As pressure is brought to bear on companies and their managers to become more agile, one wonders what would happen to those so-called managers “busy” filling seats but not producing much.
The story is told about a group of cannibals who were hired by a large multinational company. On their first day, the HR Manager gave them a welcome talk in the company’s auditorium.
“You’re part of a great company now,” he said. “You get exactly the same benefits as everyone else on the team, including being able to eat in the staff canteen. I however have one request for you: just please don’t eat any of the other employees.”
All the cannibals solemnly promised that they would not do so.
After a few weeks had passed, the cannibals’ boss called them together.
“Every one of you has really worked hard, and I’m very happy with your performance. However, I have to announce that one of our secretaries has gone missing. None of you perhaps knows what could have happened to her, do you?”
All the cannibals shook their heads. “No,” they said, “we have no idea what happened to her.”
Convinced by their sincerity, the boss left the room. After waiting for him to be out of hearing, the cannibals’ leader turned to the rest of them and angrily said, “OK, which one of you idiots ate that secretary?”
Slowly, a hand at the end of the table went up in the air.
“You fool!” shouted the leader. “For weeks we’ve had an absolute ball eating managers and no-one noticed a thing, but nooo, you had to go and eat someone who was actually doing some work in this place …!”
From my ongoing interactions with both private and public sector organisations, I have seen that many have bloated management ranks. I’m sometimes quite gobsmacked to see how many people are hired to do such a little work. And few of them know what goes on in the rest of the company. They just keep to themselves in their own departments doing whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing.
This has given rise to many people expressing the desire to be a “manager”. They think that there is prestige attached to the title as well as the promise of better pay. The nice thing, in their view, is that managers get all this “position and pay” but don’t actually have to DO anything.
In the case of many managers, this is unfortunately true.
One of the reasons that companies are struggling in the current economic climate is that they have hired too many people to do too little work. This has contributed to the perception that managers don’t actually have to do any work. They’re just required to, well, manage – what ever that may mean.
I have always believed that the most vulnerable time of a person’s career is when they go on leave. That’s the time people find out whether they can do without you or not. That’s when they find out whether you have been doing anything of value to the company.
Sit back and assess whether you are adding value to your company. If you are, you are one of those who can be referred to as “talent”. If you’re not, you need to discuss with your immediate superior what you can do to change that.
Should you have a number of people reporting to you, do an exercise to determine how productive they are. If you find that you’ve got a lot of “floating logs”, there’s no need to try to get rid of them. Collaborate with your company’s strategic thinkers to create a plan to utilize their skills and services in ways that will create new – additional – value for your company. That’s what innovation is all about – doing things you’ve never done before.
Hopefully, none of your managers will be at risk of being eaten!
Alan Hosking is the Publisher of HR Future magazine, www.hrfuture.net and @HRFuturemag. He is an internationally recognised authority on leadership competencies for the future and teaches experienced and younger business leaders how to lead with empathy, compassion, integrity, purpose and agility. He has been an Age Management Coach for two decades. In 2018, he was named by US-based web site Disruptordaily.com as one of the “Top 25 Future of Work Influencers to Follow on Twitter“. In 2020, he was named one of the “Top 200 Global Power Thought Leaders to watch in 2021” by peopleHum in India. In 2022, he has been named on the Power List of the “Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership in 2022” by LeaderHum.