicious cycle, and try to look out for that/get out of it" - which is a level of self-awareness that any semi-decent manager should have and keep in mind.
Management is a fundamentally messy and error-prone process, and dealing with differences in abilities is always hard and complicated :-/
The other thing about running organisations seems to be the "Anna Karenina principle" - all organisations that function really well are similar, but almost each organisation that fails fails in a different way.
It is not universal, but I generally start from the assumption that a manager is an adversarial colleague, not a friendly one. They see their purpose as to protect their own position and move up the management chain. This article would be completely meaningless to such a manager.
This isnt a boss problem though, right? It's a problem of interaction between two people, where neither is expressing clearly what their real opinion is. There's a bit more responsibility on the person acting as boss to resolve it, as presumably he has a bit more experience with that kind of situation, but it's a two-way street.
As a manager, it is normal to be more directive with someone who is underperforming due to (perceived) lack of knowledge. You do need to be clear about you doing so though, and be clear about the path away from it.
I had a manager a long time ago who did it in a nice way. Our office was underperforming compared to the other offices he was managing, so he explained to everyone in an all hands meeting that he would be spending more time on control activities with the goal of getting back to not doing so once we were hitting delivery targets once more. No-one took offense to that, it was more "Ok, we are not performing at the level we need to be, and that means we will spend more time on control activities for a while, but to get out of that and back to our normal more laid back approach we need to do X, Y, Z."
The harmful situation is when you start spending more time on control activities without expressing why you are doing it and without explaining what the path out is. The responsibility for that is for sure on the boss, but also on the employee. If you are not asking "Ok, I have noticed this, why is that?" as an employee as well, then you are contributing to the situation and the downward spiral.
Uh, you may want to think some more about that. If your bosses are real humans, then some proportion of them will see this as criticism, which may hurt your position.
tdullien|11 years ago
Management is a fundamentally messy and error-prone process, and dealing with differences in abilities is always hard and complicated :-/ The other thing about running organisations seems to be the "Anna Karenina principle" - all organisations that function really well are similar, but almost each organisation that fails fails in a different way.
lifebeyondfife|11 years ago
As the paper is addressing a social problem rather than a technical one, the definition of what a 'real solution' may be is debatable.
I definitely think the paper provides suggestions about how to reverse such a cycle.
Iftheshoefits|11 years ago
tonteldoos|11 years ago
jib|11 years ago
As a manager, it is normal to be more directive with someone who is underperforming due to (perceived) lack of knowledge. You do need to be clear about you doing so though, and be clear about the path away from it.
I had a manager a long time ago who did it in a nice way. Our office was underperforming compared to the other offices he was managing, so he explained to everyone in an all hands meeting that he would be spending more time on control activities with the goal of getting back to not doing so once we were hitting delivery targets once more. No-one took offense to that, it was more "Ok, we are not performing at the level we need to be, and that means we will spend more time on control activities for a while, but to get out of that and back to our normal more laid back approach we need to do X, Y, Z."
The harmful situation is when you start spending more time on control activities without expressing why you are doing it and without explaining what the path out is. The responsibility for that is for sure on the boss, but also on the employee. If you are not asking "Ok, I have noticed this, why is that?" as an employee as well, then you are contributing to the situation and the downward spiral.
ReaperOfCode|11 years ago
JabavuAdams|11 years ago