Rx For Organizations and the Economy: Axe The Incompetent Managers

Whenever there is a downturn either within the economy and/or within an enterprise the first people to be let go, hours reduced, and/or wages/salaries hacked are almost invariably those who produce the goods and services that enable the firm, and the economy to be in business.

Only when enough of that blood--and usually too much of that for the organization's and the economy's own good-- has been allowed to gush out only then are the supervisors and managers led to the chopping block. These are the ones who don't generate directly the goods and services.

The first supervisors/management to go are usually the ones that know what they are doing. The others: the cube/office spaceholders who have risen to and roil around in the Peter Principle's 'level of incompetence' and who often stay to the end: making sure they suck every cc of blood from their host they can before they crawl off to infest another body.

The hard reality is that in many organizations is that there too many managers who drive performance down because they make lousy decisions and who waste scarce resources. These personnel lack the abilities for their jobs. What typically happens is that they get hired or recommended because they were good at their production tasks: which has nothing to do with how they will perform in supervisory rules. That sets up the "vortex of incompetence": bad longer-time managers bring on board underperforming newbies--they would never approve someone who is equal to or who outperforms them--who when they get promoted selects the next generation of nincompoops.

The one thing poor managers are good as is self-preservation, in blamedeflecting and denials, kissing the right people and their body parts, and in making themselves look good. They act like viruses fighting off T-cells as they infect and debilitate the rest of their host organizations.

Contact centers are an excellent illustration of management incompetence at (dis)work. The number one cause of high staff attrition, escalating costs, and terrible performance are poor supervisors and managers. Individuals who should never been hired or promoted in those jobs in the first place.

No wonder why contact center agents bolt at the first opportunity they can to work from home. At least they don't have to see or smell them around their hairlines or what remains of them.

And one wonders why too many firms, and government departments, are poorly run and deliver lousy ROI. Why they are slow on the uptake when it comes to adopting new methods and solutions that could benefit them.

Like teleworking. The methods, technology, and ROI are there. Instead the biggest obstacles are the manager and management who think they need to 'see' their people and breathe down their necks at no notice to be assured that they are working: despite having tools like IM, e-mail, QM, and performance measurements at their disposal.

What firms and departments commonly do not understand is that managing is not a skill that can be learned, like how to write an e-mail or use a new application. It is instead a talent, namely leadership that only a very small subset of the population has.

You can't teach someone to be a leader. They either have it or they don't. Leadership training for someone who lacks it is equivalent of teaching computer programming to someone who has never used a computer and who has no skills in logic.

Herein is a prescription to help companies and the economy pull out of the downturn: take a hard look how they are managed and who is managing them.

* Deploy management-by-performance, to objective realizable standards rather by some arbitrary manager-to-worker or other ratios. Set goals and expect your staff to meet them. Bring management-by-performance to the HR level by hiring and keeping only those experienced either internally or brought from outside staff who are independent motivated self-starters who are also team players (think sports like basketball and hockey with stars).

With management-by-performance you can slice your administrative overhead (i.e. lay off managers and cobweb their offices and cubes) while boosting output. Home-based contact center agents are an excellent illustration of this. Firms that deploy them can achieve agent to supervisor ratios as high as 22:1 as opposed to 12:1 or as low as 8:1. Why? Because to work from home successfully you must be independent, self-motivated, and know how to meet objectives.

* Develop and implement proven effective management screening including assessing for leadership. Leadership need not be equated with career experience. Look for, for example whether they have coached a team, led a choir, or organized a fundraiser. You can also source e-screening simulations that sift for leadership talents. Once you have your cadre--chances are that it will be much smaller than before--then provide them with training that enhances what they have, like conflict resolution.

Then evaluate the existing management stock, mark for elimination those that do not make the cut, and give them a choice of returning to the line work that they had started from or lay them off in a downsizing or restructuring--such as when implementing management by performance.

* Minimize the expensive perqs that also draws poor managers like five-day-old fruit to flies. Mothball or sell to condo developers the ego-baths known as Class A offices. Keep a nice but small showcase office space if you need this for investors and customers, though the smart ones will appreciate not wasting their money. Limit your buildings for manufacturing, R&D, and shipping/receiving, and telework or put in smaller, less fancy space the rest of your functions. The true corporate status symbol is no longer the corner office but the home office. Managers who cannot see you, and you cannot see them, but they know where you are and what they are doing are more effective than those who are visible like the spectre that is there and present.

By taking this harsh medicine now organizations, perhaps like yours, will have a great likelihood of getting better, and so will the economy.