GOOD MANAGERS, SCARCE
Capable, qualified and confident mangers are hard to find these days.
At first, I thought, I was considering C-E-O types. But, I quickly found the real need to be in lesser management levels. Is that, perhaps, what the term “middle management” actually means when translated into work-day-routines. Lesser wheels are quite important, too..
I have known some good business managers in my time, and I have had my share, and more, of men and women who – while they held important places - were not capable of fullfilling even minimal duties of that office.
There are various ways in which a worker becomes a manager. There was a time, not too long ago, when all Junior had to do to become manager of Daddy's domain in business, industry or commerce was to be there. The success of such family ventures usually depended upon the presence of a third party, an often unseen presence; sometimes, unrewarded too... a silent third party who had the welfare of the company close to heart; someone who tended to all the essential affairs of the firm on Junior's behalf.
The executive breed usually made quite show of putting in sufficient time to gain printed proof of a business eduction from one of the nation's finest schools.. Such a diploma, suitably framed and displayed on his office wall, was throught to qualifiy any recipients for whatever management levels they chose to occupy. The system worked well as long as they could keep support personnel in place to really run the business.
In addition to such inherited leadership, there was, for a long time an honorary type of executive opportunity. All one had to do to qualify was to to amount to something in a totally different field – fly an ocean, win a sports event, swim the impossible stream, climb the highest mountain – and, as a sort of reward and specail recognition for having done so, one was granted the place of being an executive with an industrial firm in a totally unrelated field. The "name" assoiated with "fame" was supposed to engender new fields of business.
I actually worked in such a comic-opera settings for several years and I remember well some of the strange pitfalls it held.
Fortunately, such episodes lasted ,as a general, for just three years.
That, in my experience, was the average career life of most managers in larger firms. It took one full year to settle into the new job and to learn who willing, did what, when and why. It took a second year for him or her to realize that it was not going to work - none of the things planned were to get done. Then, it took a third year, or most of it, to find a new job somewhere – anywhere – which could serve as “an advancement” or, be cited in PR releases as being a “challenging change of pace."
This was just one of the in-depth causes of the virtual demise of American industry. We have been too long under temporary or transient management.
A.L.M. December 27, 2002 [c522wds]
