a manager at Apple was known to have team meetings where he would add some info item.. and then have a different team meeting with others and tell them something different.. and then try to find out who knew which one.
secondly making a blunt statement that implies some team member lied or withheld information, in front of others on that team
third casually mention that his work was not done yet, and he "needed to get to it" and that would go on for months.. while team members where required to compete to get their work done, with the loser being on termination review..
Imo, the biggest problem with management is too many hierarchical levels. Whenever there is too much hierarchy, each manager in the hierarchy tries to impose something below them to show their own "impact". Each manager tries to do better than their peers by forcing it down the ladder. Often the stakes for managers are too high - aka, they need to constantly justify their existence. They are not really producing any output so their existence is only justified by creating more policies or implementing their boss's policies.
With each level comes additional policies - all of which get dumped to the leaf node workers who are actually producing the output desired by the company. But these policies are putting additional burden on output producers, thus bringing output to a grinding halt.
The common theme for such management is that the only thing that matters is "optics". The only types of managers that can survive this kind of environment are the sociopaths who don't care about anything but their OWN existence - which leads to all the behaviors pointed in the article.
1. Self-centered
2. Input-focus
3. Afraid of failure
4. Information hoarder
An easy solution to all this nonsense is to reduce the number of levels. But I have only seen this at Netflix, Roku and a few startups in the past.
To have fewer levels the most senior leadership needs a pure vision that is clearly articulated so that everyone can row in the same direction without a legion of taskmasters enforcing order.
At most large orgs I’ve worked at, the ICs never hear anything directly from managers just two levels above them, let alone four or five. It’s a bucket chain of misinterpretations, personal agendas, and Chinese whispers.
When the upper management only cares about BS outcomes, low level managers will only care about BS outcomes e.g. story points/week or lines of code etc. Psychological safety and meaningful outcomes be damned.
What about managers who simply don't manage? I've had several of those.
One would cover up failures by lying - since the company was a dot-com startup with nepotism and many employees who had all previously worked together, he easily got away with it.
Another one, managing a department of 60-70 people in a large corporation, couldn't even enforce basic professional courtesy and workplace safety. It was at the time an old-style office with hallways, floor to ceiling walls, and 3-person offices with doors. Yet for several years, employees got used to just shoving their old junk (manuals, non-working computer hardware, file cabinets, storage boxes) into the hallway. The manager just ignored it, and since it was the kind of company where employment was close to civil-service style, none of his bosses ever did anything about it either.
Thinking of catastrophic managers I and loved ones have dealt with (not too many, but catastrophic they were), some of these resonate strongly but not others.
For example, the worst manager I remember dealing with was relentlessly focused on output, but with no sense of a plan, or of intermediate steps, or of why a given situation might be as it is when he arrived, or anything. Not even what output to aim for or why. You were expected to simply intuit his desires and then be so motivated to please him that fear of his disapproval and power was enough to produce the output, whatever that was. Probably many of these things on this list are problematic at either extreme; maybe the particular extremes he encountered is as much a function of Microsoft as a culture as anything else?
I also feel like there's certain things missing from this list, like communication problems, which are some of the worst forms of problems in my experience.
I suppose like a lot of these sorts of things, it's best taken as advice with a grain of salt.
I'm dealing with two first-class information hoarders right now, and I'm about ready to quit, as there is no way around them and no one who can help deal with the problem. Both of them are long term employees who are trying to move up the chain but don't have the skills or the experience to do so, so they are stuck in middle management roles, each with two entry level direct reports, and they make life difficult for everyone else as they attempt to exert themselves across the business.
They keep all information close to the chest right up until the very last moment. Then they'll drop it on the team before a meeting (because sharing documents earlier creates confusion, apparently) and then they'll dominate the whole meeting, never letting anyone get a word in.
It's always someone else's fault for not knowing something, or not being prepared ahead a feature release or client implementation or project launch. It's always someone else's poor performance or lack of effort, which is why they have to compensate so much, why is why the have to do everything to make sure it's done "properly" according to their standards, which is why they are always so, so busy.
The only people who can address your obvious incompetence are these two people, because you can't do it right, so they have to do it, and they'll tell you what they are doing when they are ready. And they'll make sure to tell the C-level team just how awesome they are, while making sure to trash talk everyone else around them.
These are the worst people I have ever worked with. They possess no conscientiousness whatsoever. My only recourse has been to directly roast them in public Slack channels with clear questioning that exposes their lack of thoughtfulness. I try to squash their incoherent babble with clear writing and common sense communication. This silences them briefly, but in those moments the rest of us can get a word in, can contribute to the work, can steer the discussion, and we start to make small steps forward.
Until they decide you're wrong, and the routine repeats.
Clearly my pov is jaded, but in many years having many bosses, the best one were the ones that just left me alone to do what i thought needed to be done. People on the ground almost always know that better than management, and if dictates are to be given periodically they should be strategic instruction rather than operational. My relationship with most managers, esp the ones that weren't on the better side, were one way. I gave them information, so that they could do their jobs. And it would appear their jobs were almost always to do the jobs of their bosses, so their bosses could do their bosses jobs,etc.
I suppose there are many different personalities, and many different ways people want to be managed, but frankly forced artificial weekly one on ones is just that, forced and artificial. I can't imagine why people want that.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 38.6 ms ] threada manager at Apple was known to have team meetings where he would add some info item.. and then have a different team meeting with others and tell them something different.. and then try to find out who knew which one.
secondly making a blunt statement that implies some team member lied or withheld information, in front of others on that team
third casually mention that his work was not done yet, and he "needed to get to it" and that would go on for months.. while team members where required to compete to get their work done, with the loser being on termination review..
oh he is from Japan too
With each level comes additional policies - all of which get dumped to the leaf node workers who are actually producing the output desired by the company. But these policies are putting additional burden on output producers, thus bringing output to a grinding halt.
The common theme for such management is that the only thing that matters is "optics". The only types of managers that can survive this kind of environment are the sociopaths who don't care about anything but their OWN existence - which leads to all the behaviors pointed in the article.
1. Self-centered
2. Input-focus
3. Afraid of failure
4. Information hoarder
An easy solution to all this nonsense is to reduce the number of levels. But I have only seen this at Netflix, Roku and a few startups in the past.
At most large orgs I’ve worked at, the ICs never hear anything directly from managers just two levels above them, let alone four or five. It’s a bucket chain of misinterpretations, personal agendas, and Chinese whispers.
It all comes down to looking at what matters in terms of outputs, and establishing trust -- or psychological safety as people like to call it.
One would cover up failures by lying - since the company was a dot-com startup with nepotism and many employees who had all previously worked together, he easily got away with it.
Another one, managing a department of 60-70 people in a large corporation, couldn't even enforce basic professional courtesy and workplace safety. It was at the time an old-style office with hallways, floor to ceiling walls, and 3-person offices with doors. Yet for several years, employees got used to just shoving their old junk (manuals, non-working computer hardware, file cabinets, storage boxes) into the hallway. The manager just ignored it, and since it was the kind of company where employment was close to civil-service style, none of his bosses ever did anything about it either.
For example, the worst manager I remember dealing with was relentlessly focused on output, but with no sense of a plan, or of intermediate steps, or of why a given situation might be as it is when he arrived, or anything. Not even what output to aim for or why. You were expected to simply intuit his desires and then be so motivated to please him that fear of his disapproval and power was enough to produce the output, whatever that was. Probably many of these things on this list are problematic at either extreme; maybe the particular extremes he encountered is as much a function of Microsoft as a culture as anything else?
I also feel like there's certain things missing from this list, like communication problems, which are some of the worst forms of problems in my experience.
I suppose like a lot of these sorts of things, it's best taken as advice with a grain of salt.
They keep all information close to the chest right up until the very last moment. Then they'll drop it on the team before a meeting (because sharing documents earlier creates confusion, apparently) and then they'll dominate the whole meeting, never letting anyone get a word in.
It's always someone else's fault for not knowing something, or not being prepared ahead a feature release or client implementation or project launch. It's always someone else's poor performance or lack of effort, which is why they have to compensate so much, why is why the have to do everything to make sure it's done "properly" according to their standards, which is why they are always so, so busy.
The only people who can address your obvious incompetence are these two people, because you can't do it right, so they have to do it, and they'll tell you what they are doing when they are ready. And they'll make sure to tell the C-level team just how awesome they are, while making sure to trash talk everyone else around them.
These are the worst people I have ever worked with. They possess no conscientiousness whatsoever. My only recourse has been to directly roast them in public Slack channels with clear questioning that exposes their lack of thoughtfulness. I try to squash their incoherent babble with clear writing and common sense communication. This silences them briefly, but in those moments the rest of us can get a word in, can contribute to the work, can steer the discussion, and we start to make small steps forward.
Until they decide you're wrong, and the routine repeats.
I suppose there are many different personalities, and many different ways people want to be managed, but frankly forced artificial weekly one on ones is just that, forced and artificial. I can't imagine why people want that.