I would argue there is virtually no justification to manage people by means direct control, virtually for any team/group sizes.
> has nothing to do with capital or resources.
Is most confusing point for me.
In general, if you meant enforcing compliance, I would have different response, but you clearly did not mean that in your original post.
To tie this back to the original post: why is there information that subordinates have that would potentially improve the business, that they want to give to their seniors, but they don't? It's because that information is uncomfortable.
Also, all the stuff in the original article below "Incredible amounts of harassment of any kind". Why do business deals get done at strip clubs in the first place? It's not in the company's interest, it happens because those involved have enough power to use company resources for their own purposes and enjoy all the little displays of dominance involved in such an outing.
Are highly subjective when compared to "formal" management functions.
> All the stuff that matters once voices get raised and feelings get high.
This is clear aspect of conflict resolution, if management process is optimal such situation are rare cases. Undoubtedly, there are cases where you have to change tone to get point across, this only can be rationally justified if all other means fails.
> why is there information that subordinates have that would potentially improve the business, that they want to give to their seniors, but they don't? It's because that information is uncomfortable.
This is only one of the so many reason why this can happen, in general, learning, negations, feedback, are all uncomfortable processes to a degree. The major factor why there is failures to improve organization process is shared understanding that is bases of communication, in addition to risks, responsibility individual mechanisms.
> Why do business deals get done at strip clubs in the first place?
There some aspect important aspect of social interaction before business deal similarly as there is dating before marriage.
> It's not in the company's interest, it happens because those involved have enough power to use company resources for their own purposes and enjoy all the little displays of dominance involved in such an outing.
Such narrow view is simply false.
I think it's become sort of fashionable to claim bosses are always clueless or shouldn't actually try to manage because their employees are always smarter than they are. The "servant manager" idea. That is dead wrong in my experience. Or rather, if the manager has no idea how to do the work their employees are doing and just sits out that part of their role, the team has much bigger problems.
No, managers have to create the processes by which decisions are made and then make sure the processes are followed. One way of doing that is to make the process be to do whatever they say but it's not the only way.
A manager being the single point of final decision making doesn't scale since they will eventually not be knowledgeable enough to make a good decision and be bottleneck to any decisions being made. The only manager who is smarter than their team in regards to every decision is one who hires only idiots.
Reading this reminded me of quote from Skunkworks PM (if I recall correctly); "I only want to hire people who are smarter then me."
> Managers have to lead and make decisions. If they don't then you rapidly end up with chaos. That's how ...
I thought I made this point clear in terms of inefficiencies example.
While it is oversimplification I attempt to exemplify this using spatial navigation analogy.
Owners select area and resources.
Managers of Managers who make decisions on approach to area and to a degree by what resources.
Operational Manager make decision on routes way points a given resources.
Workers will make decisions in between way points.
With such example: one can argue this should be top down one way hierarchical approach, the old school inefficient approach. (eg. Direct Control)
In my perspective, modern approach is to utilize indirect control by establishing conditional triggers (eg. only specifying limitations on areas, approaches, routes, and way points) based on horizontal feedback (top/down or down/up hierarchy) and vertical feedback (side way communication).
There may be teams where this direct approach wouldn’t work out, but so far it’s seemed to help.
But, because so many people expect to be subjugated in their roles it does require some hurdles to get past normal societal expectations and not everyone is a fit for it, some people just want a task list and to be told what to do. I think the world could be a better place if we could effectively help people sort into the companies with the leadership style that best suits their working style.
Was thinking something along the same lines. I work in an environment where a tiny bit of self initiative does very well for one's work and career, and still some people can't get it over their heads. Unless something is very clearly stated somewhere, they won't do it no matter how obvious it is, even people who are trying to get a promotion. I swear sometimes I think people would let the office burn because "yelling fire!" is not of their stated position responsibilities.
Self initiative people willing to take more risk and thus responsibility if things don't work out, where not self initiative people if things don't work out, take substantially less responsibility by default.
But the key is here:
> They immediately asked who was giving up this information and wanted to crack down on this perceived insubordination, rather than trying to address the issue
One of the key elements of the "boss" social role is to enforce subordination: people doing what you tell them to do. This is kind of intrinsic to the interpersonal dynamic, and it's quite hard to avoid doing at least some of the time even if you're aware of how it can be a problem.
The problem with people doing what you tell them to do is that what you tell them to do may be wrong or incomplete. You then have two choices:
- admit error. This is uncomfortable.
- increase the effort to subordinate the person so the boss does not lose face.
There are all sorts of examples and case studies of this kind of thing in command situations. Here's it causing a plane crash: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/02/10/asiana-airlines-to-pursue-co...