Close Contact Self Isolation

[BoldonLad]

Many years ago, I worked in the UK Shipbuilding Industry.

There used to be an Industry joke: "Japanese Managers have 20 years experience, UK Managers have 1 years experience 20 times".

 

[vickster]

That is a debatable contention.

At the highest level, some executives of large plcs move seamlessly from one sector to another.

In other words, they have the talent to run a multi-million pound business, the type of business is largely irrelevant.

Rightly or wrongly, public bodies such as the NHS recruit senior managers from businesses of all types.

In that example, the professional skill required is management, it's not being able to perform a heart transplant.

Friend of mine works in NHS for a large MH trust and says clinicians are almost always appalling managers. The ‘professional’ managers are far better suited to the job of managing and clinicians should focus on the clinical aspect where they (hopefully) excel.

Every manager I’ve had over the years in my business have been pretty good and understand the job as they’ve all done it and are still able to when called upon.

I’ve never met a senior manager who doesn’t know how to do the elements of the job which require experience and senior expertise

 

[newfhouse]

Being a skilled widget maker doesn’t mean you will necessarily the best at managing a team of skilled widget makers. You need an appreciation and understanding of the task but this can be gained through listening to the actual workers. It helps if you have the knack of knowing whose judgement to trust. This allows you to identify those that are happy take a full wage for deliberately doing the bare minimum.

Fortunately I no longer have to worry every month about paying other people’s salaries, but when I did directly employ people I’d usually favour attitude over skill. Competence can usually be taught, pride and work ethic not so much.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Very often, when you promote your best scientist/doctor/engineer to manage the department you end up losing your best expert worker and gaining a mediocre manager.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Being a skilled widget maker doesn’t mean you will necessarily the best at managing a team of skilled widget makers. You need an appreciation and understanding of the task but this can be gained through listening to the actual workers.

One of the attributes of all good managers is the ability to let people get on with the job how their experience says it needs to be done, and not try to interfere and micro-manage things. The manager should be there purely to help resolve issues that the frontline staff can't do themselves. They should facilitate the orderly working of whatever activity they manage. Trying to tell people with 30-40 years of actual hands-on experience of a job how to do things is never going to end well. If the staff feel bloody minded, they'll do things the manager's way, in the full knowledge that his way will fall flat on it's face, then they'll leave the manager to pick up the pieces and explain to his managers why he isn't performing!
I've been someone who played a part in doing precisely that once, caused a big project to run aground, and cost my employer a lot of money sorting the ensuing mess out. The manager got moved elsewhere PDQ though, which was the aim as he was a complete w****r..👍

 

[newfhouse]

One of the attributes of all good managers is the ability to let people get on with the job how their experience says it needs to be done, and not try to interfere and micro-manage things. The manager should be there purely to help resolve issues that the frontline staff can't do themselves. They should facilitate the orderly working of whatever activity they manage. Trying to tell people with 30-40 years of actual hands-on experience of a job how to do things is never going to end well.

I broadly agree with this, although not many jobs can or do remain unchanged for decades.

If the staff feel bloody minded, they'll do things the manager's way, in the full knowledge that his way will fall flat on it's face, then they'll leave the manager to pick up the pieces and explain to his managers why he isn't performing!
I've been someone who played a part in doing precisely that once, caused a big project to run aground, and cost my employer a lot of money sorting the ensuing mess out.

I suspect we’ve all felt sometimes that the only way to make a point is to let the decision maker feel some consequences, but it’s a dangerous game to play. I’d try to avoid employing anyone that deliberately cost me or my firm large sums of money, whatever their self justification. Maybe I’m lucky that the employers I have stayed with for more than a few years have generally valued my expertise and ideas.

 

[Rusty Nails]

One of the attributes of all good managers is the ability to let people get on with the job how their experience says it needs to be done, and not try to interfere and micro-manage things. The manager should be there purely to help resolve issues that the frontline staff can't do themselves. They should facilitate the orderly working of whatever activity they manage. Trying to tell people with 30-40 years of actual hands-on experience of a job how to do things is never going to end well. If the staff feel bloody minded, they'll do things the manager's way, in the full knowledge that his way will fall flat on it's face, then they'll leave the manager to pick up the pieces and explain to his managers why he isn't performing!
I've been someone who played a part in doing precisely that once, caused a big project to run aground, and cost my employer a lot of money sorting the ensuing mess out. The manager got moved elsewhere PDQ though, which was the aim as he was a complete w****r..👍

Why am I not surprised.

Yes, there are crappy managers, but another one of the big problems I came across in companies was the number of people who had been doing their jobs for 30/40 years and couldn't or wouldn't see how those jobs, and the way they were done, needed to change with the times, and made life as difficult as they could for the managers who had responsibility for change.

 

[screenman]

Yeah well if you can quote the bit about where I said it was easy that will be great. Been a manger of some sort for the majority of my nearly 40 year working like also sometimes with a lot of H & S responsibility. It's not easy but just because it's hard didn't mean you have a right as a manager to ignore the health and safety of your workers. How many people do you manage I thought you are self employed.

It was not aimed at you, sorry it sounded that way I just hate to see all managers get tarred with the same brush by people that could not or will not do the job.

 

[BoldonLad]

Why am I not surprised.

Yes, there are crappy managers, but another one of the big problems I came across in companies was the number of people who had been doing their jobs for 30/40 years and couldn't or wouldn't see how those jobs, and the way they were done, needed to change with the times, and made life as difficult as they could for the managers who had responsibility for change.

Quite. 1 years experience, repeated 30 or 40 times, is not the same as 30 or 40 years experience.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I suspect we’ve all felt sometimes that the only way to make a point is to let the decision maker feel some consequences, but it’s a dangerous game to play. I’d try to avoid employing anyone that deliberately cost me or my firm large sums of money, whatever their self justification.

The bloke had it coming, and my employer deserved the hit for promoting such a complete dick to any position of management authority. Bad judgement call on their part, they paid for it afterwards.. More than a dozen of us just decided to let him hang himself and then covered our own backsides by doing everything strictly by the book ourselves. Effectively it was a work to rule. every problem encountered just caused more delays, we didn't look for solutions. As a result, we were fireproof, he wasn't.

He was the worst type of poacher turned gamekeeper, borderline psychopath type who did his utmost to snoop on people and try to get them on disciplinary offences to show what an on-the-ball manager he was. He soon pissed off enough staff that someone he crossed actually tracked him one day, and arranged for his own private car, not his company one, to have it's paintwork trashed. He never said a word about it though, but probably suspected (wrongly) I was one of those behind it because I never made any secret of what I thought of him personally and his style of management. After only four months of enduring this idiot, he got "reorganised" into another job a hundred miles away. His career never went anywhere, as his reputation for antagonising staff and screwing up team performance followed him. He also subsequently cost my employer an out of court settlement to make an employment related legal case go away quietly.....

 

[Rusty Nails]

The bloke had it coming, and my employer deserved the hit for promoting such a complete dick to any position of management authority. Bad judgement call on their part, they paid for it afterwards.. More than a dozen of us just decided to let him hang himself and then covered our own backsides by doing everything strictly by the book ourselves. Effectively it was a work to rule. every problem encountered just caused more delays, we didn't look for solutions. As a result, we were fireproof, he wasn't.

He was the worst type of poacher turned gamekeeper, borderline psychopath type who did his utmost to snoop on people and try to get them on disciplinary offences to show what an on-the-ball manager he was. He soon pissed off enough staff that someone he crossed actually tracked him one day, and arranged for his own private car, not his company one, to have it's paintwork trashed. He never said a word about it though, but probably suspected (wrongly) I was one of those behind it because I never made any secret of what I thought of him personally and his style of management. After only four months of enduring this idiot, he got "reorganised" into another job a hundred miles away. His career never went anywhere, as his reputation for antagonising staff and screwing up team performance followed him. He also subsequently cost my employer an out of court settlement to make an employment related legal case go away quietly.....

Sounds like a company full of dickheads to me, including top management who must have been worried enough about the way they went about things that they paid up rather than go to an employment tribunal.

I suspect that you and your colleagues just want a boss who's a bit of a mate, knows his place, and leaves you alone to do things your way, without challenge.

How long did you say you have been working there?

 

[cisamcgu]

I've got no intention of being told what I can or can't do for two weeks by some medically unqualified call centre drone employed by the likes of Serco. They can go and do one as far as I'm concerned. If I have actual virus symptoms I'll stay away from others until they disappear. If I don't get any symptoms I won't be isolating and I won't be playing the game by making myself traceable in the first place.

Yeah, but that is because you are a ****

 

[lane]

It was not aimed at you, sorry it sounded that way I just hate to see all managers get tarred with the same brush by people that could not or will not do the job.

OK thanks. the comment was made when quoting my post so it appeared it was. The point I was making was that while there are without doubt some good managers doing their best to ensure employees are safe from Covid, you don't have to look far to find managers paying lip service and also pressurizing staff not to self isolate. This will quite likely have a detrimental impact on the business in the longer run as overall more employees will be off work. Also some employers appear quite ill informed in terms of what precautions are effective.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

@Rusty Nails, there's always been some rogue management element, probably the case in most organisations, but it grew quite large during the late 90's and 00's. A few of the idiots managed to get high enough up the ladder that they then started promoting more idiots in their own image. Things have improved somewhat again now, as the bully boy style of management is indefensible in PR terms, and increasingly results in litigation. It's getting too risky both financially and reputationally to tolerate too many such characters in any organisation that values it's image. A lot of the dross has seen the writing on the wall and taken payoffs over the last few years, but unfortunately some really good managers whose experience and positive attitude were valuable assets have gone too.
More worryingly, some of the latest management intake are showing signs of turning rogue as their lack of job knowledge means they often fail to perform, then they resort to getting snotty and bossing their people around because they have got senior management on their backs demanding unrealistic results.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" as the song goes....
In 35-odd years I've had a few truly outstanding guvnors, a few harmless but unremarkable ones, and a couple of out and out c**** that I would happily take a baseball bat to without a second thought. The really shite ones never stay long in one role, they cause too many problems and soon get shuffled sideways for damage limitation! Unfortunately they very rarely get sacked no matter how useless they are, unless involved in serious financial fraud or found with hardcore porn on their laptops.
As you say, the best managers are the ones who mostly leave people alone, support but don't meddle, and can motivate staff to do their best. My most recently retired one was outstanding both in job terms and on a personal level, and will always get an invite to future works drink ups. Jury's out on my new boss. On the plus side he's not a dick, but time will tell if he can be as good as the retiring guvnor, the bar was set pretty high.

 

[Rusty Nails]

@Rusty Nails, there's always been some rogue management element, probably the case in most organisations, but it grew quite large during the late 90's and 00's. A few of the idiots managed to get high enough up the ladder that they then started promoting more idiots in their own image. Things have improved somewhat again now, as the bully boy style of management is indefensible in PR terms, and increasingly results in litigation. It's getting too risky both financially and reputationally to tolerate too many such characters in any organisation that values it's image. A lot of the dross has seen the writing on the wall and taken payoffs over the last few years, but unfortunately some really good managers whose experience and positive attitude were valuable assets have gone too.
More worryingly, some of the latest management intake are showing signs of turning rogue as their lack of job knowledge means they often fail to perform, then they resort to getting snotty and bossing their people around because they have got senior management on their backs demanding unrealistic results.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" as the song goes....
In 35-odd years I've had a few truly outstanding guvnors, a few harmless but unremarkable ones, and a couple of out and out c**** that I would happily take a baseball bat to without a second thought. The really shite ones never stay long in one role, they cause too many problems and soon get shuffled sideways for damage limitation! Unfortunately they very rarely get sacked no matter how useless they are, unless involved in serious financial fraud or found with hardcore porn on their laptops.
As you say, the best managers are the ones who mostly leave people alone, support but don't meddle, and can motivate staff to do their best. My most recently retired one was outstanding both in job terms and on a personal level, and will always get an invite to future works drink ups. Jury's out on my new boss. On the plus side he's not a dick, but time will tell if he can be as good as the retiring guvnor, the bar was set pretty high.

Sounds like a sound business model for a successful company. Only promote from the shop floor, based on a popular vote from the workers, and don't let managers actually get involved with production. What could go wrong?