Leaves from a Baker's Notebook: Management Theory

[daidoji_gisei]

I am told that there are managers in this world who regard competent subordinates as a threat, and do everything they can to make sure that their subordinates remain non-competent so as to minimize this threat. My years in running the bakery department have led me to the conclusion that these people are freaking insane and need to be moved to non-supervisory positions as quickly as possible, for the good of their subordinates and the organization as a whole.

My goal as a manager is to train my people well enough that they can show up and do their job without ever having to talk to me. This is a bit of a platonic ideal--it's a rare day that I don't have to change things a little because of some information that I know and my subordinate doesn't (yet). But in the main, I like my staff to be well-trained. This takes time and work, of course, and time spent training can sometimes feel like a 'waste' because it's time not spent doing production work or paperwork. This is an illusion, and a lie. Poorly-trained employees devour production time because you are always having to redo botched tasks. Also, they put a damper on your vacations because all the while you know that you are going to come home to find your department a (metaphorical) flaming wreck.

Assistant managers should be treated as replacement-managers-in-training and given all the training and responsibility they can handle. This is of course assuming that they are competent to actually be a manager. If you should discover that they are not, and that the failing cannot be fixed, they should be gotten rid of (in a legal, preferably compassionate fashion) and replaced by someone who is. (I guess I should point out here that the ability to be ruthless is of great help to a manager; its lack can rarely be overcome.) My current general manager thinks that training someone who can replace you is a manager's first responsibility. I'd quibble a bit on this--I'm pretty sure my first responsibility is to make sure the daily bread gets baked, followed by maintaining constant supplies of chocolate cake and nurtilicious cookies--but I'll agree that it is in the top tier.

And finally, something I realized this week (and the catalyst for this entry): A good assistant manager will watch your back. A really good one will sometimes kick you there.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

This is alarmingly close to my theory of teaching, which is that you want to make yourself-the-teacher obsolete. For most math students this is not going to happen while you are around to see it, if at all, but it's an ideal. I have seen too many math classrooms that nurture utter dependence on the teacher--learned helplessness. I cannot see this as a good thing.

[ironhand.livejournal.com]

Glaah! (to learned helplessness)

Heck, one of the reasons I liked my Math Analysis course so much was because it showed me the math behind the math, if you will. Once I saw what made the wheels turn, so to speak, I could use that knowledge to find out what made other wheels turn.