Can one be a good manager without having done the subordinates' job?

In My Humble Opinion
21

There are a lot of people on this board who expressed that an ideal job for them is one where they have nothing to do all day and can just sit around idle not being bothered. And then they have the gall to say that they are “just good businessmen” because they maximize their return for minimizing their expense (work).

As a manager, I don’t want the kind of people who are looking to minimize their work. I’m looking for the kind of people who look for ways to do things better and don’t need to be constantly monitored. A good manager should be more of a “coach” then some sort of overlord. You hire motivated people who are eager to learn, you teach them the skills they need and you create an environment where they can be successful and are rewarded.

Most managers in corporate America are pretty bad though. Many are just beurocrats focused on their org chars and “numbers”. Others are self-agrandizing salesmen or cheerleaders who have no real connection with reality. Really one of the hardest jobs is the lower to middle managers and project leads who have to actually get work done while indulging the vague theoretical fanstasies of upper management.

22

Of course- managers manage which (in my experience) means dealing with staff. That is far, far more difficult than being a techo. It helps if you understand the pressures your staff are under and are able to suggest work arounds but I am not certain it is essential. And by this I mean senior management- there are layers of management whereby the CEO (for instance) does not need to know how a widget is lasered or whatever. The job is different.

And the skill sets are different.

23

Fundraising - I don’t think you can supervise it unless you’ve done it. And I’ve seen it. People who never had to ask for money are terrible at teaching others how to do it well.

24

I think the biggest misunderstanding is what a manager should be doing. In most cases, his job isn’t to micro-manage, or to know the ins and outs of everything every employee is doing. His job is to help his employees do their jobs. That is, in a way, a good boss really works for his employees and not the other way around.

The relevant part is when it comes to communicating information with your boss so that he can either make decisions, or then turn around and present that information in some way or another to his boss or to a customer. To that extent, I think that having done the job, while helpful, is overrated.

To use the carshop manager as an example. He doesn’t need to know how to repair a transmission, what he needs to know is how it affects his resources (man hours, supplies, etc.) and how to communicate any issues to the customer. Being specifically knowledgable is unnecessary because, well, you have plenty of examples of the resources to repair a transmission. And specific knowledge isn’t terribly helpful when explaining to a customer because, chances are, the customer is unknowledgeable. Turning a wrench won’t help with either of those.

Now, that’s not to say he doesn’t need some domain specific knowledge. I would say that a manager who doesn’t know what a transmission is would probably be a bad manager at a carshop, but being able to repair it himself is unnecessary. That’s why you have employees.

This is exactly how I approach my managers; that their job is to help me do my job. First off, none of them know a damn thing about programming, but it doesn’t seem to matter at all. When I need an executive decision about how to implement things, I approach them prepared with as large a set of options as I can along with what I perceive to be the pros and cons. It’s their job to assign weights to the pros and cons, not to understand why it’s that way. I’ll tell them one option is faster or one takes more space or gives a certain set of features or whatever and then they can make a decision without knowing a thing about how I’m actually implementing it. Similarly, they have no idea about timetables. Often, they expect some changes to be much more complex or much simpler than they actually are. And as a criterion for making decisions, I try to provide time estimates.

Personally, I generally feel like I have a good working relationship with most of my managers, and that’s simply because they realize that they highered us, not because they just needed someone to do a job they could, but because they wanted someone who was knowledgable and skilled. I’d hate to work for a manager who thought he was as or more knowledgable and skilled at the job than me, because in those cases I’ve often end up getting micro-managed, which means they’re not doing other things that they could be doing to make my job easier.

25

I know some managers who HAVE done the job who are terrible managers of others doing the same job. So I don’t see any reason why someone without the same experience couldn’t do a better job. In a couple of cases, they couldn’t possibly do any worse.

26

Two things are essential to the manager-subordinate relationship: communication and trust.

A manager doesn’t have to know how to do a subordinate’s job if there is trust that the subordinates are actually working and they two parties communicate their needs and requirements effectively.

In my experience micro-managers - whether or not they know the subordinate’s jobs or or not - have severe trust issues that invariably make them bad managers. Slackers who are trying to get by with doing as little work as possible, are sort of the mirror image of that.

For me, the best situation is when the manager trusts the subordinates to do their job, gives clear goals, makes sure resources are available, and solves major problems and the subordinates do their best to deliver quality work on time. It helps if both sides of that equation have some idea about the other party’s job, but neither has to be able to do that job in order to have the knowledge needed. For example, if I know what my boss’s priorities are it gives me a better idea of how to avoid making the boss’s job more difficult (which is a major no-no). Likewise, if the boss has some idea how long it takes to actually do part of my job he or she is better able to make a realistic schedule for work.

27

I don’t think it is necessary to have done the exact subordinate’s jobs; for example, one of the best managers I’ve had went from lab tech to lab manager to production manager to factory manager: she was never a production worker, an accountant, in sales or a maintenance worker, yet the people from those departments were happy with her.

What is important, tho, is to be conscious of what you don’t know, when a subordinate knows more than you do, and be able to learn from and listen to your subordinates. A good sergeant can make any lieutenant look good… so long as the lieutenant lets him!

The two worst mistakes I’ve seen when choosing managers:

  1. assigning someone to manage a group of people he hates; a dude with a PhD in chemistry, a career in sales, a trophy wife and a hate of women, foreigners, engineers and production people comes to mind… he was my manager and guess what, I scored a 4 out of 4 in his hate list but everybody else in the team scored at least a 2
  2. mistaking a “gungho attitude” with the ability to lead. Someone who buys any “new” () idea very hard and very fast and starts dancing around the room to get people to implement it will often be someone who abandons that implementation as soon as the new shiny catches his eye.
    (    ): “new” in this case being defined as “he’d never heard it before;” I’ve seen people go nuts about a “new” management system which was from the 1910s when their company’s “old” one was 1980s…
28

[nitpick] That’s training not management[/nitpick]

29

A good manager is expected to act profesional and not bring his personal biases and bigotry to his job.

I’ve found that salespeople often make terrible managers and tend not to get along with engineers or technical people. What it essentially comes down to is they resent reality intruding on the self-agrandizing fantasy they fed their clients or superiors.

Also, there is a bit of a Peter Principal effect where just because you were good at your job as a subordinate does not mean those skills translate to being the boss. There is a school of thought that a more effective organization is one where there are different tracks or classes for different levels in the organization.

30

Aye, and if you’ve already seen that the guy does not leave them at the door, he shouldn’t be a manager - and specially, not a manager of the people it’s clear he can’t stand. “Maybe he’ll grow out of it” is a lose-lose situation, plus it may work for children but not for guys in their forties.

Rick, a manager is, among other things, a trainer. Not necessarily a “nuts and bolts trainer,” but they are trainers. They need to be able to give you correct instructions and make sure you understand them: that is training as well as management.

31

Further nitpick: A major part of my job is training. This is explicit in our job descriptions and evaluations.

32

Right, but it’s not an inherent quality for a manager. Many managers do little training–especially people who manage professionals.

I think a manager does not need to be about to actually do the job if they 1) have enough imagination to see things from different perspectives and 2) are smart about how, what, and who to ask for the information they do need.

33

Not in software development. That’s a job for the architect or tech lead.

34

The best boss I ever had basically said the same thing. (Paraphrased, since I don’t remember the exact words);

“My job is to help you do your job. Most of the time just by staying out of your way. Sometimes by keeping other people out of your way. Sometimes by making sure you have the tools and training you need. Sometimes, hopefully never, by providing discipline, and sometimes by taking a bullet for you.”

If you don’t know how to do the job, you can’t judge if your people are doing it well or efficiently, or if they can do it better.

But hey, a great many companies and managers engage in the “not invented here” strategy of ignoring the skills and potential of their own people in favor of hiring people from outside when it is time to fill higher level positions. No promotions, always hire people who have already done it. (Then watch your own people leave for those same promotions in other companies.)

It’s weird, because I know from experience that some executives rationalize that they need to hire people who have the experience, who have been there, rather than training new people into the roles. But what they fail to see is the question; ‘if they’re already in that position, why do they want the same position with you?’

35

It looks there are two camps debating what a “manager” actually is.

The manager-is-a-worker camp:

From the workers’ viewpoint, they elevate the skills “tech lead” or “job foreman” and insist that those skills are a prerequisite of “manager.” (However imo, I think this is inflating a job title of a hands-on supervisor/mentor to “manager”)

From the opposite direction, some folks tear down a “pure manager” as a clueless Dilbert that just attends meetings and plays with his Blackberry. He can’t possibly be a “real” manager because if he was, he’d actually how to build websites, and repair automobiles, dig ditches, etc.

The manager-is-an-organizer camp:

The manager may be ignorant of the underlying hands-on work but is a master coordinator of people, goals, and meeting deadlines.

This is the breed of manager that is important to venture capitalists, board directors, MBA programs, and productivity thinkers like Peter Drucker.

Lou Gerstner when he was CEO of IBM would be a good example of a non-techie manager guiding the company to its comeback success. General Dwight Eisenhower in WW2 never experienced the front line of battle. Nevertheless, he was put in charge of Allied forces and directed the D-Day landing invasion.

Perhaps we need a more precise terminology such as “tactical manager” vs “strategic manager.” The tactical manager is the one that has to know how to do all of his subordinates’ jobs himself. The strategic managers are your Gerstners and Eisenhowers.

There are a few examples of hands-on-in-the-trenches workers that can transition to pure organizers of work (Bill Gates Microsoft) but these people are extremely rare. There’s a particular aptitude required for management success and most workers do not possess the skills.

36

I agree that management is a really different skill set, but I think it is a set that has to be developed in a hands-on-setting as well as in the classroom–so while effective managers do not need to have done the exact job they are managing, I think they are more effective if they’ve been seasoned in some sort of job where they are producing something and being managed. It gives the context they will need to later understand the perspectives and challenges of the people that work for them.

As far as “strategic vs. tactical” goes, I think there is another axis, as well–administrative vs regulatory. The administrative side of management is “taking care of BS”–running interference, taking care of logistics, putting together timetables, etc. The more regulatory side of management is motivating people, keeping them on task, maintaining morale, dealing with trouble makers or malingerers, etc. The skillsets for these two roles are very different, and often managers will see one of these things as their job but not the other, leading to problems.

37

There is - there is direct management, senior management and middle management. Not all organizations have three levels - and some have a forth and/or fifth.

Supervisory management is the most direct level - this is the guy who knows the job and can step in to do it. Its often the “lead” and sometimes has no true management authority (i.e. doesn’t do reviews). These people watch people who get work done.

Direct management is what most of us know - but may be a little more hands off than supervisory management and definitely has hire/fire authority. These people make sure low level objectives get met. They watch budgets and revenue streams at the “small” level. They generally don’t affect the direction of the company and really don’t have that much authority. Often, but not always, these people have done the subordinates job. But it isn’t necessary depending on the makeup of the team. My team has a DBA, a couple scripters, a project manager, a technical engineer - obviously our manager has not done everyone’s job. And in technical jobs, you often move to management and then have the technology change - a programmer who moved to management 20 years ago probably can’t do much with .NET, but that isn’t what he is doing now. Now he’s making sure his team can code in .NET, by getting them the tools, the training, making sure they have the requirements, arguing with the business about what is possible and what isn’t within the constraints.

Middle management sits between the direct managers and the senior management and develops tactics to execute on strategy. They are responsible for budgets and revenue at a middle level. These people usually have titles ranging from Sr. Manager to Director to VP (and there are some true distinctions between those three titles).

Senior management is your executives (in a big company and some industries, Vice Presidents don’t really count - but Executive Vice Presidents usually do).

Then there are CXO level people - your CEO, CFO, CIO, COO. Unless you work for a very small company, they have no idea how to make a widget, can’t run your line or get out your TPS report. And they still answer to someone - the shareholders and board of directors (and each other).

38

I heard Roger Penske would tap a worker on the shoulder and send him home with pay. Then he would do an 8 hr shift at his job. He felt it was important to understand the workers plight.

39

I had an Assistant Principal that had never worked in special ed but was in charge of the IEP meetings. She let the respective experts do their jobs and handled her end as facilitator and expert of District policies and procedures.

Best damned boss I ever worked for.