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the link in the description below if you could change one thing about your job what would it be
i'm sure a lot of you will say the management in a recent study conducted by mit american workers
identified management and the culture they create as the reason why they were looking for different
jobs 10 times as frequently as workers who were looking for another job to get a pay increase
good managers do exist but even if you are lucky enough to find one they are often stuck
with poor management of their own that trickles down throughout the entire corporate structure
in an age where staff turnover is costing businesses billions of dollars a year
you might expect that companies would do their best to address this problem but even
companies like google and apple that do their absolute best to create world-leading working
environments are still called out for their toxic leadership it's not just staff turnover either
management structures determine the direction of the companies and it feels like every other
week their poor performance is the reason behind a company going under so why do managers always suck
well believe it or not this has been studied in great depth by a number of business publications
and the results suggest this is not just people being angry at other people who are just slightly
higher up the corporate totem pole managers always have and always will be terrible at their jobs but
it is possible to see why and with any luck you can use these findings to avoid being a terrible
manager yourself so it's time to learn how money works which was made possible today by the daily
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served to you every morning with the daily upside now back to our incompetent manager there are some
obvious issues to address first in a perfect world managers would be promoted into their
positions after displaying strong proficiency in the roles they would be managing or better
yet they would be recruited because of their qualifications and experience in similar roles
obviously this does not always happen and nepotism favoritism and plain old bad hiring decisions give
us managers that should not rightfully have their jobs but this is probably not as big of a problem
as people think especially not in large companies where hiring and promotion decisions are handled
by strict working procedures not individuals who could give the job to their useless son-in-law
instead one of the biggest problems is what business analysts call the dilbert principle
popularized by comic writer scott adams the dilbert principle states that incompetent
workers who are not bad enough to fire are put in supervisory roles to get them out of the direct
workflow this normally doesn't happen directly but rather it happens through lateral movements that
line the dilberts up for promotions down the line if a dilbert works in a research analyst team but
they consistently make coding mistakes which slows down the work of their fellow analysts
a manager might decide to move the dilbert into a non-operational role for example this particular
dilbert might be put in charge of helping new employees showing them around and teaching them
how to use the company systems this lets the proficient analyst remain on task without having
to stop or fix the dilbert's mistakes or teach the new employee how to connect to the office printers
now in a vacuum this is good management people should be given tasks they can perform
well but the problem comes in when management positions open up in this hypothetical company
the dilbert would have an edge over his arguably more competent peers because on paper not only
does he have the experience of doing the business analyst work that everybody else did but he was
also responsible for onboarding new employees a skill that looks great for a potential manager
the dilbert gets their promotion because they were given a task to keep them out of everybody
else's way now i want you to remember this dilbert because believe it or not there is something to
be learned from them about effective management which i will address later a similar concept in
business management is the peter principle this was a concept developed by lawrence j peter a
high archaeologist and published in a book of the same name this theory states that good employees
are promoted until they are given a job that they no longer can perform well at which point they are
no longer promoted and they remain in the position that they do poorly if a junior analyst performs
well above their peers for a few years they should be first in line to get a team leader role if it
becomes available if they do well in a team leader role they might get offered a project management
role but if they suck at working on deliverable projects then they won't be promoted again and
this role will indefinitely be filled by someone who is not particularly good another great example
would be michael from the office by all accounts he was a fantastic salesman and that's why he was
promoted to regional manager the problem was that he lacked the skills or personality to perform
this role effectively so he stayed there for three years on end making the life of his subordinates
miserable the peter principle is important for people making hiring and promotion decisions
to understand because a cursory understanding of this theory would have you believe that corporate
positions are simply a ladder where each rung is harder to climb than the one below it which
is of course simply not true this means that some peters could do really well in a position
above their current role just as they had done well in a position below their current role but
nobody would ever know because they aren't going to be promoted outside of their position that they
aren't doing well in and nobody wants to move into a position below what they currently have
the peter principle also covers a unique brand of manager who is no longer motivated by promotions
these are the people that may have been motivated to go above and beyond to secure themselves a
promotion or a big pay raise but are now happy with the job and the salary that they have
they don't want to be promoted so there is no reason for them to put in the work beyond the
bare minimum to avoid termination so far we have only looked at the often hated middle managers
in large corporations these are the people that statistically most of you watching will have the
displeasure of dealing with in your careers but these issues often go right up to the very top
founder syndrome is the theory that companies face significant difficulty when their founders
maintain disproportionate control over the company's activities coming at the expense of the
employees shareholders and customers founders are obviously very important figures in a company and
their vision is what is responsible for getting the company started in the first place but great
visionaries are often not great managers founders can often conflate themselves with the brand who
do you think when i say spacex facebook microsoft or even bloomberg this can be good if the founder
is charismatic and publicly likable but that's rare because the public doesn't generally like
billionaire company founders that much this gets a whole lot worse if they end up doing something
terrible because their personal reputation is inextricably linked to the company's reputation
founder syndrome is also likely to foster a culture of micromanagement as founders want to
retain control over all elements of the business no matter how large it gets the founders skills
and experience play a huge part in the initial success of a company and they often want their
work precisely replicated by everybody that comes on board to assist them with scaling the business
founders also fail to manage the tedium that comes with running an effective business a startup is
fast paced and a company leadership will be challenged every day with massive decisions
that will determine the direction and survival of the business once a company is at scale though
a lot of senior managers time is simply spent overseeing boring business functions are people
being paid on time are staff workloads being managed effectively are expenses being properly
processed these are all things that are essential to a healthy business and they are all roles that
a good ceo should oversee but good founders don't necessarily make good managers and these kinds
of tedious tasks are the first to be neglected by self-proclaimed big picture guys if management is
eternally destined to suck then what can people do if they want to try and be good managers
themselves first of all that is a noble pursuit and i guarantee wanting to be a good manager
makes you a better manager than most people the next step is to really ask yourself why you want
to be a manager in the first place for many people the reason is that positions where you manage
people are more prestigious and better compensated if you are in it for the money and the power then
don't be shy about it just be honest with yourself and admit that you are probably going to end up
doing a subpar job if you do genuinely want to do well for all business stakeholders then the next
most important thing to ask yourself is if you have the right stuff to be an effective manager
there are things you can do to improve these skills but there are still always going to be
people that are happier keeping to themselves and working on a test they are individually good at
the dober principle that we discussed earlier is often used to discredit managers that can't do the
work of their subordinates but the principle does work in reverse too some of the very best managers
in a company would not be very good at the operational work that their team does they instead
have the people skills to know what tasks to leave up to what people and the self-awareness to know
that micromanagement is not helpful valuable or appreciated the story of managers single-handedly
guiding company to successes are rarely true but it is important that you believe that they are to
find out why go and watch my video analyzing the myth of the job creator a special thanks
again to the daily upside for making it possible for everybody to keep on learning how money works