A unique opportunity came my way this week in the form of some assigned reading. My boss gave me a book, Managing When No One Wants to Work by Ralph Peterson. I can't recall if I raised my eyebrows, a pleading look plastered across my face, as he handed the book to me. I feel like that's how I must have reacted. I did something because he felt the need to defend it before passing it my way. Granted, I'm in no position to refuse help, of any sort, having never worked a management position before. But, for some reason, the idea of management books has never sat well with me. At least I can try to make the best of the situation by adding the surprise reading to my list. Sure, it's not exactly non-fiction but I don't want to suffer alone so I figured I'd drag you along for the ride. Don't worry, I'll try and keep it fun.
Still, management culture has never sat well with me. 'How to Manage' books have always seemed a polite way to say 'How to Manipulate and Control People in a Work Environment' and the advice is usually the same. The advice being to, essentially, look sharp and give the impression you are better than your employees but not talking to them that way. Distilling that concept even further, the idea is to look and act like a soulless automaton that is solely devoted to its work. Looking back now I know a few managers who really had that image down. Okay, yes, management is a lot more nuanced than just that; it's a job that can take a lifetime to master. At the end of the day though, the name of the game is still controlling people and a lot of that is based upon image. Which is something Managing When No One Wants to Work also focuses on.
At 157 pages long, Managing When No One Wants to Work contains, if I recall, twenty-seven lessons in the form of stories. As I mentioned before, this is a concept that could work quite well. Unfortunately, a lot of the stories came across as quite muddled at times and, even worse, didn't offer any definitive proof that the strategies work. I will grant that some of the stories presented some common-sense strategies and some appropriate cautionary tales. Again, I did learn a few things here and there, but some of the stories were also self-defeating. Many of the stories contained stories within stories, as Ralph Peterson recalled events in which he lectured other budding managers/supervisors. Sometimes, after a story, there would be a brief post-script describing what happened months or weeks after the story. In some of the stories the managers who had been lectured still ended up quitting, even after following the advice. In one story a manager was reamed for being a poor manager only to be described as still limping along in the same position months later. During moments like those I would briefly lay the book down and stare off into space as I struggled to figure out the point of what I had just read.
Of course, the whole book misses a very crucial issue. What I could really use is a book titled: Managing When You Don't Want to Work.
That's all for now. My regular reading/discussions should, hopefully, resume later this week. I'm currently in early pages of Exile, and because of my tendency to forget Exile at work I've also started The Briar King. So far both books seem promising and are guaranteed to be more interesting than today's selection.
No comments:
Post a Comment