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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Default management question

    I'm considering applying for a management position where I work. Not 100% if I'd get it or want it, but if the pay increase is worth it, seems worth it.
    I want one question on management style, about if you'd find something motivating or not.

    In all the jobs I had, one thing I really appreciated in a boss was if they were willing to say "This is a stupid task, and we shouldn't have to do it, but we have to it. So get it done." or something to that effect. I wouldn't open with that, but if there's pushback about doing something new by the employees and lack of sense of why we're doing it, I think it's helpful to be honest and admit "yeah, this is dumb".
    At least, I find that helps me as an employee. And it also boosts my respect for my boss since I feel like I can be honest and say, "Hey, this looks stupid" (perhaps with an "Am I understanding the request right? Because it seems useless what they want..."). So while I might not be motivated to accomplish the given task, I still feel good with the office setting as a whole and feel motivated to do a good job for the sake of a good job.
    (I'm in government, so we do sometimes get stupid tasks assigned for political, bureaucratic, or person-wants-to-do-something-stupid-for-research reasons. I can't see how that might be less motivating in private industry where you might try to cut down on stupid stuff to make more profits. And I might be, unintentionally, exaggerating things a little bit for comedic effect, as I tend to do that while talking about work inanities in real life.)

    In short: would you find it motivating if your manager/boss admitted that stupid projects were stupid?




    Feel free to post other management, or related 'motivating-folk', answers, too.
    Last edited by JeenLeen; 2020-07-17 at 07:20 AM.

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    Default Re: management question

    All saying something is stupid does is make the employees think they're smarter than the bosses. And make your bosses write things like 'not a team player' on your employee review.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    I know exactly what you are talking about.

    My approach would be.

    “I don’t completely agree with this decision, but the people way up there need to make decisions based on all sorts of criteria we aren’t even aware of... and we need to make it work. Saying ‘they shouldn’t have made that decision’ is a waste of time, so we need to say ‘what can we do to make this work’.”

    Think of it as a challenge. How can you make the process succeed in spite of the decisions you disagree with.

    I’ve been working in a bureaucratic environment for 20 years and I’ve always respected my managers that were honest like that and I’ve always been honest like that to my staff. I have no patience for people who pretend something is a good idea when it isn’t. I either consider them stupid for not seeing the problem or spineless for not speaking the truth.

    Of course it is possible that it isn’t a bad idea after all and I just need more context. So you do need to be humble enough to accept that you might not grasp the big picture.

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    Default Re: management question

    Oh yeah. New hires where I work always hate the 'busy work' of filing very detailed reports on our interactions with pretty much everyone during a complaint investigation. Right up until their first interaction with hostile lawyers, where they can just read the report into the record as a starting point instead of trying to remember something from months before.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Re: management question

    I wouldn't find it motivating, but I'd appreciate the honesty of management admitting that some tasks appear stupid or meaningless.
    I'd be much happier if having noted that, management then decided the task doesn't have to be done, or finds out why it has to be done, or if it can be changed to something that's actually useful.

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    Default Re: management question

    Ideally, in management, you'd be in a position to understand why "stupid" tasks are important, and to explain it directly to the employee if asked. There's always a reason for it, even if it's just CYOA.

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    Default Re: management question

    your subordinates don't have to understand why everything gets done, they just have to be onboard with accomplishing the goal. i would focus more on teambuilding, and less on pointing out that things are dumb. you might not even know the real reason why it was assigned to you in the first place. maybe your boss just wants to see if you can handle an objective in a timely manner. acknowledging its dumb to your staff does nothing except erode confidence in the team as a whole. find someone good at the task, make them a team lead, and assign a few people you want to develop into that role. in the end, this approach will help you, and everyone else out far more than simply saying 'we have to do this thing, but it's dumb.'

    being an effective manager is about more than just honesty. you have to find a way to be honest, but also genuine, and stay true to your company's ideals.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    I get the impression that most of the comments are from people who have never worked in government. As someone who has been directly or indirectly working for various government agencies since the 90s, I can tell you that your approach will pay off.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tarmor View Post
    I'd be much happier if having noted that, management then decided the task doesn't have to be done, or finds out why it has to be done, or if it can be changed to something that's actually useful.
    The decisions are made above management. There are many things that are done in my current quasi-government agency that the CEO grudgingly agrees "There is nothing we can do about it... so just make it happen"

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Ideally, in management, you'd be in a position to understand why "stupid" tasks are important, and to explain it directly to the employee if asked. There's always a reason for it, even if it's just CYOA.
    Most of the time, sure. Sometimes the reason is that an elected official wants to personally brand an initiative for ego reasons, and they aren't experts in the field... at all. Sometimes it is high-level bureaucrats putting processes in place that helps their preferred department/agency/area, but it ends up shafting your team. You can't stop it, there isn't much point in complaining, but you do need to accept that it is dumb so you can do damage control.


    Quote Originally Posted by jdizzlean View Post
    your subordinates don't have to understand why everything gets done, they just have to be onboard with accomplishing the goal.
    My god no. I don't hire people like that. I know business areas who do, and they turn into the epitome of bureaucratic departments. Staff who fill out checklists without any critical thought or even asking why.

    Makes me think of a joke:
    "A man is sitting in a coffee shop watching some city workers on the boulevard. One digs a hole, the other fills it in... and they move on and do it again. Being curious, he eventually goes out and asks what's going on. They respond, 'the guy who puts in the tree is sick today' "

    I don't want staff who just do things without thinking about it. I need them to make judgement calls. I need them to know why they are doing things, so they can anticipate problems and give me a heads up before things go sideways.

    Someone from another department was talking to me about a checklist that their staff were using. 8 steps to completing a specific task. I looked at it and said "you do realize that step #6 stopped being relevant 6 years ago right?" For 6 years the staff were taking time to complete step number 6 because it was on the list... even though it had to do with sending info to an organization that _didn't exist anymore, and hadn't for 6 years_

    When a new decision comes from high up, if my staff say "that's a dumb idea", I tell them "you need to do better than that. You need to tell my why it is a dumb idea, and what sort of mitigation strategies we need to put in place to fix it." The ones that pull that off eventually get promoted.

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    Nerdomancer in the Playground Moderator
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post

    When a new decision comes from high up, if my staff say "that's a dumb idea", I tell them "you need to do better than that. You need to tell my why it is a dumb idea, and what sort of mitigation strategies we need to put in place to fix it." The ones that pull that off eventually get promoted.

    that's a good way to go about it. most people will say it's dumb out of laziness, but if they can point out why its dumb, and more so what to do about it instead, then you have a winner on your hands. the hard part is mentoring everyone else to be just like that person
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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    In situations like government jobs where you often get mandates and regulations you have little control over and just have to make them work, I think it's ok to acknowledge that things are dumb ideas as long as you do so sparingly and with a certain kind of attitude about it. "I know this doesn't really make sense for our department because *reasons*, but the regulation says we're going to fill out Form X so we're going to do it anyway" will go over well, but a general "everything about this job is stupid" attitude will not so you have to be careful not to slide into that.

    A couple of personal stories along those lines:

    My mother used to work for the US federal government in Alaska back in the 70s. Every time she needed to travel for her job, she had to justify why she was not taking a bus or taking a train to get where she needed to go in order for her job to cover the plane ticket. She was often traveling to Alaska Native villages that were only accessible by bush plane, and pretty much every place from Anchorage is a flight rather than a drive anyway, but she still had to fill out the form explaining why she couldn't just take the non-existent train. Everyone in her local office of course knew that this was a deeply stupid form for her context, but they also knew it was just one of those things that happens when rules are written in Washington D.C. rather than locally. I'm sure her boss at least heavily implied it was a stupid form the first time she was asked to fill it out to reassure her that she hadn't somehow missed major information about how she was supposed to be doing her job that would have made it relevant.

    I used to teach in a school that had a lot of layers of bureaucracy both within the building and in the larger school district. We had, among other things, a picky dress code that didn't allow any hats on the theory that gang members might wear hats. I flat out told students that I wasn't in favor of the policy, it wasn't the one I'd have picked if I were in charge, but I was going to enforce it anyway because it was more important for everyone to be enforcing the same dress code rather than it changing room to room, and that's why my own hat was locked in my filing cabinet as soon as I got to school even though I'd rather be wearing it. This worked at least as well for getting students to take off their hat as a long justification of a policy I thought was stupid, and probably better than just enforcing the policy while refusing to discuss it at all.

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    Archmage in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: management question

    As a long-time manager in a variety of environments, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the answer is: maybe, sometimes.

    Effectively managing human beings is a game of very few clear lines.

    Admitting that a new rule is stupid but needs to be done works sometimes, with some people, often depending very much on how you say it and what your relationship is like. You can't use that line all the time, with every rule you disagree with (or every rule they disagree with) because it causes active mistrust of the organization, which breeds discontent and is bad for morale. But, similarly, you can't ardently defend every decision made by higher-ups because that causes them to mistrust you and that also breeds discontent and is bad for morale.

    Sometimes you have to say "Do it because I say so" and sometimes you have have to say "This is why we're doing this." And often which one you choose differs from day to day, rule to rule, employee to employee, conversation to conversation.

    Machiavelli said "There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making [people] understand that telling you the truth will not offend you, but when all [people] may tell you the truth, you lose their respect."

    I remember reading that when I was a teenager, long before I had ever been in charge of anyone, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And it made me realize that there's no one single path, no simple rules, no one-size-fits-all way to go about thing where other humans are concerned.

    People joke about managers who can't do the jobs of the people the manage, about "failing upwards" and the like, but managing people is really its own skillset, completely separate from whatever skillsets you're managing. It's challenging but I also find it very rewarding.
    (Avatar by Cuthalion, who is great.)

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    Dragon in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: management question

    There's an old joke: a man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 6 degrees west longitude."

    "You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?" The balloonist answered, "well, everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip." The woman below responded, "You must be in management."

    "I am, but how did you know?" replied the balloonist. "Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."


    I bring this up because here we can see the same answer given by two people, a manager and a(n amateur, non-performing-outside-of-this-forum) comedian. The manager says:
    Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
    As a long-time manager in a variety of environments, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the answer is: maybe, sometimes.

    Effectively managing human beings is a game of very few clear lines.

    Admitting that a new rule is stupid but needs to be done works sometimes, with some people, often depending very much on how you say it and what your relationship is like. You can't use that line all the time, with every rule you disagree with (or every rule they disagree with) because it causes active mistrust of the organization, which breeds discontent and is bad for morale. But, similarly, you can't ardently defend every decision made by higher-ups because that causes them to mistrust you and that also breeds discontent and is bad for morale.

    Sometimes you have to say "Do it because I say so" and sometimes you have have to say "This is why we're doing this." And often which one you choose differs from day to day, rule to rule, employee to employee, conversation to conversation.

    Machiavelli said "There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making [people] understand that telling you the truth will not offend you, but when all [people] may tell you the truth, you lose their respect."

    I remember reading that when I was a teenager, long before I had ever been in charge of anyone, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And it made me realize that there's no one single path, no simple rules, no one-size-fits-all way to go about thing where other humans are concerned.

    People joke about managers who can't do the jobs of the people the manage, about "failing upwards" and the like, but managing people is really its own skillset, completely separate from whatever skillsets you're managing. It's challenging but I also find it very rewarding.
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    THINGS
    I've been staring at this now for five minutes and I still can't decide if I've been insulted or not.
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
    I've been staring at this now for five minutes and I still can't decide if I've been insulted or not.
    Ha! No insult intended, I was basically agreeing with you in a much shorter way and thought I could punch it up a bit. You explained it in a very meaningful way so that people could understand it. I encapsulated the sentiment in a pithy remark.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2020-07-20 at 01:23 PM.
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    Most of the time, sure. Sometimes the reason is that an elected official wants to personally brand an initiative for ego reasons, and they aren't experts in the field... at all. Sometimes it is high-level bureaucrats putting processes in place that helps their preferred department/agency/area, but it ends up shafting your team. You can't stop it, there isn't much point in complaining, but you do need to accept that it is dumb so you can do damage control.
    That would be the "CYOA" part. ;).

    Regardless of whether something is dumb or not, for government work saying "that's dumb" outright probably isn't going to be the best approach. "Because we'll get fired if we don't" is an acceptable answer but "it's dumb, but we gotta" is something that can be a huge problem if you get overheard by the people that really don't take kindly to that kind of active dissent in the workplace. IME government workers who have nothing better to do at any given time (which is a lot of the time, if my experience with the DOT is any indication of other branches) spend a lot of time looking like they're busy collaborating with other people, but really just shooting the **** in the office, and talk like that gets around.

    There will almost always be a better way to say the same thing than "it's dumb" in a job where that can often be taking as synonymous with "because my own boss is incompetent".

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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    There will almost always be a better way to say the same thing than "it's dumb" in a job where that can often be taking as synonymous with "because my own boss is incompetent".
    Trial lawyers have a rather famous one: "My client has instructed me to..." is effectively saying to the judge, "I am aware of how ridiculous this is and advised otherwise."
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    Default Re: management question

    What I have found often works for my team is "I don't fully understand why corporate does some of the things they do, but this is what they're asking of us. We need to give it an honest shot. If it fails, it'll be because it was a bad idea, not because we weren't up to the task or because we undermined them. And if it does work out, they'll be very happy with us. So how do you think we should go about this?"

    Acknowledge that we don't always have the full picture, appeal to their sense of integrity, and make it a sort of challenge for them to succeed with implications of getting rewarded without promising anything specific. Be honest, but frame it encouragingly.

    Of course, I work in restaurants, so our culture is often a little more coarse and direct than a typical office setting because of the constant short-term time pressures. I left out the expletives that would normally be sprinkled in
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by jdizzlean View Post
    that's a good way to go about it. most people will say it's dumb out of laziness, but if they can point out why its dumb, and more so what to do about it instead, then you have a winner on your hands. the hard part is mentoring everyone else to be just like that person
    I learned it from someone who was my boss's boss many years ago. I went into his office with a problem that I thought he needed to be aware of, he kicked me out of his office immediately. As I was leaving I said "but this is important", he said "I don't care. Stop coming to me with problems and start coming to me with solutions".

    I changed my attitude pretty quick, because clearly he wasn't impressed with me... and you don't want your boss's boss to think you are annoying. I ended up getting along with him really well after that, and learned lots from him. Another thing he said to me at the time was that "You aren't in management yet, but that shouldn't stop you from being a leader". He was a blunt jerk at times, but he really motivated me to grow.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    That would be the "CYOA" part. ;).

    Regardless of whether something is dumb or not, for government work saying "that's dumb" outright probably isn't going to be the best approach.
    Well yes, I suppose tact does matter. The message is the same, but the presentation matters. And you do need to judge the audience... is that the sort of person who will gossip? Is that the sort of person who will take this out of context. You really need to learn to read people.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: management question

    I see these requests all the time. And as someone who gets assigned a lot of dumb projects, I'll say that when a manager calls a project dumb, it's not motivating me to do it in the slightest, but it does help soften the blow. It makes the manager more "relatable," for lack of a better term, because I know that they're just as frustrated by the request as I am, as opposed to someone on a power trip that just wants to make people do things, or one of those corporate goons that feel like you need to keep people working at all times to justify paying them.

    Communication is key here. If you know why the project needs to be done, explain it. Even if it's a super basic, high-level explanation, it's better than just saying, "It's dumb, but do it because we have to." We had a project at my job where the customer requested we go back and give new categories to over 3,000 old project records. We fought back, saying this was a waste of money and time for no payoff. They came back and said it was needed for a metrics report on their end to get more funding to pass along to us, and that was good enough. It was still a dumb, tedious, waste of time, but at least there was a reason for it.

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    Default Re: management question

    They could've saved time and trouble by telling you that the first time.

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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
    I've been staring at this now for five minutes and I still can't decide if I've been insulted or not.
    Yup, sounds like management to me.


    Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
    People joke about managers who can't do the jobs of the people the manage, about "failing upwards" and the like, but managing people is really its own skillset, completely separate from whatever skillsets you're managing. It's challenging but I also find it very rewarding.
    That's a joke because it has a kernel of truth. As you say it is a specific skill set to manage people. The traditional corporate (and public organisation) hierarchy works on the assumption that being good at what you do also means you can manage the people who do what you do. My professor at uni in Organisation and Management referred to the field as the rantings of dead bearded white men. Then he played us some Rage Against the Machine.

    It also impacts pay scales in odd ways. Like our local public health organisation had to raise the salary of the chief officer because the organisation wanted to hire a medical doctor specialist and had to offer a fair bit over "market price". As they uncritically put it "our highest officer has to have the highest salary". No one ever asked the question, "why?". More properly one should consider how taxing is the position and what are the requirements for it. When I was at uni flat hierarchys were all the rage but I've not seen one successfully implemented yet.
    Last edited by snowblizz; 2020-07-24 at 09:48 AM.

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    Archmage in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: management question

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Yup, sounds like management to me.
    Ouch. Decided that one faster than five minutes.
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