License to Manage

Day 2 of this management and leadership course and my cynicism has gone into overdrive. This is a course that makes sense and that every manager at work has been on. So how come they manage to fuck it up in such a spectacular way.

For every example our trainer suggests of bad management, I can think of several examples that are worse. So I wonder if our entire senior management team (with 1-2 exceptions) should be sent for re-education.

Or instead maybe managers should be issued with a management licence (akin to a driving license). And every time they make a spectacularly bad managerial decision they can be reported and punished with points on their license. After they get 10 points they should be sent back on this course, with special emphasis on the participative culture part.

My colleagues disagree; they think any manager earning 10 points should have that license permanently revoked. Such managers should be demoted to a job they can actually do.

After the course I return to the office for late night working and then to the pub with someone from the firm who I really respect. And so we explore the state of the staff body and whether poor management is an inevitable consequence of the staff we have.

In common with every organisation we reckoned staff fit into one of 4 (maybe 5) categories.
A – Baleful staff. If they didn’t turn up to work tomorrow (or ever again) the organisation would be better off.
B – Basically shit staff. You’d notice if they weren’t around, but it’s worth the organisation going through the pain and turmoil of sacking them and getting someone better.
C – Coasters. Staff doing their job on cruise control, nothing much to moan about but in this organisation passionate talented people would murder to have a chance to work here.
D – Inspiring Doers. Staff who make stuff happen, who push the organisation forward, who often work stupid hours, who are creative and devoted to the cause.

And maybe a 5th category combining inspiring people (D) with a few really big flaws that probably makes them worth firing.

And so in an orgy of cynicism we labelled everyone we work with into one of those categories. Out of 120 people we reckoned we had
A (10%) B (30%) C (50%) D (10%)
Obviously a sick twisted exercise but fun.

The question is, does this hold true everywhere?

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