Management Guides and Systems - The Conspiracy

The bookshelves are full of books promising to make me a better manager, a more organised manager, a more effective manager, person and/or partner.  My inbox is often peppered with invites to seminars and workshops on how to lead, coach, inspire or other ways of influencing people to listen to me during business hours.

These two phenomenon are linked.  I think management guides and systems were cooked up by the publishing industry and the hoteliers to make money out of us keen to learn managers.  On the one hand the publishers get a constant stream of money from stressed out managers wanting a way to make the work problems disappear and when the books don't work the hotelier can squeeze us into windowless conference rooms and feed us tepid coffee and danish pastries whilst we get taught how to become a better, more effective, efficient, balanced, focussed principle driven manager/leader/coach.

Because if there was one way to become the best manager you possibly could be, there would be one book and one course and we would all get our companies to pay for it and bingo! we are all the best possible managers we could ever hope to be.

Except for life isn't like that.

It is obviously not that straightforward if you can fill shelves upon shelves in bookshops with "how to guides" and pearls of wisdom from business icons vying for space on said shelves.  And then there are the apps - countless dozens of them, all offering similar, but different takes on how to organise that pesky to do list or all those projects you have on the go.

So perhaps there isn't one system that can solve all your management ills in one go.  Perhaps all those books are wrong and you don't need to spend another afternoon in Basingstoke watching a Powerpoint presentation on the 5 (or is it 6?) key leadership skills every manager needs.  Perhaps you just need to find a way to adhere to some straightforward principles and check how many you adhere to each day or week?

Then you can borrow what you want from any of the systems on offer without having to subscribe to the Facebook group or write comments on blogs about management.

What to do With My Time at Work

We are all struggling with not having enough time.  If we had enough time as a manager and leader what would you do with it.  Here are my suggestions:

Now all I have to do is clear my diary of unnecessary meetings and stop emails sucking time from my day and the rest is easy!

Motivation

I went for an interview the other week. The feedback was clear and uncompromising. I came across as cynical and jaded (in places) and I slouched. My ego flounced off to its room and ate chocolate for a week, but I also started thinking that perhaps a new job is not really what I am after and I should review my options with my boss.

The discussion did not go as I thought it would. It was like walking into a room and expecting to sit on a comfortable sofa, but instead I was confronted with a hard wooden chair and a lamp shining in my eyes.

I am cynical and jaded, I don't look like work gives me a buzz. This was the first time my boss had mentioned any of this to me. He needs someone who finds the information agenda exciting and if I am not going to grasp the opportunity then he will find someone who will.

After that motivational speech I went home avoiding high bridges and railway tracks.

On reflection though he is right. I have been treading water, albeit expending a lot of energy doing so. I am busy and look at the fires I have put out, but what have I achieved? What projects have I driven forward recently?

Time to sit up straight and sort out what is important.

Another Brick in the Wall

Parents' evening. A time to discuss your child's successes, failures, likes, dislikes and crucially, their potential. Alternatively you can drown the spark of educational enthusiasm in targets and performance measures. At one point my daughter's tutor went into a detailed explanation of the necessary sub-level improvement each child needs to make in their SATs. The aim is to show how a child's performance has improved, but we are mired in the details of sub-level data collection. What the measure can tell us about a child's performance is lost in the drive to list all schools in a league table.

The performance measure has become an end in itself. Education is being reduced to how far a child progresses up a scale, but only in as far as it helps the school. Once that level is reached on goes the parking brake, because the box has been ticked for that little darling.

For my daughter the necessity to show improvement has helped her Maths no end. She can dance through Maths problems, where previously it was a weary trudge to the wrong answer. English is her strong suit, so time to unlock her full potential? No, she's doing fine, but other kids need to be pulled up, so she can tread water. Especially as it is SATs year. All energy is focussed on getting enough points on the school board, and the children are a means to that end.

Teachers want to teach and the kids (mostly) want to learn, but we are hemming them both in through the need for teachers to understand how performance levels are measured and how many sub-levels each child has to pass through on the way to a good Ofsted report.

We need to get back to the goal of education, which I think is:

**Every child has the opportunity to realise his or her full potential.**

Victims

Politicians pontificate and shake their heads

Inquiries about inquiries are announced with a straight face

And still the victims wait for justice.

A grey faced middle aged man says he knew nothing 

Another grey faced middle aged man shuffles the chairs at the BBC

And still the victims wait for justice.

Every paper discusses the grey faced man

And what next for the BBC?

And still the victims wait for justice.

Other middle aged men continue to make decisions

About children and their welfare

More victims who will have to wait for justice?

Talent Costs

We are told that to have talent at the top of a bank or business costs a lot of money, but it is the best way to guarantee returns to shareholders and drive economic progress.  The revelations over the last few years of how business and media work, suggests that the system is now run completely for the benefit of the few who go to the top universities, work up through large corporations and award themselves huge pay settlements.  If these few choose the political route, then after setting in place light touch regulation and making the countries business friendly, they can walk into directorships at the very corporations that have benefited from such largesse. 

Now since the crash of 2008 we are propping up the banks and the ethical hole in the middle of the system has been exposed.  The system was about making returns for the holders of capital, if you look at the pension mis-selling, the insurance mis-selling, unsound mortgages, toxic derivatives, LIBOR fixing and loan mis-selling and even phone hacking, it points to a rotten ethos and culture of making as much money whilst you can at the expense of customers, shareholders, taxpayers et al.

The rotten foundations upon which the modern financial system seems to be based, are now being propped up by taxpayers to the tune of about £20,000 per household, that is the true cost of the talent we have running our banks and businesses.

Get A Grip

Lying bankers, politicians prostrating themselves before media companies, a double dip recession and the Bank of England shoving money into amoral banks as fast as it can print the stuff.  

What are the two most senior economic politicians in the country doing?  Indulging in a puerile slanging match about who said what to whom back in 2008.  Have they learnt nothing from the expenses scandal?  We don’t care who did what to whom, because almost NONE of them saw the financial crisis coming, and the rest were too busy sucking up to banks and big business in general, or switching their second home allowance to care.  So they are all culpable for the economic and ethical mess we find ourselves in.  None of our political leaders have shown the clear or rational thoughts and ideas necessary to start to rebuild the economy, let alone the ethical foundation of our political establishment.

We do need a forensic review of what happened to our banking industry, but that is a big question to answer.  A parliamentary inquiry will achieve very little if our Chancellor and his Shadow can’t even say “Good morning” to each other without throwing accusations across the corridor at the same time.

Our politicians are showing small minded, petty, dogmatic thinking at a time when objective, forensic and rational thought is required.

Trouble is the only person in the country who seems capable of doing that is currently busy making our politicians and media people look even shiftier than usual.

May I add to the clamour “Robert Jay for PM?”