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Management

Entry 746, on 2008-04-17 at 15:55:23 (Rating 4, Comments)

I don't object to any particular profession or interest group having a say in the way an organisation is run. This even applies to professions which I generally see as being very narrow in their focus and counter-productive to the general well-being of an organisation, like say... accountants!

I recognise that I am biased against business people and the commercial world in general so the fact that I have little respect for most commercially oriented professions isn't surprising. I think accountants should be able to have their say, but then I think they should then be mostly ignored. They seem to be excellent at telling us why something can't be done (we don't have the budget, its too much of a financial risk, etc) but poor at figuring out how something could be made to happen.

After my traditional obscure opening rant I will now explain the specific event which lead to this discussion. Now this example of the evils of accounting may seem trivial to you but please accept it as a simple example of the greater problem. Also, I have changed the names around to protect the guilty.

Recently an organisation I know of was audited (this was just an internal "check-up" not an IRD audit or anything like that). Now this department has been run down over many years and there isn't a lot more fat that could be reasonably trimmed, but the auditor had to justify his fat salary some way so he had to come up with something to make it look like he filled a useful function in life instead of being just another idle cog in the great corporate machine.

So what did he come up with? Well one small privilege the staff of this organisation had was a coffee machine which ran most of the working day. It meant anyone could just a grab a coffee when they wanted one instead of having to invest the time and money in visiting a coffee shop. But the auditor thought this was far too extravagant, so he recommended the coffee be stopped.

Now any manager with half a brain would have thought "the happiness and efficiency of my staff are more important than saving a few dollars here and there on coffee" but, of course, managers are possibly an even bigger waste of space than accountants so he just went along with the recommendation and stopped the coffee. Now the staff waste time going to a coffee shop instead. The organisation saved a few dollars but lost many more in productivity.

That's the sort of pitiful petty-minded stuff accountants and managers are good at. There was no discussion and examination of the possible negative effects of the change - it just happened. The staff objected more to the fact that it was insulting and degrading as much as that they now had to buy coffee.

The manager involved is fairly well universally despised from what I hear and its easy to see why. In my own experience its hard to find many managers who are admired in any way. It seems to me their space in the Universe would be much better filled with a vacuum. When I present my anti-manager speech many people say "but who would go to the meetings and make all the important decisions". Well most of the meetings and important decisions I see managers making are just to make the manager next up the hierarchy happy. Its only more senior managers that make junior ones necessary. Let's do away with the lot, I say!

So what do you think? Am I dreaming of an impossible Utopian ideal here? Or would the world sink into anarchy if managers were abolished? Or is there some middle ground where a balance could be struck. Like most issues, the moderate option is probably best.

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