One of the great things about the internet is how you start looking at one topic and end up looking at something else that’s equally, if not more, interesting.
I found this essay by William Deresiewicz on Solitude and Leadership whilst following a thread on the Mini Microsoft blog about the demise of the KIN and how the Danger team seem to have been actively demotivated by incompetent management and marketing wonks at Microsoft in the time immediately after the buyout.
In particular, this caught my eye :-
Excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.
Finally, maybe, we’re starting to wake up to what is fundamentally wrong with Western business ethos.
Incidentally, if you read the Mini Microsoft blog and wonder if it’s just a bunch of whiny techies … no, I think not. My recent experience in this business area suggests that this sort of thing is all too common. Most of the people doing the actual work know what customers want – after all, a lot of them are customers themselves. Those calling the shots, on the other hand, give the impression that they’ve never even seen the internet, let alone a smartphone.
I fear this is all too common across all aspects of our business lives.
Mingey, why not just come out with it and say what you think instead of quoting academic essays and the blogs of disillusioned techies. I assume it would go along the lines of – “all the managers you’ve ever had have been incompetent idiots, you have no respect for any of them and are determined not to be one of them so you have opted out of the rat race and are happy to be a slightly higher paid than average independent coder rather than be like one of them”.
Right ?
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Let’s deal with “all the managers you’ve ever had have been incompetent idiots, you have no respect for any of them” first.
I’ve worked for several good managers. Without exception, these were people who had somehow managed to beat the system and moved up the greasy pole without losing all of their soul. I have the utmost respect for all these individuals as it seemed to take a lot of skill, both politically and professionally. The other thing they all had in common was that their team came first, no matter what.
Let’s not forget, I’ve not always been a well-paid geek. I’ve also been a manager myself, albeit only for a brief while (and quite a while ago now) before I decided that I hated the politics, the lying and the sycophancy. Before that, I was a team leader for several years, during which time I had quite a lot of contact with very senior people, including presenting at board level in two different PLCs. In other words, I have an inside view, albeit a slightly dated one.
I’d also debate “slightly higher paid than average”. I know it’s painful to admit that skills other than coffee-drinking, ass-kissing and sitting in pointless meetings are in any way valued in Western business concerns, but fortunately my skills still fall into that category. I have no doubts that if companies could get away with paying my fellow geeks and I less money, that would happen. We sell our skills in the ultimate free market. Some get paid less than me, but I know a lot get paid more than me as well. So I’d say I’m about average.
Anyway, having dispensed with the straw men of disillusionment, personal dislike etc., back on thread.
What really worries me about UK PLC (and, for that matter Euro PLC and USA PLC) is that the services that we pride ourselves on are actually just smoke and mirrors. The time will come when, if we don’t change, someone will spot that a large proportion of the “value add” we contribute is actually “zero value” or (even worse) “negative value”.
What really worries me about UK PLC (and, for that matter Euro PLC and USA PLC) is that the services that we pride ourselves on are actually just smoke and mirrors.
Give us some specific examples please
It’s always difficult to prove a negative, although I don’t think any of us would struggle to come up with a long list of areas where we used to lead the world that now, seemingly, we don’t seem to do any more.
Why don’t you suggest something that we excel in now that actually involves doing something other than acquiring some form of asset, mysteriously inflating the price and then selling it on to someone else?
Have a look at the constituents of the FTSE100 and see what they do. There are still some world class UK companies there. BP, Vodafone, Smithkline Beacham, Centrica and HSBC spring to mind. And London is still a global financial centre. I wouldn’t call that smoke and mirrors.
Oooh, such easy targets.
HSBC and our “global financial centre”. The epitomy of buy something, inflate the price, sell it on. Smell the smoke, see the mirrors. The same really applies to Centrica and, with the decline of North Sea Oil, BP as well.
As for GSK, do they actually have anything other than their HQ in the UK?
http://www.gsk.co.uk/locations/index.html
which, of course, illustrates another problem – “listed in the UK” is by no means the same as actually providing services in the UK.
Helpfully, one of the econogeeks on R4FM’s “PM” tonight came up with the statistic that two-thirds of the profits made by the companies in the FTSE-100 are made outside of the UK.
I’m not sure what the thread of this rant is, so forgive me if Im wide of any mark.
Managers, like developers are a normal distribution with the full range from good and bad. Climbing the greasy pole may be a different game to maximising billable hours and rate, but they can both result in the worst performers/behaviours being rewarded.
I would stand up for UK businesses. I think we continue to add a lot of good to the world, be that profit, revenue generation or just creativity. As examples Dyson, ARM holdings, Rolls Royce, Greggs, Virgin, red or dead, rolex, tesco, Sage and others inspirational companies I cant immediately recall.
We have good companies because we encourage entrepreneurialism (wish there was a spell-checker on this) more than other European countries, if still less than the US.
Greggs … you’re such a Geordie!
I had ARM, Dyson and Rolls Royce on my list of UK Companies To Be Proud Of.
Until yesterday I would have had BAE down on my Were Great Once But Not Anymore list, but then I saw this …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/lancashire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8811000/8811475.stm
Managers, like developers are a normal distribution with the full range from good and bad.
Whilst this is, to a certain extent, true, the big difference is that it’s really easy to spot a bad developer and get rid of them, or at least sideline them. The problem is that quite often they get sidelined into management.
I’ve lost track of what the thread of this is about too. Are you suggesting that we get out of the service industries and revert to manufacturing ?
@mingey
one of the econogeeks on R4FM’s “PM” tonight came up with the statistic that two-thirds of the profits made by the companies in the FTSE-100 are made outside of the UK
That’s a good thing isn’t it ?
http://dilbert.com/fast/2010-07-11/