What's my problem with management

What's my problem with management - a question in my mind since early in my frenetic career. I realised that I can hardly agree on many well-spoken and broadly used management training material as golden rules. I thought I was alone until I read this book in (ex-) Symbian. Just in case, this is not a review to this book. There is no intention for me to speak for the (management) group, neither is my intention to generalise to all industries. 

There are a few things I feel quite strongly about, sometimes I do carry away a little,

• Managers should not be doing the engineering work, either they will be intimidated because of the hat you are wearing or you will soon find yourself on multiple critical paths, instead of lubricating the machine, you stalk it. JP has mentioned this during one of our conversations, which I agree. However, what I do believe is, a mature enough and healthily established team which doesn't care too much about the basic needs and do value open opinion would be able to deal with people no matter what hat he or she is wearing. Also, I can have more than one hat cann't I? What everyone else need to do the same is try to forget about all my other hats when I am wearing this one, as do myself.

• Managers should not be too handson, as this way you might neglect some other things where your energy and time would be much better spent, strategically, some might say. Handson and handsoff is really irrelevant, the more you think. I have seen a very efficient team with its director with exceptional talent and energy running like nuclear generator and his team operates around him providing information, executing tasks, find their own ways around. Only top priority things will be picked up by him and priority effect propagate through the whole team. This turns out to be a much more efficient way than typical way of submission-review-decision-agreement-... There is nothing wrong to confess some entity is good at generating stuff (although that means there is a good chance it will burn out sooner as I heard the best way to longevity apparently is doing nothing). Fancy organisation chart will show you how a matrix is supposed to work under ideal situation. On the contrary, I found it gives birth to bureaucracy and unclear responsibility.

• Managers and engineers are two different types of people living in their own world. Even though sometime one type try to get face familiar and be friendly to the other, they are by nature conflicting groups. Reason being, one is managed by the other and manage means control, on our tiny planet and in our small minds (thanks Steve, for the nice quote). People are just people. There is difference in what we do because what we like. There is no golden rule to be a manager as far as I am concerned, only successful ones and failed ones. Management is not about control, not at least when you realise that there is a common goal, with shared resource. We just have different stands in where we are. You might feel great when your name gets mentioned in the board meeting and feel excited about it. This does mean probably you get more paid in what you do (in fact, this means you are supposed to take more responsibility and do more job!). This doesn't mean being a manager is superior. To really appreciate this is a philosophical challenge but to realise that being a manager you are not utilising resource to achieve your goal, on the contrary, you are supposed to maximise your strength and capacity within your role and health constraint to help the team achieving their goals. Unfair? Maybe, why you get paid more then?

• Being a manager, the last thing you want to do is to assume and convince yourself that someone else is going to make tough decisions for you or things will evolve themselves to the nice shinny direction when you feel difficult to deal with right now. You need to kiss goodbye to these illusion if you ever want to be an exceptional manager, my opinion. Craig (faked name) worked for me before as a some project manager. He is a very energetic and likeable chap. He likes to be in control of things, which is nothing wrong. From the first day, people can see him everywhere, in every meeting, I mean, literaturely. Great, finally we have someone who cares about things, people talked about. However, after a while, quite obviously, it turned out that things were still things, which got talked about, put in hands and lips, and then put aside to different places or back to exactly the shelf where it came from. Why? Because to create an impression of being busy is a skill managers as a group has mastered for a long period of time, possibly from the beginning of management. At the end of day, what matters is how you would make things happen (or disappear which I prefer).