Friday, May 04, 2020

Management Cheapskates

What other profession praises those who skimp on resources, compromise quality, and show disrespect for others?

What happens when you try to manage people "on the cheap?" You get shoddy goods, poor customer service, a frustrated workforce, and a recipe for decline and failure. So why is Hamburger Management—the epitome of management on the cheap—so prevalent? Because the culprits are rarely around when the sh*t hits the fan.
Lisa Haneberg's article “Management on the Cheap“ caught my eye earlier in the week. She lists a series of ways in which managers short-change their staff and their consciences, including:
  • Claiming that you value relationships, and then leaving people are out of the decision-making process.

  • Saying you reward for excellence and then avoiding dealing with people who are not making the grade.

  • Telling your employees that ongoing development is important and then failing to ensure that you keep learning and developing.

  • Saying you value managers and then designing their jobs such that no one wants to do that work (or worse, takes the promotion and then checks his/her brain at the door).
I’d like to add some more examples of my own:
  • Hounding people to increase short-term profits by every means available—then paying them as little as possible for their work.

  • Talking about ethics and integrity—then expecting staff to cheat customers to make more money, and lie to cover up the organization’s mistakes.

  • Talking about building value—then expecting people to work far more than their set hours for no extra payment.

  • Demanding commitment and loyalty to the organization—then laying off people if you can find someone elsewhere willing to do the same work for less money.
We all know that doing anything on the cheap is only going to produce low-quality, shoddy work. How do Hamburger Managers get away with it?

The great advantage of being a high-flier is never having to say that you’re sorry.

Few of them expect to be in the same job when the problems that they have caused start to become apparent. The great advantage of being a high-flier is never having to say that you’re sorry. By the time it’s clear what lay behind your “success,” you’ve been promoted or moved on to bigger and better things. If anyone tries to pin the problems on you, you can simply say that your successor was the one who messed up.

In fact, your successor is almost certain to have changed everything anyway, in an attempt to stamp his or her mark on the new job. Nothing is more annoying to a newly-appointed manager than to see success attributed to the previous manager’s decisions. Nothing is more pleasant than to be able to point to that person’s errors and suggest you are exactly the right person to correct them.

By moving or promoting people every few years, organizations have institutionalized short-term thinking.

Why do you get cheapskates in management? Because that is the behavior that most organizations today reward. We’re told that the average tenure for a new CEO is less than two years. Don’t feel sorry for them. For many, that’s already too long. Their mistakes have already started to catch up with them. What they really wanted was to jump out with the golden parachute earlier, so they could keep the undeserved reputation of leadership genius as the basis for getting the next job. But then . . . even failed CEOs seem to find little difficulty in being hired again.

Managers don’t take the long view because they don’t need to. The short-term will see their time out in the job. By moving or promoting people every few years, organizations have institutionalized short-term thinking. By equating managerial performance with short-term results, they have solidified the link. In the end, organizations get what they reward. The people to feel sorry for are those who have to go on working in that kind of culture.



Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon
Sign up for our Email Newsletter




Labels: , ,

Add to Technorati Favorites Stumble Upon Toolbar

8 Comments:

tommyk said...

Actually, CEOs and senior managers do have problems being hired again. Latest HBR issue (May 2007) features article "Surviving Your New CEO" and according to their research, only 4% of senior managers are able to get better position after being fired. 65% of them drops entirely out of the radar or join very small companies. The rest are "laterals" and "setbacks".

Not that there is any need to feel sorry for them.

3:31 AM  
Carmine Coyote said...

Thanks for this, Tommyk. I hadn't seen that article.

I was thinking about the very top executives, and I guess many of those who drop off the radar had such generous pay-offs that they never need to work again.

The senior managers who can't — or don't want to — get back into the corporate world at the same level fall, I think, into the category of those who suffered from having to work under a Hamburger Manament culture.

New CEOs are like other new managers: they love to make a "clean sweep" of policies and stamp their own ideas on the organization as quickly as possible. Most managers have to work with the team they inherit. CEOs have the dubious luxury of being able to clear out the previous management team, one way or another, and surround themselves with their chosen cronies.

Keep reading, my friend.

6:27 AM  
Howie said...

It is certainly not appropriate. Saying something we can't do shows that we are not reasponsible enough and not yet ready to manage.

Not a good example to show the people you work with.

12:58 AM  
Carmine Coyote said...

Thanks for your comment, Howie.

Sadly, many managers openly make promises they must know that they cannot deliver. Why they do this isn't simple. I suspect in many cases it's just short-termism: buying off a problem by a simple lie, in the hope it will go away if ignored.

Keep reading, my friend.

7:02 AM  
Charlie said...

Thanks for bringing this one up. It's a sad reality and we must take action to stop it. It may not matter in small situations, but allowing it will only make it even worse.

7:08 PM  
Carmine Coyote said...

Thanks for your comment, Charlie.

It has less impact in small situations, but it's uncivilized whenever it occurs. I agree that it needs to be dealt with.

Keep reading, my friend.

6:53 AM  
Walter said...

This situation is especially rampant in the military. With all the officers (middle and upper level management) serving 2-3 year tours there is a lot of "run the troops into the ground" mentality. Unfortunately the troops usually serve at a command for 3-5 years so they have to endure the pain a few times.

6:03 AM  
Carmine Coyote said...

Great comment, Walter.

I didn't realize the military works like this, but many other organizations are much the same. The "grunts" spend around five years in a particular role (often longer) and the bosses pass through every two years or so.

Keep reading, my friend.

6:53 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.