This year, I've been working part-time so I could pursue a master's degree at BYU. An expensive decision, in the short-term, but if I get nothing else out of it, I think the new perspective I have gained on management is worth it. And what is that new perspective, you ask?
Management may not be the unmitigated evil I had previously assumed it to be.
Old Attitude:
Management is, at best, a necessary evil -- keeping the forces of darkness and politics from disrupting all the actual work done by the non-management who keep the company running. Most often, however, it is a bunch of people who don't know what is going on making decisions that don't help anything and then taking the credit for things that go right despite their best efforts. Being in management, by definition, means not contributing anything meaningful to the company and turning almost immediately into bloat and overhead that could be cut from the company without hurting anything at all, and probably actually helping increase profitability tremendously because of the typically inflated salaries associated with Management.
New Attitude:
Management is still probably most often what I've outlined above. But there is a better best case than what I thought before. That better best case involves two things:
1. Managers can help prioritize and make good, long-term decisions as representatives of the other interests and activities of the company
A heads-down, productive worker can do a tremendous amount of good. They are the lifeblood of the company. But the very nature of heads-down-ness is that these workers can't see what everyone else is doing. It's hard to really see how their work fits into the overall plan and direction of the company. (If the company has one, that is, which is another issue altogether.)
In a good company -- that is, one that is more than just a collection of good people, though that collection is an essential part of it -- managers can help workers do more important work better. I have witnessed a transformation as the Research and Development team (which I was ineptly managing previously) has been held accountable for weekly goals and priorities. Without even understanding every activity, our President has helped the team do better work and make everyone else in the company much happier, just by holding a weekly meeting where everyone has to report on what they've done and what they'll have done by next week.
2. Managers can train and create
This is the issue I struggled with even more than the first. Because even if they are effective motivators, all that is doing is getting other people to do the work for you. Deep down inside me, I loathe the attitude of getting others to do the "heavy lifting." Maybe it stems from childhood, and always being the "smart kid" in the group, I dunno. (No time for psychoanalysis!)
But managers can contribute real, significant value on their own, when they have actual expertise in the area they are supposed to be managing. Training people how to do things is possibly the most valuable activity a manager can perform.
Look at it as a choice: I can spend all my time learning and doing things myself, making myself a better and more-productive employee until I'm so great I just glow everywhere I go and everything I touch turns into gold. (Yes, a bit of deliberate sarcasm there. I fully appreciate the enormity of my own arrogance.) Or I can balance my time learning and doing with time training and helping others to do more, better.
Maybe I could phrase it as "if you don't teach anyone to fish, you'll not be able to feed the whole village no matter how good a fisherman you are."
I guess it involves a shift of my own goals. I have always wanted to be the best worker I could. The best employee, the best affiliate program manager, SEO specialist, program developer, marketing analyst, CRE improver, whatever. I thought (and for a time was right to think) that the best thing for the company was for me to develop myself as much as possible. ("Be the best fisherman." It's really a selfish kind of way to look at things.)
But I see that a more important goal for me now is to have our company become the best affiliate program company. The best SEO company. The best CRE company. ("Feed the whole village.") And just making myself the best doer of any of those specific things isn't the best way to accomplish that.
The only way we can really excel at each of those areas is for our employees to become the best at it. That involves a combination of processes and understanding on the part of each employee. And the way to do that is for me to develop good processes, train people, and encourage everyone to see and work towards the real goal.
So What?
So, I need to get over my knee-jerk tendency to do everything myself. That's been my default response for so long, just recognizing that I need to change isn't enough. But being part-time this year forces me to acknowledge that I can't do everything myself. That helps.
I suppose ultimately, the best way to encourage me to do the right thing is to make me responsible for and accountable for the performance of whatever groups and tasks I want to help improve. That starts to sound a lot like management.
Hmm.