View from Above

Have you realised how we pray, wish and hope for things that when we finally achieve them, you are so disappointed? They no longer hold value or meaning like we used to think.

Of all things that economics is not, perhaps this is the only true value that economics has to society: needs. A career, profession or trade has layers of specialisation and by implication seniority. People generally aspire to grow to the top of whatever it is they do for a living. This is the shortcomings of a career.

That your earning capacity is directly linked to a job title and sometimes to how many people report to you. You reach a stage where no matter how good you are, you will have reached the ceiling. Your only options being to stay where you are, move higher up or change careers.

Changing careers is usually not an option for many people due to the time it takes to develop your skills in any given career. So moving higher up seem plausible. The operational roles higher up seem okay, until you are now faced with the reality that you must now ascend to management.

Operational people perform the job and deliver on whatever it is they are responsible for. Management on the hand seem to be a bunch of people whose job is to make the job of operational people diffucult. All management does, at least in my experience, is talk and talk some more while doing nothing that adds tangible value to companies. They love meetings and they love reports. Meetings seem to keep managers busy while reports are a way of making people work even more. Most of the reports that are drawn for management are never read.

In my experience as a manager in different companies, management is the worst job you can do if you are an operationally inclined person. Performance and delivery seem to be measured differently to how it is measured in operations.

This is the coldest place in the corporate culture as your job title determines who in the company you can associate with. Non management staff see you as a manager while the rest of managers higher up see you as someone way below. I have also learnt that this is the level where you find the most non performing people. It also seem to be the level where it is most difficult to fire someone. Managers with poor performances would rather be redoployed to other departments than be relieved of their duties.

Management was the most frustrating area of work I have had to do in my life. Three months goes by without any tangible deliverable you can point to. You spend so much time in meetings that produce nothing but commitments for other meetings to follow. Decisions that are continually deferred for future meetings. It comes to a point where you wonder if your job is actually worth it. You feel redundant as there is absolutely no noticeable progress in the work that you are responsible for.

Perhaps I am not management type, but what else can you do when you reach that ceiling? When you can no longer continue in your capacity because the next level of growth is management.