Good managers are essential to any successful organization. Of that I have no doubt.
The better manager, the experts tell me, hones a hard-working and productive work team that punches above its weight.
Great managers, I am told, must have the oomph to inspire their group into doing what they otherwise wouldn’t, and without creating psychological distress. Furthermore, the crew should be so emboldened, that their tasks are completed on time, with enthusiasm, and extra energy to do even more.
No wonder Public Sector Reform is not working!
As new thought has it, the good manager produces works of wonder. He, or she, is workmate (read that workhorse), comic, psychologist and confessor.
Managers must be engaging, and must challenge, stimulate and entertain (while getting serious work done) their team. If any member doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well, or doesn’t like to work at all, it is the leader’s fault.
A manager is now to be a transfigured Jesus. He, or she, should readily turn both cheeks, again and again; be willing to be crucified for the sins of the team.
Having to do this, he should not take the name of the Lord our God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain. So he grins and tries to bear it. Then when he fails, he calls out to Jesus.
The thing is nobody selected a work team for Jesus.
He picked his own men – all 12, without consultation.
Most leaders do not have that luxury when they head up a group of workers. They must make do with the motley crew they get, one of whom will paint the main door in the wrong colour. Or break a window pane while yapping and installing it the wrong way. Or adhere to the bedroom floor the bathroom tiles.
In any tight control of expenditure, the team leader may be expected to underwrite recovery and replacement. After all, the careless worker wasn’t engaged and motivated enough to do things right.
Am I old-fashioned in thinking workers should blinking well motivate themselves?
The last time I checked, the definition of a worker was one who works. Now if you are doing a lousy job, you can hardly be said to be really working. As such, a worker will only be one who works well.
Sir Roy Trotman needs to speak to that. Don’t get tied up. Sir Roy and I, we both work well!
It’s just that unions the world over have been responsible for the hatchery of a squadron of shirkers, and for their nurturing. I must say, though, that the admonitions of the very Sir Roy and other unionists of the likes of Bobby Morris and Derek Alleyne of giving full service for wages fought for have not gone unnoticed or unheralded.
But there is this notion by the younger whatchamacallit that work should be fun – always fun. Not even life is always happy, and it is certainly not always easy.
Work was meant to be what it is: a concerted and concentrated effort to complete a task, the goal of which (provided it is reasonable and sound) is of greater import than any spin-off fun.
I trust Ms Maureen Holder doesn’t get it all wrong about me again. The vast majority of working teams I have been privileged to head were great. They simply wanted to work.
I blame our straying education system. There was a time when primary school produced rounded pupils with a healthy sense of enquiring of the world around them.
Instead we now factory-produce children for the 11-Plus Exam, who have no thirst for wider knowledge, no interest in their culture or anybody else’s, except America’s decadent hip hop, rap and gangsterism export.
And they have got the impression they do not need to work hard, and when employed (which politicians tell them they have a right to) that they need not work at all – they just need to be entertained.
And these management experts insist that a good manager gives foresight to the blind and common sense to the dumb!
