My friend Dilbert

I used to really like Dilbert until I joined the ranks of middle management. Then it stopped being funny and started becoming eerily prescient. Take, for example, the strip from 10/25. I'd like to post it but I think Scott Adams would sue me for all my Google ad revenue. Anyway, if you substitute just two words in Asok's line in the last panel you have my boss in a nutshell. It is unbelievably uncanny. I massaged it a bit and sent a copy to an ex-coworker who agreed exactly. BTW, the reason he is an ex-coworker is because my boss is such a cliche-spewing automaton. Some folks have a very low tolerance for idiocy...
Now you know why I write this thing.

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Who the &#$@^% are you?

I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, so forgive me for repeating, but I have never really fit the leadership mold of the plant where I work, and I suspect of the entire division of the company. They like the driver-driver model, type A personality. I’m not. On the Meyers-Briggs test I am right smack dab in the middle. In many places this would be a positive boon, but where I work I am considered weak, too accommodating, and a poor delegator. I would admit to the latter as something I need to improve (and would state unequivocally that it is better than delegating everything, which some of my co-workers do). I totally disagree that I’m weak (of course I do) and I’m proud that people think I’m accommodating. Ever since I started down the management track I have heard these complaints. I am certain that I was passed up for promotions because of these perceptions. I will freely admit that I have a naïve utopian worldview in which a for-profit company should be a meritocr...

Mysteries of Life

There are many mysteries of life that continue to astound me as I grow older and theoretically wiser. A few I should mention: Why is popular music popular when it sucks asbad as it does ? It makes me cringe. Why do politicians of all stripes treat the public like a bunch of indolent morons? Maybe we’ve earned it. Lastly, why do people get promoted into management when they have absolutely no idea how to manage? Conventional wisdom says that exceptional technicians (and I use this word in its broadest possible interpretation) tend to get promoted because they are exceptional technicians, not because they are good managers. Rarely is there much thought given to the interpersonal gifts one may or may not have, especially in a technical organization. I’ve found that many exceptional technicians are exceptionally terrible managers, and I bet that the same traits that make them good at their jobs are the very ones that make thei...

Setting Priorities

A manager will not be successful if he does not set priorities. Success comes in many colors and flavors, but if you measure it by the number of your employees who wish to remain your employees, a person who does not set priorities will not be successful. A manager who refuses to point the way is the antithesis of a leader; he is a bureaucrat. The corollary to this is that a good manager needs a good boss who is willing and able to set priorities. A weasel boss will not set priorities and then blame you when you fail to deliver. We will try to walk the fine line here, since we’re all middle managers, of managing versus leading. In some work dialects, they are synonymous. In some they have vastly different meanings. The fine line we’ll walk is that we will try to do more leading than managing. Leading is setting the way, finding the right path, being the good example, complimenting the good and coaching the bad, etc. Managing is ensuring report b-27 is complete, monitoring the abse...

Middle Management Blues

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