A Case for Management

The current philosophy held by decision makers in the workplace is that for a person to manage employees, the manager must be an expert, or at least have considerable experience in, the jobs their employees are doing.  An example of this would be a manager of machine shop workers needing to be a tool and die expert, or a manager of a group of engineers needing to be an engineer themselves.  This opinion is backed up by many authors of popular business literature and business researchers alike. 

Those that hold this view believe, for several possible reasons, that a manager’s only value is in solving employee’s technical problems in order to keep employees producing.  There may be several reasons for this viewpoint.  Perhaps they have been promoted to management themselves, with no training or experience, and have not been made aware of the overwhelming benefits that are the results of modern management techniques.  Many believe that motivation and employee Quality of Work Life are touch-feely things, and don’t belong in the work place.  Others may not realize that in most cases, the skills and personality required to excel at one job may be the very reason the person would make a poor manager. 

The practice in many businesses when an employee becomes very good at the job they are currently doing, is to promote them to supervisor and then manager.  After all, what else is the company going to do with them?  If the company doesn’t do something to reward them with more pay and a better position, they will likely leave to work somewhere else.  The problem is not that the organization is promoting the employee; the problem is they stop there.  They are promoted to a new position, and receive no training for the new job duties that they are expected to perform.  Since they do not know how to manage people, those responsibilities get pushed to the bottom of the “To Do” list and eventually fall off all together.  When the department experiences high turnover, low employee productivity and moral, and other symptoms of poor management; the manager is at a loss to explain the reasons because they lack the management experience and training to diagnose these symptoms. 

Fortunately many of the “no employee welfare nonsense” managers are retiring.  However, the ones that are still in the workforce are often high level executives.  Also unfortunate is that the companies that are run by these people are often only marginally successful, because the employees that work for them are usually underpaid and underappreciated.  They cannot attract quality employees, and the ones that do work for them move on when the job market improves or they get tired of the atmosphere.  If the company does have some good managers, their efforts are often thwarted because the companies executives think that they are unnecessary. 

Management is an activity that requires a specific set of knowledge, skills, and abilities, just like any other job.  Caring about one’s employees, a collaborative attitude, communication skills, leadership ability, and many other abilities are needed to be an effective manager.  There are jobs where the skills required are opposite or significantly different than the skills and abilities necessary to be a manager.  Take for example doctors and nurses.  These medical professionals are trained to do what ever is necessary for the patient in front of them.  At that time, they are not concerned with other patients, the allocation of resources, or how treatment is going to affect others.  What they are concerned with is their patient; and this makes them good doctors and nurses.  A good doctor will demand what they need to treat their current patient to the best of their ability at that particular time.  If I am having surgery, I do not want my surgeon thinking about a patient they saw earlier, the cost of medical supplies, or problems in another department.  I want them concentrating on my surgery and nothing else.  Management, on the other hand, is all about collaboration and compromise.  Assets allocated to one area are unavailable to another.  Spending money on a piece of equipment for department A means that you cannot hire needed employees for department E.  Managers must consider the good of the entire organization when making decisions, whether about resources or policy.

The best situation would be to have a manager that had both technical expertise for the job being done and managerial ability.  However, if a choice has to be made, my vote is for managerial ability every time.  Technical expertise can be obtained from a variety of sources; vendor help lines, equipment manufacturer’s help lines, reference materials, and paid outside experts.  However, there is no substitute for quality management.