"Senior Management"

A friend of mine was recently told they were part of “senior management”. Of a company, granted of seven-figure turnover, employing fewer than fifty people and with offices in the basement of a shop on a south-west London high street. Next to the fish shop. Oh. And they're a part-timer: three days a week.

In my book, a manager can hire-and-fire and spend on their own authority up to certain limits: approving expenses doesn't count. If you have to get approval to get on a plane, book a hotel and go to that industry show in Copenhagen, you are not a manager. You are a senior manager when you can do all that, sign contracts, effect re-organisations and spend quite sizeable sums either on your own authority or because the Board (not some other manager) said okay. If you didn't negotiate the terms of your contract of employment, and not just the salary, then you are not a senior manager.

Needless to say, my friend could not do any of that. What struck me as silly, pretentious or both was the idea of a small company having “senior management”. It's even more daft than the idea that a school has “senior management” - and they do, you know (the Head and his / her cronies, I mean, team). The idea of "senior management" in local government is equally risible. It's sheer pandering to vanity and would be hilarious if these people weren't paid six-figure sums for underpaying and under-training their staff, whom they try to make as insecure as possible. 

How did the concept get so devalued? Why on earth do people want to be called “senior management” when they have none of the powers and perks? And if a bunch of men and women in open-neck shirts in an open-plan office are “senior” what do we call the guys with their own offices who can hire-and-fire?

Oh. Yes. They would be “Directors”. Not real directors whose names are down at Companies House and who have to approve the Annual Report and Accounts – but titular “Directors”.

Just who is fooling who here? I suspect the answer is that no-one is fooling anyone, but they all have to pretend that they believe.

Why would anyone impose that kind of psychic double-thinking idiocy on other people? Well, because they are fooling themselves as well as everyone else.

Which it turns out is exactly what my friend's employer was doing.