Bad Management

The bad management is just about to catch up with the incompetent manager.
All and the engineering staff are ready to leave.
Be well,
Dwika=ExecuTrain



"Why do mediocre or even incompetent managers survive?"
by: Steven Cerri
(10 minute read)

Remember the Merovingian in the second installment of The Matrix? He was fond of saying, "Cause and Effect. Cause and Effect".

Or we could say, "A body in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by a force." Cause and Effect.

However, many events follow sequential patterns without being casually related. For example, a solar eclipse. Assume a solar eclipse occurs. I beat my drum to tell the gods to give back the sun. The sun returns. See, my drum beating worked!

Obviously, this type of reasoning is the basis for many superstitions and erroneous beliefs.

There is even a Latin name for it: "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after this therefore because of this). This Latin phrase essentially ties an initial event#1 to a subsequent event#2 and states that event#1 caused event#2 without any proof of a connection.

The unfortunate point is that this approach to life is everywhere. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is everywhere!

It's in the advertisements that tell us that buying a new car will help us more easily get to the grocery store. It's in political discussions about what got us from Situation A to Situation B. It's in our discussions about how to become rich... stop buying coffee every morning (and you are on the way to becoming wealthy!).

Beware, post hoc ergo propter hoc is everywhere. IN FACT, it's even in management. Yes, management is filled with these false connections.

One of the places it shows up in management is in the management books that are written by "observers" of management. Books written by people who have followed executives around, or who have "questioned" executives of companies about their motives and actions, or those books written by people who have done a post-event analysis of the "causes" of the event. In many cases, these books are filled with examples of post hoc ergo propter hoc. The only way to know what goes on in the executive's head is to be an executive or to have been an executive. We must be very careful making or accepting connections that only "appear" to be.

Let me give you a real-world example of what I mean by post hoc ergo propter hoc in management. I'll set the stage carefully with this example.

Imagine a software company. It's a relatively small company, a startup. The people of interest in this story are the software development manager and the software development team of 6 programmers. The programmers are a combination of full-time employees and contract employees.

By most standards, (except those of the software development manager and the CEO...remember this, it will be important later) the software development manager is incompetent. Not only does this manager lack software development experience, he also lacks management training and experience and he lacks management temperament. He is incompetent but he and the CEO belive his management skills to be adequate and therefore he is in charge of software development.

The software team has been working for a couple of years on a new product. The product is getting close to completion. A potential client has emerged from the market to test the software and a date has been set for an implementation.

A glitch is found in the software. Additional work is necessary to get the software ready and it's going to be a lot of work. The installation was originally scheduled for a month from now.

The software development manager proclaims the following (I only paraphrase slightly): "The next month is going to be hard work. Seven days a week, twelve hours a day. This is going to be like the death march! This is going to be like the Battle of Stalingrad. Get ready."

A month later, the software is completed, the installation is on schedule.

Now here are the questions: "Did the management approach of "this is like the death march" and "this is going to be like the Battle of Stalingrad" contribute to or actually make the software developers meet the schedule? Did that management approach motivate the programmers to work as hard as they did? Was that management approach instrumental in achieving software development success in the last month?

Did the management style cause the successful completion of the project on time?

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc!

Now I can guarantee you that in the manager's mind the answer is a resounding "YES! My management style worked! See we got the job done on time."

The CEO, I can guarantee you, will also answer, "YES! My manager is a good manager! Whatever he did he got the job done. Well done! Keep up the good work."

In my mind the answer is NO! They manager and the CEO, both, are guilty of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc!

Why do I say this? Because most people actually want to do a good job. This applies to both full-time employees who would like to keep their jobs and to contractors who survive by doing good work.

Also most people, especially technical people, are often internally motivated regarding their work. The programmer decides when the code is finished. The programmer decides when the code is well enough documented. Much of the decision-making process regarding the quality of programming code is decided by the programmer. This is called "internal referencing".

Now add to this the fact that from the time we are all children in school, we are trained and taught to do good work, REGARDLESS of our teacher. How many children heard from their parents or others, "Don't complain to me about your teacher. Do your homework." Or, "I don't care if your teacher is nice or not, that's no excuse for these poor grades."

We are trained from an early age to do good work regardless and in spite of the circumstances, regardless of our treatment (up to a point) and as engineers we take a great deal of pride in our work (as do many, many others as well).

This means that we will do good work IN SPITE of the managers we have. And you know this is the case. How many times have you done a good job even though you've had a poor manager? How many times have you had an attitude "I'll show him or I'll show her"?

Just look around and you'll see that people often do good work REGARDLESS of the quality of their managers and this is due, in large measure, to the educational system we are all put through. People will complain and still do good work. Until they reach a threshold. Then they will either fight back or leave.

They might fight back by complaining, slowing down their work, no longer doing good work, or by sabotaging their project. By this point you've lost the employee. And as you know, the good employees leave sooner than the less competent ones. The less competent employees will attempt to fight back, the better employees will leave to find a better home and get on with their lives.

Is it any wonder then that most manager's believe their personal management styles work well? Most management styles seem to work because most management styles don't matter... up to a point. Most management styles don't have any power compared to the personal sense of pride in accomplishing good work that most employees have early in the process.

Be aware however, this is generational. Past generations, older workers, are much more willing to put up with poor management and still do good work. The younger generations are not so generous. In fact, it's a little ironic that the younger generations, which want more autonomy, also will demand better managers.

So for managers and would-be managers, here is your tip for the day: "Management style doesn't matter until it does. In many situations, the drive of the individual direct report to do a good job is so high, that even incompetent managers can be successful.... until their incompetence wears down the pride of the employee. And then the employee will either leave or rebel.

But! because the manager has achieved successes in the past with the specific employee(s) in question, it appears that the employee is the one who has cracked. It appears that the manager has been doing a good job and the employee is the one who is at fault for this "shift" in attitude. In reality, the employee is just finally fed up. The employee has reached his or her threshold. A threshold that has been slowly approached ... the slowness is in direct relation to the pride and will of the employee to do good work in spite of the poor management style of the manager.

Just as many children grow up to be decent people in spite of their parents, many employees do good work in spite of their managers. However, just as a parent can put a child over the edge and the child can become a delinquent, an incompetent manager can push an employee over the edge and the employee leaves or becomes disruptive. Your job is not to be an incompetent manager and rely on the desire of the direct report to do good work, as the manager in this example is doing. Your job as a manager is to inspire employees to do good work not just for themselves, but also for the team, for the manager, for the company, for sheer job of it. Bad management will catch up with you. Good management will have you trying to catch up with your team.

So back to my example company. The bad management is just about to catch up with the incompetent manager.

All, and I do mean all, of the engineering staff are ready to leave. Most of them are actively looking for new jobs, and one has already left. They strategist about how to tell the CEO of the manager's incompetence. They talk each other out of quitting on a weekly basis. It's only a matter of time. When they decide that the company won't collapse with their departure (see, there's that desire to do good work cropping up again) or when they get fed up, they'll leave. Maybe they'll tell the incompetent manager off, as did one employee who recently resigned. Or maybe they'll just resign and be done with it. They'll leave and move on with their careers.

The only unfortunate outcome of their leaving however, regardless of "how they resign" will be that the management (the CEO and the incompetent manager) are very likely to say, "It's just as well. They were just fickle and disgruntled employees anyway and they were just too difficult to manage."

Be well,

Steven