ARM ROUND THE SHOULDER OR BOOT UP THE BUM?

There’s increasing discussion about management style. In the past there was an arm-wrestling aggression and bullying in management depicted still in the “The Apprentice”. It seems to bring out the worst in everyone. It gets good ratings (over 4.5 million watch it) but it’s a bad advertisement for management.

 

In football, tough managers like Sir Alex Ferguson and now Pep Guardiola and Jűrgen Klopp are admired. Many want disciplinarians controlling the prima-donna footballers earning £20,000,000 a year. 

But it depends on the footballer whether it works. Some will respond to praise and encouragement, others to putdowns.  Contrast the tough, “call me Boss, son” approach with that of Gareth Southgate, England Manager, and Graham Potter, the Brighton Manager. Both gentler people, good at getting the best out of their players.

Some managers seem genial until you work for them. Sir John Hegarty – the founder of advertising agency BBH - always seems relaxed and charming but some of those who worked for him said he was unreasonably demanding.

Jeff Bezos – the spectacularly successful founder of Amazon – is allegedly a scornful and hard taskmaster with put-downs like “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”  The results of his company speak highly for this approach.  But could it be out of date? By the same token Steve Jobs was very successful but with little to applaud in the way he treated people. His successor Tim Cook who has a quieter more democratic style of management has lifted Apple to entirely new levels.

Being a bully is completely unacceptable nowadays, yet in politics bullying has apparently become endemic. The Tory Whips Office has become increasingly intimidatory; politics is a nasty business. Ask the Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She was recently reviled with shocking language by a Republican politician. 

Bullying in business has negative effects. Talent can be squashed by snide dismissiveness. We can all recall moments when self-confidence and creativity flowed away like water out of a bath.

Management of people is a real skill too few people think about or learn. It’s about getting the best out of others and there isn’t a simple formula for that because few managers and few employees are the same. But when we read about the poor levels of productivity in the UK blame poor management of people. It’s not easy but great managers are usually great controllers of results, of numbers and of which levers to pull to achieve desired outcomes. 

It's interesting that sometimes it needs a hands-off approach when management needs to stop being in charge and to start to behave like absentee managers. One of the best managers in my life just let me get on with it. I wonder if the companies I know that did so well during the various Covid lockdowns benefitted from people being left alone to do their work rather than having someone breathing down their neck and putting them on some time consuming training programme. 

I also wonder if the restrictions of the past two years may not have changed our expectations of and our need for great management. What we need is a mixture of inspiration, integrity, enthusiasm, and energy.  Most of all we need to believe in and trust our managers. Abraham Lincoln said something interesting about what making a person a manager can do to them. 

His observations are wise and raise the question that we should consider about all managers. Their effectiveness may seem great but what of their influence in the longer term. What of their character?

DECKCHAIRS, ICEBERGS AND FARCE

Maybe I’m tired or maybe the world really is falling apart. My day had started badly. I’d read the papers and the name Trump was getting me down.

He loves breaking eggs but does he know how to make omelettes? And with omelettes in my mind I started worrying about France. Marine Le Pen? They can’t, they won’t … will they? According to comedian Andy Hamilton they won’t because she’s a fake. Never served in the armed forces and has certainly never been a marine. Truth will out. But I’m no longer sure of that
   

Life is all smoke and mirrors. Take this morning. I bounded happily from the house and clicked my key at my silver, shining beast of a car expecting that welcoming beep, flash of lights and wing mirrors opening like a butterfly’s wings. But nothing happened. I tried again. Peering in I saw the lights had been left in the ‘on’ position. Flat battery. A vivid torrent of language flowed from my lips. First Trump and then this. Fate had taken advantage of me once too often, once too often. This was payback time. I kicked the car’s tyres and vowed vengeance. I called Jaguar and shouted a bit. And then I sulked. After a while bored with sulking I went out to whack my car again. And when I got to it I realised it wasn’t …my car that is. The same make, the same colour, the same interior but different number plate. Looking up I saw my own car further down the road. My blameless silver beast.

Laughing at myself my mood lifted. I thought about grandchildren and great nieces with whom everything seems so much simpler. Their games are more fun. I’d played shops with my two year old granddaughter whose pricing concepts are strikingly at odds with dynamic pricing. Everything seemed to cost £30 although everything my wife bought seemed to be cheaper. Tea, wine, Eurostar rail tickets all £30 until I trumped (sic) her strategy by asking “do you sell trumpets?” She gazed at me saying “I think I have one - can you ask your friend there what the price is?” My wife chipped in with a price “£12.50 will do” and so off I trotted with an imaginary bargain trumpet.  This interlude compared favourably with our grown up world.

Donald has a certain bully-in-the-playground, childlike quality as have virtually all our politicians. Last week they meekly voted “yes” despite most of them strongly disagreeing with it, to the motion to action the Brexit article 50. Jazz fan, portly, Tory Kenneth Clarke stood alone in saying “No” and therefore representing the 16,000,000 who voted remain. First past the post referendum politics has served us very badly.

Yet the country’s economy is outstripping expectation. So all is well then? Not exactly, no. However fast we go there’s still an iceberg ahead. And there’s a farcical belief that we can avoid it. As our granddaughter would say “oopsy.”