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Incompetents are less threatening than good workers. Like someone said, they always vote the strongest/smartest one off the Island first!
There may be something to that for well, especially for insecure managers. Eliminate anyone thats a threat either to your position, or who can see thru your BS easily and question the status quo.
I see this a lot, many managers are afraid to fire anyone. They become friends with other co-workers at work, it is tough having to fire anyone. A good manager will not balk when the time is right to fire someone. Making crass judgements without evidence is a no no, however. You want to have all the evidence lined up, HR included, and then proceed to do your managerial duties, which includes firing if need be.
In the context of this thread, there is great irony in what you say. As this discussion goes on, there are thousands of managers across this great land sharpening their managerial weapons and lining up "evidence" to fire anyone but the lazy incompetents we are talking about.
Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
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Critical Root Cause: Incompetent Management team.
There are lot more bad managers out there than there are good ones. Very few companies promote people into management roles based on their management talent, but rather success in their previous role. For example if you are a good sales person you are promoted to a sales manager, a good engineer may be promoted to a Project Manager and so on. Very different skill sets at play. Than, there is always plenty of nepotism, favoritism, sexism thrown in for a good measure.
When a company puts someone into a management role for all the wrong reasons, the team performance of said manager will likely reflect those same behaviors.
Oddly enough, this actually makes some business sense too (obviously depending on the business and the job being performed).
I think an awful lot of people get frustrated because in their opinion, they're hard working, knowledgeable/well educated, and just can't see how a co-worker can keep a job while clearly lacking in those areas. Meanwhile, it's quite possible the knowledgeable, hard worker also just comes in every day and performs the work at hand in a rather zombie-like fashion -- not really making an effort to remind others of his/her accomplishments and not spending much time on friendly chit-chat.
Meanwhile, the perceived "clueless slacker" is adding value in less obvious ways, such as keeping morale higher than it would otherwise be by cracking a few jokes, letting people relieve some stress when they have conversations with him/her, etc. He/she may also be in a position where he or she is "client facing", so the warm personality really helps please customers and keeps them satisfied.
Yeah, office politics is ever-present and makes certain things unfair in the workplace. I don't think that's ever going away. But I'm just saying, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the proverbial forest for the trees; getting too caught up in "doing your job" rather than realizing a lot of what you do gets taken for granted after a while if you're not keeping the lines of communications open with everyone else.
I remember an old job where simply going to the happy hours on Friday night was a big help in keeping on top of things. Why? I don't think it was really intentional on anyone in management's part, but a lot of frank communication happened after people were loosened up with a few beers and had the chance to talk freely with people from multiple departments, all in one place. You'd often finally learn what so-and-so was always doing in their office when they had the light on at 6PM and everyone else was leaving, or get the scoop on why there was tension between departments A and B, or ??
You're speaking of the prom kings and queens of the workplace right? You can put them on a financial report as intangible assets, right?
Well, in the broad scope of the nasty business of plain ole office politics, the kind that creates the dysfunctional workplaces some of us can't stand, this is just the ripened old con game. The sharp-witted eagle eyed vets in this thread are well acquainted with this old b.s., we are not buying into it. We are not social inverts who don't get the importance of a little finesse where it really does count. But this old con is always pulled out to give cover to and make excuses for the managerial class and their privileged subordinates
Sometimes it's just because you need to keep the staffing level up, and HR makes it very difficult to fire somebody, and even more difficult to hire -- in many firms, if you can't fill an open job within 6 months, it's assumed you don't really need that headcount and the position is eliminated.
I work in IT, and finding new hires who have the basic necessary skills and can pass background checks and security clearances is very difficult. My company has positions in Chicago and Boston that have been open for over a year now, with zero qualified applicants.
I've seen two specific instances of "keeping on incompetent works" because of this. At my previous employer, we had one utterly useless guy on the team. He could never meet a deadline and usually his coworkers had to take over his projects and re-do half the work. We went to the manager and explained the issue, and our manager came right out and explained that yes, he could fire this guy, but if he did, the company would not allow him to hire a replacement, the rest of the team would just have to take on the extra workload, which would also mean more on-call days for the remaining staff. So he kept his job, it was better for us, his teammates, to do half his workload then all of it, and none of us wanted to be on-call more often.
A second case was where I was working with a major consulting firm that was handling the outsourced IT operations for a large corporation. Part of the contract stipulated that they had to have X people on-site at the client's main site 24x7. Because it was so difficult to not only find qualified employees, but also to get them approved both by the consulting firm's HR and then by the client's own background check process, it was easier to keep the non-productive woman around than to risk being out of compliance with the contract by being understaffed.
In the context of this thread, there is great irony in what you say. As this discussion goes on, there are thousands of managers across this great land sharpening their managerial weapons and lining up "evidence" to fire anyone but the lazy incompetents we are talking about.
There are, not all managers are honest and truthful. This is where politics come into play and the good ol' boy system. People put work in with play, they ride each other to the top or at least attempt to. This all stems from the top down, and all it takes is one to introduce this type of behavior, whether it's intended or not.
There are lot more bad managers out there than there are good ones. Very few companies promote people into management roles based on their management talent, but rather success in their previous role. For example if you are a good sales person you are promoted to a sales manager, a good engineer may be promoted to a Project Manager and so on. Very different skill sets at play. Than, there is always plenty of nepotism, favoritism, sexism thrown in for a good measure.
When a company puts someone into a management role for all the wrong reasons, the team performance of said manager will likely reflect those same behaviors.
That's the Peter Principle. In the corporate model, people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Then that's where they stay. It takes a very dedicated top team to avoid that because correcting it requires moving someone who is underperforming to a level where they DID do good work. And that usually involves a demotion. It's the cause of many a management reorganization. Too many people have reached their level of incompetence and the whole company needs a shake-up.
Me too. I've seen that quite a bit in many companies. However, the absolute worst I've seen involved a young woman having an affair with the Chairman of the Board. She actually worked in the Accounting department. She got a company car (Lexus), an expense account and an office. She was a clerk, but was given more power than her boss, the CFO. She even was allowed to go over his head to the Chairman when she didn't like whatever she was assigned to do.
A lot of people here are blaming female co-workers for the being the slackers and under-performers. Try blaming the male bosses who fall for that act. No women would be able to sleep with the boss if he wasn't interested.
A lot of people here are blaming female co-workers for the being the slackers and under-performers. Try blaming the male bosses who fall for that act. No women would be able to sleep with the boss if he wasn't interested.
True, but I would like to think that this is a rare situation...if not then I wouldn't be inclined to necessarily blame the male.
Working hard, being smart and creative, projecting a professional attitude-all these are ''threats'' to those who just show up and watch the clock.
Honest excellence is never valued or rewarded.
True feelings of worth and purpose in today's work places must come from within ourselves.
44 years of working. Can't wait to retire in 7 years, if not sooner!
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