Why Your Best Employees Don't Deserve To Be ManagersLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Why Your Best Employees Don't Deserve To Be Managers article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
After all, the skill set required to practice a specific profession -- whether it's plumbing, hairdressing, engineering, selling, teaching, accounting or whatever -- is entirely different from the skill set required to manage people. Yet organizations persist in promoting 'doers' into management roles. These promotions come with better-sounding titles, more money, more perquisites, more prestige and... more responsibility. And they involve doing less -- perhaps none -- of the 'technical' work that the manager did previously, and more (or all) of the work of managing others. In one sense it's logical -- a manager who used to do the work himself or herself should understand what his staff need to do the work now. And yes, there are many managers who are just as good, if not better, at managing others as they are performing the actual work. In fact, many managers prefer to manage rather than do. But, as indicated above, there's no reason to assume that a good doer will make automatically make a good manager! Now, this isn't to say that a pyramidal organizational structure -- where the many are managed by the few -- is necessarily a bad thing. As a delegation or management structure it works fine for many companies. But when getting more pay and other rewards is contingent on becoming a manager, it's inevitable that people will try to get, and will get, promoted into management roles -- regardless of whether they have the talent or passion to manage. The result? Plenty of unhappy and ineffective managers. Plenty of frustrated people working for ineffective managers. And an organization that isn't performing at its optimum. Doesn't it make more sense for people to do the work they enjoy and are good at? To reward them for getting better and better at that work, rather than only paying them more if they step 'up' to management... where they may generate less value for the organization? Isn't a top salesman better off staying in the field selling... than floundering in the office, struggling to organize and motivate his staff? Doesn't a terrific teacher do more for her students, herself and the school by staying in the classroom, than spending her time doing paperwork and trying to manage other teachers? Fortunately, some organizations have seen the light. They do tie greater rewards to greater responsibilities and greater performances within the same role. In fact, some companies, like investment banks, are renown for paying traders and sales people much, much more than the people who manage them, simply because, in the eyes of the bank, the traders and sales people generate more value. Of course, as a 'manager's advocate' I would never suggest that managers shouldn't be compensated well, especially given the challenges of managing people. But to be as productive and profitable as possible, organizations should tie greater pay and rewards to greater responsibilities and performances, whatever the role. That way, they'll have people doing and being their best. So if you're responsible for 'promoting' people, I urge you to think twice before promoting your best people into management roles... and out of the jobs they love and do well at. Instead, consider whether you can enlarge, or give them more challenges in, their current role? Or, if they've performed exceptionally well, can you give them a bonus or some other special reward to recognize their efforts?
Of course, if you work for someone else, you may be limited in terms of what you can do... but if that's the case, and you're committed to staying with your current employer... it may be time to start a revolution! |
More Articles:1. Stop the Revolving Door of Employee Turnover By Robert Cameron The challenge and cost of employee turnover is one of the most discussed, most frustrating and most misunderstood problems businesses face. CEO’s have identified employee retention as one of their key challenges in 2005. Yet organizations continue to struggle with this costly issue. The science of psychological assessments has recently advanced, allowing the development of much more predictive assessment tools.If you do not know what your employee turnover cost is, many experts agree that you … 2. The Best Way to Keep Track of Meetings By Bette Daoust, Ph.D. How should you keep track of meetings?Have you ever wanted to run away from a meeting? I worked for one of the top five companies in the US and they seemed to hold meetings to plan meetings. It absolutely drove me around the bend! I would try and multi-task like all the other participants and secretly hoped they would not call on me for any information. In the long run, I did not get any value out of these meetings and my work was being ignored. I had to keep track of the meetings and place ac… 3. Succes and Business Intelligence Hand in Hand By Finn Jensen A business without succes in some degree is not good. Succes comes from either growth in the number of customers or in the numbers of sales you do per customer. Business Intelligence can assist a company to gain new customers and keep hold of old ones. And by keeping old customers longer time you earn more money from them because of more sales to them. Business intelligence can be shortened to BI.A definition of business intelligence is that it is a method of collecting information on your bus… 4. Taking Decisions – A 5 Point Checklist By R.G. Srinivasan Your success as a manager primarily rests on one single factor. The key factor in your managerial success is the ability to take decisions, quickly and effectively. The fine art and science of decision making will decide how far and fast you will travel in the managerial ladder. The choices you make will have long term impact in your business and career.Decision making is not the ability to take the best guesses and works on strong hunches as some management guru’s make it out. Gut feel a… |
||||
