About management

In these times at least some companies do recognize that it is important to have enough Indians to do the work. In the last years many have grown too big in administration and increased the amount of chiefs in favor of operators.

And especially the managers often eat up the most of the money a companies earns. But I guess even more money is wasted when performing big mergers that go along with a rebranding.

Another observation reveals that most people are somehow managers. A person that cleans up the room is treated as "facility manager". Sounds good, isn't it? - Well, my special honor goes to everyone who does a hard and dirty work, they don't need to be any form of manager to get my respect. Everyone who does a good work has my full respect for that. My doubt is that many companies do "job rebranding" to attract people. For a job (title) that supports (self) esteem people may also accept a lower income and therefore this might be a good strategy of companies to save money. And further there are a lot of jobs that only a few people accept to do.

The very strangest thing that my experience shows is that although everywhere it is full of managers, it seems that since economical crisis started (or even already before) many services are not provided in the quality any more that I got used to. The efficiency in many places seem to go down instead of getting better.

I think the reason is that calling every action being management and calling everyone a manager does dissolve the whole meaning of management. Real good management may already be absent in many places.

Luckily as long as Wikipedia and other sites are around we can be full of hope that the important knowledge of management does not get lost. From Wikipedia about management:

Management in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

If you look at this definition you notice that management is an activity that requires

• having a very good overview of the whole thing that is being managed
• good social skills
• good organizational skills (many think that this is something you get automatically when getting adult but this is not necessarily the case)
  
• ability to resolve conflicts
• accounting skills
• ...
  

A good manager must be able to do accounting (at some level) and even must be half a psychologist (I talked to a manager who told me that sometimes it is also necessary to help employees to solve their private problems to get them productive again).

Management is important to have a company working efficiently! While reducing number of managers in the downturn it is important to increase or at least maintain the quality level in management.

It is important to have as many Indians for the war as you can feed but it is important that they are motivated and run against the right target(s)!

Related post: Management by Customer.