The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vision, or seek to empower people to change things up to deliver on the vision, they'll instead choose to get involved. This despite not really having the details of why things are working or not working; this is where micromanagement comes in, daily status reports and other time sucks, etc.

But staying strategic and unblocking people below them can look like doing little. Inaction in the face of delays and things, even when warranted, may still look and feel bad to them, and so rather than have an org wide retro or similar to figure out what happened and if/how to avoid it in the future, they'll instead reason "something must be done!" at which point anything counts as something. Remote work is an easy target; it was an unplanned change forced upon them, so blaming issues on it means no one actually gets blamed.

Everyone, no matter how many "executives" or "vices" in their title, is simply reacting to what the person above them is on about that day. Everyone is reacting. No one is planning, unless they've just been asked for a plan to present "next week". Then they will have a portion of the plan to assign you, but it will already be narrowly defined per what the boss's boss has already indicated they're expecting to see. And you'll need to complete it in two days, so there are a few days to make changes. I was never privy to any long range planning, and I came to realize that's because if there was any of that happening (I'm very skeptical) it had to be happening at the board of directors level.

"The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. "

So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception:

1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership.

The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard.

Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always.

Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making.

Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly.

I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture.

2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing.

Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out?

Musk?

Ford?

Bezos?

Not really.

There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication.

The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products.

Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring.

We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics.

I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough.

In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively.

That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare.

Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.

But, you mention you've been overridden by bad executive fiat on occasion, and also made forays where you shouldn't have because you didn't have the bigger picture. The 'right' course of action to address both of those as your manager would be to make sure you understand the bigger picture, and then to let you (or whoever bears the effect of the decision) make the decision, not to make it for you, nor to let you stumble blindly into a bad one.

In terms of Jobs, Musk, Ford, Bezos, strategy informs tactics, and tactics inform strategy; as you say, you have to ask questions and seek to understand; you also need to communicate and help people connect the dots. But that's different than daily status reports and directives. Seeking to understand the why, rather than endlessly try and stay up to date of the what, is the goal. If you've built a healthy org, they'll raise up concerns about the what when they need to; even when they do, the fix for a bad situation is never focusing on the situation ("still in the hole?" "yep"), it's helping navigate a way out of it ("quit digging; here's a ladder, our new goal is climbing out"), and then figure out how to avoid it in the future ("how did we get in that hole? Why did we keep digging ourselves deeper? WHERE DID ALL THESE SHOVELS COME FROM?!").

And, yes, strategy is often boring and predictable; given the same knowledge, the same set of inputs, most people would make the same decision. It's one reason why I don't think executive pay is justified; I'm not intending to mythologize it or something. Just point out that as you climb a management hierarchy, your concerns move along the strategy/tactical axis toward the strategy side, and that oftentimes bad, poorly informed decisions are due to execs moving too far toward the tactical.

So many issues transcend the narrow scope of some product, which is why 'the effect' as you say, generally goes pretty far, meaning, executive leadership input which is essentially necessary.

It's also a good example of how circumstances can create existential scenarios that have nothing to do with classical strategy and yet take up so much time and be pretty important to a companies evolution.

To me, strategic issues like acquisitions, major product extensions or internalizing parts of the supply chain (i.e. Apple doing cars, their new ASIC chips) are big, CEO level things, those are not general executive strategic things.

The VP at Apple in charge of desktop software products has a 'strategy' that is not going to remotely sound like a 'strategy'.

I believe that the iPhone, since it's inception, has evolved along the lines of efficient product operations, not strategy. Or rather, their 'strategy' would be summarized by choosing 1-3 major consumer issues to focus on, having a new physical design to support that, and all of the marketing, carrier sales, ops and production issues resonating efficiently around it. Their 'strategy' is in a way just 'effective and coordinated product, product marketing, manufacturing, marketing operations' etc..

My reply still stands. "Hey soandso, we need to change our persistence strategy for this information due to regulatory compliance" "Uh, okay. What are the specifics?" "I'm not entirely sure; I've already reached out to soandso in legal/whatever to let them know we're working on this, reach out to them" "Got it"

You haven't been blindsided, nor have you been told what to do by fiat; you've been informed about a new stakeholder and been empowered to collect requirements from them.

'The situation' involved legal overview of ambiguous legal statutes, to the point wherein we had to engage specialized, outside law firms. Even just making that determination, and the wherewithal to know hat we needed outside help, the type of help, the firm to use ... way beyond me. We're dealing with a government agency using those 'backdoor' channels within the bureaucracy, very sensitive, political, relationship based.

In that context, the 'product part' (my job) was frankly the easiest, most obvious thing. It was all of the 'other things' that made it very difficult to navigate.

In the other anecdote, where I was 'blindsided' by an executive requiring a specific thing for a product without much discussion, there were broader issues at play, I think your assessment of 'context' might have helped, but even then, it still would have required coordination.

So these things all touch each other, and where they do, there's an VP involved, having to make decisions, every day.

I'm really wary of some of the commentary here that is dismissive of the kind of work executives do, I think those comments lack a kind of organizational maturity. Director and VP level jobs are the most brutal kinds of work, they're very stressful and operationally oriented, they are not these 'big office grand strategy' type jobs that I think maybe some people think they are. Though obviously 'it depends'.

I would not call "telling me what/how to do something in an area I am completely lost in" as "by fiat". By fiat implies they're telling you what/how to do something by the authority in their title.

And when it comes to giving details, I am not trying to say there isn't coordination or similar involved. This, again, has to do with the level of delegation. There are 10 I've seen discussed in coaching literature, and they range from "I am literally telling you ever step to take", up to "I gave you a broad desire I have, and now I walk away". What is right in a given situation varies, but the way you figure out what amount is right is by having a respectful conversation.

But I agree, operating at that level is not cushy. At the same time, I don't think it has to be as hard as it oftentimes is...but I think that to be true at every level. When a given position is really hard, it's because of bad management above them, I've generally found, but I've not observed many C-levels so can't comment there.

> They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter

This is true, but like you say -

> That said, good execs are rare

and the difference, in these meetings between the good asking probing questions and the bad doing it out of unaware self-justification in this case naively look somewhat the same. To go back to broad strokes, it seems easy to convince yourself that once the dysfunction sets in - that as good/motivated people leave over lack of being able to make progress, it's easier to maintain the dysfunction than fix it.

I'm in a part-academic, part-business company associated with a national lab, which means that commercial pressures towards growth are somewhat missing or ill-defined. There are lots of good people who truly believe in what they are doing, but it remains a truth that it's a lot easier to just move people around or let their contracts play out (if not permanent) than fire them, and there is clearly a reticence to promote useful or "essential" people out of the job where they are supporting things more critically that their position technically describes.

a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics.

If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree.

If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious or boring.

IIRC, that was already true for business customers before the iPhone.

> There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hiring Jony Ive) and an app store (so kudos for Jobs either for recognizing the benefit of allowing others to do the work to extend the iphone's software capabilities, or for hiring someone who did).

IIRC, the previous smartphone brought email, what the iPhone brought was email and the Web. With regard to the app store, I'm not sure if Jobs really deserves much kudos for accepting what users were already doing with their devices rather than continuing to try to force his original vision (first party native apps and web apps only, no third party native apps).

"what the iPhone brought was email and the Web" - So I never mentioned email re: the iPhone, that was supported back in the first smartphone in 92. For the web, I saw an article that mentioned that, but that doesn't jibe with what I remember or can find elsewhere. There were definitely phones that allowed you to browse the web, as early as the Nokia 9000 Communicator. I think it was the first to have 'unlimited' internet plans due to their partnership with AT&T, but I'm not sure that's nearly as convincing an innovation as 'the web'. Maybe the fact that mobile Safari had a look and feel similar to desktop Safari.

I list the app store from https://time.com/4837176/iphone-10th-anniversary/ and https://www.vox.com/2017/6/26/15821652/iphone-apple-10-year-... (though to be fair, the latter also includes the web), and because it jibes with my own recollections; I don't recollect app stores before the iPhone (though it came after launch). Yes, I remember user customizations, but not an official, searchable repository of them.

The Web and mail experience on ipod touch was simply great, not sure I could explain it better than 'just great'. Nothing world shattering, but it seemed the thing was just natural for surfing and emails. And music of course (but heh, ipod). Didn't care about apps, or anything (or plants vs zombie was a great fun time waster). The thing was thin, nice to hold, nice large screen, capacitive keyboard and... So much better than my n900 or my palmshits for Web and personal email. No 3g then! Just WiFi. It was a simple, nice blend.

As soon as I got hooked up on this, next phone-break I bought... A galaxy s2 then stayed android (mostly because iTunes, iTunes and iTunes, which I hated as much as I can hate any software... Talk about learned helplessness...).

The original ipod touch was the best Web terminal at that time, I think.

My understanding is that "the web" on mobile phones was crippled and unappealing prior to the iPhone. Sure you could "use" it, but most people didn't want to. In 2007 the web was on the desktop, and the iPhone bringing a desktop-like experience to a phone was a game-changer.

>Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...

So who built the first smartphone?

It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them?

BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone?

Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product?

Almost none.

'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself.

The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology.

'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.

Also not really.

Only rarely that gambit doesn't work, the sacrifice ritual is performed, and the manager gets a new, even better gig elsewhere.

I've had my manager change out above me, and the difference has been night and day. The good ones gave me a defined goal, then stayed out of my way, yes, but they also listened when I raised concerns, and brought me answers and solutions, and provided cover when I needed it. They made my job easier. The bad ones made my job harder.

A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks.

I mean, _explicitly_ this, to the point that I almost included it in the initial reply. The reason they think no projects have moved is that they can't sit in endless, pointless meetings making unhelpful suggestions to feel justified. Meanwhile, the scientists and developers who actually build things haven't been pulled all over the research campus to sit in these pointless meetings all day any more, so the "real" work being done, and incident response timing, has drastically improved.

Literally no projects have run any later than they always did (by initial plans, at least, they normally tended to restrospectively "move the goalposts" so that historically past projects are defined as having delivered "on time"), but this is being used as the primary justification for forcing everyone back in, full-time, from september.

Maybe I'm just exposing the dysfunction of my hybrid academic/industry working place, at this point. We had trouble recruiting before, will be interesting to see how many people leave because of this; informally many are searching for alternative employment.

Sadly this is all too common. It's the case in my large publicly traded company. Was the same when I was in 5-20 person startups. Our society needs people to have jobs so they can keep propping up the illusion of growth by buying more junk. This means there are many people (and entire organisations) which contribute nothing but consume time.

I can't locate it, but I've noticed similar effects, and this pandemic seems to support it also (even after compensating for my likely confirmation bias).

The window of opportunity is very small and those high value employees who the big corporates can ensnare with high salaries are surely willing to value or prioritize other criteria for the time being. That window will surely close soon if the choked out economy is throttled back up again and the neo-slaves go back to their bread and circus to keep them distracted.

You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position), but there is also a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven. Massive investments in capital assets in the form of real estate and their overhead costs that are also collateral and backs all kinds of other derivative things like valuations. For example, institutional value investors look to book assets for investment cues. If the justification for office space breaks and is sold or even leases are cancelled, it will skew the numbers and institutional investors (private and public) that divine those numbers who rely on or are even legally compelled by past patterns, are not necessarily adapted to these new or future patterns and changing realities.

The system, any system is inherently driven to revert to the mean. This community, over most other communities, should realize that.

Like I said, I think that this period has starkly divided the good and bad managers, and really shown the value of someone who actually cares about what their team needs, what's stopping that, and how to support/cover them from wider company politics.

Unfortunately, I think in any oppressive company (which seems to be most of them once they get to medium-large) the selective pressure is against these managers staying, as they often don't get this reciprocity from their managers, or somewhere above that, and at some point it becomes too much, and you basically have to write off the whole team as the things that actually let them be productive are removed and they drift away.

> a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven

I mean, we are a national facility, so the space is to a certain point already "priced in" since the physical machine it's built around isn't going anywhere. But we were struggling to accommodate new people and even embarking of plans for an expensive new building on campus. WFH or hybrid working would completely solve that without big expensive investments.

All the people I know "IRL" working with small companies and startups dropped the rented office space as soon as they could last year (sensibly) and probably aren't going to go back at all.

It really will be interesting how this affects things long term, but I am afraid that you are probably right about things reverting towards the mean, and the momentum against change at large companies meaning that the average experience is only being slightly affected by this year's "experiment".

What I am really surprised at - companies have been blind to these bad managers and are letting them run the show. Just blindly fire them. Life becomes simpler for everyone, including the company.

Remote is a win-win for everyone except the bad managers. Why keep them then. Is this so hard to realise ?