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1) As previously mentioned, people are hired for management (or executive, or whatever) skills based on the notion that those general skills are the most important qualification. I think that in part it's people with management degrees and non-specific qualifications trying to defend their value by hiring others based on the same qualifications. And if you're in a company big enough for an HR department, those are people who often know nothing about any part of the business but who are professionals at hiring and managing employees and managers. So the system reinforces and perpetuates itself.
2) The Peter Principal: In an organizational hierarchy, employees are promoted to their level of incompetence and then stay there.
3) Or maybe you just are working for a particularly crappy manager?
It's not just retail. I work in a research lab and the managers that come in today have no freaking clue about what we do. They just substitute PowerPoint and quotas for ignorance. It wasn't like this when I first started in the 80s. Those managers I worked for back then really knew their stuff. They had been where I was and knew the job or at least knew enough to understand what we were doing. These new guys literally don't understand high school math. I had one manager yelling at me wanting to know "how much all those meters cost and who authorized buying them?"
Quote:
Originally Posted by reed303
In my experience, it used to be that "they hired the resume", now it seems even worse when they "hire the haircut".
Reminds me of the commercial where the guy runs and shaves his head because the pictures of all the execs are bald.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pughnose
1)
2) The Peter Principal: In an organizational hierarchy, employees are promoted to their level of incompetence and then stay there.
I think in many places today they just skip the promoted part and hire them right in above their level of incompetence.
Because their job is to manage.
It's the job of the people on the front lines to know the product.
Regardless of how much they may tell you that in biz school, the reality is you cannot manage that which you don't understand. Oh you can make a big show, fuss a lot, talk a lot about metrics, but in the end, if you as manager don't know what your people are doing, your dept will fail.
Regardless of how much they may tell you that in biz school, the reality is you cannot manage that which you don't understand. Oh you can make a big show, fuss a lot, talk a lot about metrics, but in the end, if you as manager don't know what your people are doing, your dept will fail.
I don't know how anyone could be comfortable putting someone in charge of managing an operation if they have no knowledge of the operation or product.
Or how a board of directors could put a CEO in charge of a company with no knowledge of the intricate workings of the company or field.
I don't know how anyone could be comfortable putting someone in charge of managing an operation if they have no knowledge of the operation or product.
I agree, it doesn't make much sense and if I was a manager I would make sure to know everything about the product.
My father works in the trades and this is his biggest complaint with today's workplace. He is a machinist and says back in the old days, the bosses knew the ins and outs of the equipment they worked on. That benefited the workers in many ways. Now, he says the production supervisors couldn't tell you the difference between two switches.
Regardless of how much they may tell you that in biz school, the reality is you cannot manage that which you don't understand. Oh you can make a big show, fuss a lot, talk a lot about metrics, but in the end, if you as manager don't know what your people are doing, your dept will fail.
The complaint isn't what the people are doing, the complaint is that they don't know the product, there's a difference.
Product doesn't matter. They get the job because they can manage people and they are good with customers. They can make the store run withing the budget and labor constraints and the store is profitable.
Given time, they will learn the product. But that's not why they were hired. Ask anyone who has worked retail and I bet almost all of them have 'trained' several managers.
I volunteer at a place and luckily, the managers are very knowledgeable and nice people.
There is a higher up manager that comes through and seems to yell and criticize a lot.
I'd like to share my story of playing world of warcraft.
Often the leader of those groups is not the nicest person, but the person with the most experience / knowledge of the fights.
Because when you have 3 different people arguing on what way to do something (and often throwing out misinformation), the leader has to make an executive decision on which way is actually best. And usually the guy best fitted to do that is the one who knows the fights.
You do not want some noob, maybe nice, but noob, making the calls. It's gonna fail and it happens.
Being "good with people" doesn't mean much in that game (the groups are like 15 peope in size). I think most people would prefer a hard ass who knows the fights to some polite dude (although a cool guy) who is very unqualified to be leading a group in that game.
So anyways, that's what I think of when people argue about qualified / unqualified "leaders" who may be good with people but don't actually know the subject.
Imagine a very nice basketball coach but who doesn't know the subject. He's not gonna know who is carrying the team, who is pulling their weight, who is not, who to take out and when, and who to reward.
It makes me wonder why some jobs list "leadership experience" as a positive quality. Cuz if you're a leader at construction, maybe it's because you know the most or a lot about construction. Doesn't necessarily mean you will be a good computer programming "leader".
Because you have to supervise and inspect peoples' work and if you don't know the subject you can't do that.
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