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Agile Management
BlogEntry
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Why Aren’t Managers Paid More?
David J. Anderson
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I feel that if we are to deliver on Davenport’s vision that good management will come from offering a premium for knowledge workers to make the leap to a new skill set then we must first start to value management skills more highly. In order to value management skills more highly, I believe that we must embrace Barry Boehm’s observation from 25 years ago – poor management can increase software costs more than any other factor. So far, we’re an industry in denial of this basic truth. Until we face our own brutal reality – that good management works and bad management hurts – then there is little hope for fixing the situation.
***End Quote***
Arghhh! (in the most professional blogger 2 blogger fashion)
I would assert that the paradigm is wrong.
[The comic book version for those who haven’t been Kinsey-like or -lite “management” consultants. (And, I don’t mean that disparagingly. Sometimes, I think. Think that the only way to communicate with “senior management” that really should be “senior leadership” is by comic books, or their consulting equivalent content-free power point slides.) Any way the comic book version is that if you’re in LA with a map of NYC, your paradigm is wrong. Paradigm is the five dollar word for your thinking about something. Anything. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Look at the optical illusions. Once someone shows you how what you think could be something else, your thinking and perceptions change dramatically. So do you have the wrong map or the wrong city. Either way your wetware is the problem. Sorry, no cartoons.]
The whole “management” paradigm is wrong.
You can manage “disk space”, register receipts, fuel tanks, or any abstract or concrete thing. The minute you put people in the equation, the concept of “management” should go out the window. People need leadership first, last, and always.
Why is that consultants always replace “you should do x” with “we propose we do x”. They always seek to engage the Client or Customer with a shared struggle. It’s not a “me and you. It’s “us against the world”.
I have had “mangers” and I have had “leaders”. The difference was that if I was lead then I was self-motivated to do something. When I was managed, good-luck getting me to do great work. Compare “Yes, boss, I did my status report” with “Hey, Joe, take a look at this. I think we can reduce disk drive failures to near zero by lowering the temperature in the data center 5 degrees.”
No, I’d assert that “manager of knowledge workers” should be a position slated for nuking. Leaders command value commensurate with what their team creates. Always have. Always will.
How’s that saying go? “Without vision, the people perish.”
All too often, we have no leadership.
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