What a good manager does

My father spent his career establishing and running large research laboratories, and he taught me early on that a manager’s job is not to “manage” her/his people. A good manager’s job is to hire the best people he/she can find, and then protect them from outside interference so that they can get on with the job at hand.

Too many people reach management with the idea that a manager’s job is to sit in a big office and give orders. They use management as a way to gratify their need for power or status. I once worked in an organization (which shall remain nameless) in which everyone from the president down ate together in the same cafeteria and had offices about the same size. Some years later significant changes appeared: managers began to get bigger offices with fancier furniture, reserved parking places appeared for them, upper managers got permission to travel first class, they built a separate dining room for the managers so that they wouldn’t have to eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the staff. It is probably no surprise that within a few years the company was in deep trouble.

My principle has always been that a manager’s primary job is to run interference for his/her staff, and to do whatever tasks need to be done, no matter how “menial”, to help her/his staff get on with their jobs unimpeded. There are some other important tasks for managers – mentoring young staff is one, helping to provide a guiding vision is another, encouraging staff to improve their skills and keep up with their field is another. But the single most important task is to face outward and protect one’s staff from the inevitable inanities of the corporate bureaucracy that always exists.