Excepting things like a executive with a secretary, of course.
I manage an inside sales team for a well-known corporation I won’t name. This is my second time working for this company; the first time I was in inside sales, then outside sales. Of my fellow managers, about half have never done the job our teams do: instead, they either come from customer service backgrounds, are former outside sales execs, or have MBAs but no experience dong the jobs their employees do. (But reams of knowledge of case studies.)
In my experience, corporate sales managers who have never done the sales job tend to be awesomely bad at it, though sometimes they’re skilled in covering up their incompetence. This was also true in retail sales. But I was wondering if other people in other fields have different takes on it.
Well, I’m a tech but my boss is NOT a tech. (Business degree) It gets very tiresome having to explain to him like a four year old everything that is going on.
I guess he does a well enough job but it would make things a whole lot easier if he had a tech degree.
A good manager makes his subs jobs easier by doing the things that would distract them from doing their jobs better. If micro-managing is required then it would help if the micro-manager actually knew the lower job, but with experts under me I would have no problem managing in an unfamiliar field.
In auto repair, it can certainly help if the manager understands enough of the technical side to have basic comprehension and to explain things sufficiently to customers. However, the assets that make a manager effective and competent have more to do with understanding the business. There are good managers who haven’t really turned a wrench, and some in the field argue that more often than not a good mechanic makes a poor manager. So yes, one can be a good manager without having done the subordinates’ job.
Long time local government worker here… don’t get me started on this! It is my pet peeve where I work… Managers making decisions about work they have never done… and never consulting long time employees… It makes my department so incredibly inefficient, you would not believe it.
One of the best software development managers I’ve worked for had never even programmed. But he recognized that he didn’t know the technical side of things, so he was very good about not getting in our way. Instead, he focused on protecting us from bullshit and keeping us as happy as possible.
As a manager you must be able to do the subordinates job (one level down). That doesn’t mean you have to be very good at it, but if you have no idea what your subordinates do, it gives them an edge over you.
I’ve always gotten high marks on reviews as a manager and that’s because I right away train at my subordinates jobs. I KNOW EXACTALY what they do, how long it should take them to do it and so forth. More importantly THEY KNOW, I know, so right away they have no power over me.
I always tell my staff, I should be able to do your job 90% as well as you. If I can go it better than you, there’s a problem, 'cause you do it all the time.
Now this would apply to one management level down. But you at minimum have an excellent command of what everyone is doing. The idea is not that you can do their job but that if they leave you can get their job done, either by delegating it or hiring an outside resource to cover it.
Now knowing a job well doesn’t mean you’re a good manager. This is something most people fail to understand. The technical details of a job are easy compared to the art of managing people so they do the job to the best of their ability. Just because you can do a job well doesn’t mean you can manage others doing that job.
This and RunSilent together are the right answer. I don’t agree with those saying you have to know how to DO their jobs, but you do have to know what’s expected of your subordinates. I manage in total, either directly or indirectly over 250 school bus drivers and aides. I know every inch of their state requirements, their training, how to handle difficult children, belligerent parents and everything they have to do in their jobs each day. I don’t have a CDL, or a School Bus Permit.
The seven staff members working for me - same thing. I know their jobs, though at one time or another I’ve done most of what they actually do, I don’t get involved aside from giving direction. RunSilent’s point is perfect - good managers don’t hand down decisions, they get input from the people that have to actually do the work.
You don’t have to know how to drive a rivet to be a bridge builder. There’s a reason managers are hired to manage and not do.
Why is that any different? You may not know the first thing about how your subordinates job works (although that isn’t ideal). But you should certainly be able to understand the results of their job.
Being a good or bad manager seems to have to do more with how effectively that manager communicates goals and expectations to their team and how well they enable that team to meet those goals and expectations. It also helps to be able to sit down with your team and discuss these things so you aren’t making decisions in a vacuum.
90% of corporate managers, IMHO, are bad managers. Or they are in organizations that does not enable them to be effective managers. My current job is like that. We have layers of management (project leader reports to manager reports to director reports to vice pres) all doing nothing but passing status reports and sitting in management committee meetings. There are no goals or objectives beyond vague corporate sloganism.
IOW, there is no way for me or anyone who works for me or anyone I work for to determine if they are doing a “good” job.
I don’t know about that. I think good management skills are an entirely different set of skills than what’s involved in doing the work itself.
I’ve had utter shits for managers who were very good at both their jobs and mine. The problems arose through their management style conflicting with my work style; i.e. breathing down my neck, constant micromanaging, second-guessing, and undermining at every opportunity.
I’ve had fantastic managers who have never done my job. What made it work was that they were good at managing – they coached me on how to be more effective, gave me ideas on how to apply my skills to new projects, supported me and my projects with The Powers That Be, offered criticism only when necessary and actionable, etc.
To be clear, I’ve had shitty managers who’ve never done my job, and fantastic managers who have. It comes down to people skills.
ETA: Wrote my reply when the last one was ultrafilter’s.
I think it’s possible, but it’s a lot harder to really grok how complex any given task is, how long it realistically takes to do it, things that could complicate it all, etc. Of course, managers who did the job a long time ago, before several policy/technology changes are at just as big a disadvantage in that respect. In some ways, they’re even worse off, because they think they know all that, but they’re wrong. Very, very wrong.
That last is a constant struggle in my current job–my boss used to do all his own tech/nursing work, so he thinks he knows exactly what our job entails and how long it ought to take us to do it. But what he fails to take into account is that he did all that more than 20 years ago, and he’s added about 40 bajillion little piddly things to just about every job since then, and decided you have to make a detailed note in the chart every time a dog belches, and, and and… What really drives me nuts, though, is when he explains to me, in great detail, how to use the blood chemistry machine and gives me massively wrong instructions. I know these instructions are wrong, because I’ve been using this same model of machine for over 10 years, pretty much every day I’ve worked. Also, he tells me to use settings that this machine doesn’t actually have.
But at least he’s quit explaining to us that we don’t understand how a thermostat works, and that setting it at 75 keeps the place just as cool as setting it at 65.
In any field in which any moderate level of technical knowledge, expertise, or skill is required, it is essential that the manager be able to do the work of the people he or she is supervising. Right now, a friend of mine is dealing with a manager who has absolutely no idea how to do the department’s work and no working knowledge of the field (law). As a result, the manager is essentially a hindrance to the efficient functioning and morale of the department. This manager spends all her time reworking workflow policies for which she has absolutely no understanding of the underlying work, and enforcing capricious staff relations policies that do nothing but frustrate her subordinates.
There is also an element of inferioriity complex at work. The manager understands at some level that she has no idea what she’s doing and thus redoubles her efforts to appear to be in charge, resulting in pointless tyranny.
Finally, it’s absolutely critical that when staffing levels drop, due to illness, vacations, whatever, that a manager be able to step in and actually do his or her subordinates’ work when it is needed.
"In any field in which any moderate level of technical knowledge, expertise, or skill is required, it is essential that the manager be able to do the work of the people he or she is supervising."
The above sentiment seems to be shared by several responders here. It is simply not true.
Now, it might be true for SOME technical fields, but it’s certainly not true for all. Fixing cars requires more than a moderate level of technical knowledge, expertise, and skill. Properly managing an auto repair shop does not. As I said above, a certain level of knowledge/understanding can be an asset, but being able to actually fix the cars is absolutely not necessary in order to be a good manager of those who fix them.
That is not to say that said manager can blithely get by with no grasp of the realities out in the shop, no understanding of the possible problems that may arise, no respect for the challenges involved. The manager cannot do well with unrealistic expectations or imposition of arbitrary procedures that are counterproductive. The manager must, to a certain degree, UNDERSTAND the job. But to say the manager must be able to DO the job is wrong.
Now, if you’re talking about a shop foreman working in the trenches with trainees, that’s a different story. Such a person does need to be able to do the job. The person who manages the shop as a whole, however, does not.
I don’t see how a manager could do their job effectively without know what their subordinates do.
As an engineer with a non-technical boss it is painful when he tries to review my work and I can see his eyes glaze over. It is nice because the only thing he can care about is the final result. I don’t think is possible for a direct manager to do a good job and just know that a final product is need and have no idea of the intermediate steps.
A shop manager or someone with more general responsibilities doesn’t need that knowledge they mainly need to know how long something will take and how do deal with finances.
My support department has two sections: app and tech. The app people support the actual use of the product, while the tech side deals with the MSSQL and Oracle errors, installation questions, etc. My department has two managers, one on east coast time and one on west coast, and a senior manager to oversee everything.
Of these three people, only the senior manager really understands anything about the tech side, and her knowledge is…I don’t want to say “minimal”, but she’s definitely way behind us senior techies.
All three of them are great managers. They are wizards at organizing the 35 or so people who work in this department, and when a case gets escalated to them, they know how to get it assigned to the right person to get it resolved quickly. They spend the bulk of their time taking customer complaints and dealing with bureaucracy and red tape so we can keep doing our jobs and helping the customer.
My managers keep me happy and I keep the customers happy (to the degree that I can, you can’t please everyone), which keeps everyone happy.
I agree with this. I manage 30 people in the service department of a new car dealership. I have been a technician and know tons about how the car works. However I know many very successful service managers that have never twisted a wrench.
In my own case, I have not yet had a chance to take a class in our particular computer system, and as a result, I cannot generate a repair order on my own. Yet somehow I manage to supervise my 4 service advisers without a problem. I understand their job, I just can’t do all of the nuts and bolts of their job. For that matter, I don’t know how to do the cashiering or warranty administration functions either, but I have people that work for me that do this.
My job is to supervise and point my people in the correct direction, and then check to see if we are on the correct course.
This does not mean I micro-manage my people. Far from it. My job is to find a problem, find a solution and then verify that that solution is implemented.
If you manage professionals (i.e. adults who take pride in their work), you can manage to results without any clue of how they do their jobs. That’s because professionals aren’t trying to snow you. They will tell you what they can do, what they can’t do and why they can’t do it. And your job is to make sure they get the resources to accomplish what they need to do and point them in the right direction - then make decisions if the parameters change.
If you manage people who are out to surf the internet all day, you’d better know exactly how to do their jobs, or they will tell you they spent 32 hours last week compiling the TPS report - which if you know the job you know takes forty minutes.
Not a manager, but in the Army my favorite NCO on his first day assigned to “my” shop came in, and told us he knows nothing about computers. He will do all the paperwork, go to the meetings, and keep people off our backs. We do the tech side.
He was the best manager I have ever had. He did all the “overhead” stuff, and left me alone to do my job. He would get a task from someone, and would ask me if it could be done, and how long it would take. He didn’t try to tell me how to do it. He knew he didn’t know it, and wasn’t afraid to admit that. Also it helped that we were not out to screw him, and he didn’t try to screw us by taking credit for our work. We got the job done as fast as we could so we could surf the web.
If you have employees that don’t like the job, or just don’t want to do it then you will need to know some of their job so they don’t try to screw you. In that case I would rather get rid of them, and hire someone with better work ethic.
I think it is more important to go the other way. Not only should I know my job, but I should know how to do as much as my bosses job as possible. The military is big in the know the job of the next rank. That way when you move up your learning curve isn’t as big.
There’s something to that. An auto mechanic who has some understanding of what the manager does in dealing with customers and parts sources can do some things in a way that makes the process easier for everyone involved.
Not a manager here, but I think a good manager needs to really understand that the hands-on people know how to do the job and should consider their knowledge when making decisions. A good manager makes sure things go smoothly.
There are some lower-end managers that should know how to do the work should the need arise, but I consider them “leads” rather than “managers.”