The Real P&L Managers Deal With

I woke up the day after I had read Seth Godin's Linchpin and asked "where are the managers?" His book is addressed entirely to employees. All the cute stories are about busboys, stewardesses, PR flacks and other folk generally regarded as "staff". Compare it with Robert Townsend's Up The Organisation and you will see what I mean: Townsend's book is addressed to managers. Why are there no exhortations to managers to stop ruining their staff's talent, provide some lebensraum and generally behave like Good Guys?

I'm guessing that Godin has given up on managers and management as a force for anything positive in a corporation. He's pretty much open about having given up on corporations as a force for anything except low prices, poor quality and mis-using the workers - and I'm not really reading between the lines here. I gave up on management a long time ago. When I started work, I wanted to get into management: it looked like a place that a real man could go. Now it doesn't. Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into management. If they can't make management, they go into central government. If they can't make central government, they go into teaching. If they can't make teaching, they go into local government. And if they can't make local government, they go into charities.

I've given up on "managers" because middle-management always was and still is there first, to provide a channel of communication between the "guys at the top" and the "guys who do the work"; and second, to handle the P&L. Except this P&L isn't "profit and loss", it's Personnel & Logistics - recruitment, training, development, administration, supplies of tools and materials, and sometimes actual transport and distribution - so that the guys like me who do the work can, well, do the work. What confuses the middle-management is that, while their job is to handle personnel and logistics, they only get promoted if they take actual initiatives and make a difference: but they are given no resources to do this and no idea what initiatives will be received with a smile.

"Management" today in a large company is about delivering compliance with internal rules, delivering the messages to the staff from the guys at the top and selling this year's no-pay-rise and lousy bonus - again. The managers aren't there to run the business, they are there because everyone can't report to the Board. They are place-holders in an organisation chart. Except that the ones who do something that makes a difference get promoted to "near-Board" positions and get some actual clout and decision-making. So "management" is full of people wondering how on earth to make an impact and what the hell they're supposed to be doing for a living in the rest of the time. This is why they have all those meetings: to disguise the fact that they don't have any work to do and couldn't do it if they did - because their technical skills are obsolete.

Some of them are Good Guys. Right now, I'm lucky enough to work for one. Most of them can neither be trusted nor distrusted and some are just bullies and jerks. I've worked for plenty of those. None of them run the business. None of them have a clue what to do next. Even the good guys. And they know that if they don't get a clue, they aren't going any further. No wonder Godin reports that one thing managers want is a clue from their staffs.

Which they would get if they deserved it.  But most of them don't deserve it. And why they don't is another subject