10 signs of incompetent managers

• Date: August 5th, 2009
• Author: Toni Bowers

I came across a great piece about traits that incompetent managers share. Written by Margaret Heffernan for FastCompany.com, this no-nonsense piece cuts to the chase and is about as true a list as I’ve ever seen. Here are the traits of incompetent managers, according to Ms. Heffernan:

Bias against action: There are always plenty of reasons not to take a decision, reasons to wait for more information, more options, more opinions. But real leaders display a consistent bias for action. People who don’t make mistakes generally don’t make anything. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy argued that a good decision today is worth far more than a perfect decision next month. Beware prevaricators.

Secrecy: “We can’t tell the staff,” is something I hear managers say repeatedly. They defend this position with the argument that staff will be distracted, confused or simply unable to comprehend what is happening in the business. If you treat employees like children, they will behave that way — which means trouble. If you treat them like adults, they may just respond likewise. Very few matters in business must remain confidential and good managers can identify those easily. The lover of secrecy has trouble being honest and is afraid of letting peers have the information they need to challenge him. He would rather defend his position than advance the mission. Secrets make companies political, anxious and full of distrust.

Over-sensitivity: “I know she’s always late, but if I raise the subject, she’ll be hurt.” An inability to be direct and honest with staff is a critical warning sign. Can your manager see a problem, address it headlong and move on? If not, problems won’t get resolved, they’ll grow. When managers say staff is too sensitive, they are usually describing themselves. Wilting violets don’t make great leaders. Weed them out. Interestingly, secrecy and over-sensitivity almost always travel together. They are a bias against honesty.

Love of procedure: Managers who cleave to the rule book, to points of order and who refer to colleagues by their titles have forgotten that rules and processes exist to expedite business, not ritualize it. Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize — a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning.

Preference for weak candidates: We interviewed three job candidates for a new position. One was clearly too junior, the other rubbed everyone up the wrong way and the third stood head and shoulders above the rest. Who did our manager want to hire? The junior. She felt threatened by the super-competent manager and hadn’t the confidence to know that you must always hire people smarter than yourself.

Focus on small tasks: Another senior salesperson I hired always produced the most perfect charts, forecasts and spreadsheets. She was always on time, her data completely up-to-date. She would always volunteer for projects in which she had no core expertise — marketing plans, financial forecasts, meetings with bank managers, the office move. It was all displacement activity to hide the fact that she could not do her real job.

Inability to hire former employees: I hired a head of sales once with (apparently) a luminous reputation. But, as we staffed up, he never attracted any candidates from his old company. He’d worked in sales for twenty years — hadn’t he mentored anyone who’d want to work with him again? Every good manager has alumni, eager to join the team again; if they don’t, smell a rat.

Allergy to deadlines: A deadline is a commitment. The manager who cannot set, and stick to deadlines, cannot honor commitments. A failure to set and meet deadlines also means that no one can ever feel a true sense of achievement. You can’t celebrate milestones if there aren’t any.

Addiction to consultants: A common — but expensive — way to put off making decisions is to hire consultants who can recommend several alternatives. While they’re figuring these out, managers don’t have to do anything. And when the consultant’s choices are presented, the ensuing debates can often absorb hours, days, months. Meanwhile, your organization is poorer but it isn’t any smarter. When the consultant leaves, he takes your money and his increased expertise out the door with him.

Long hours: In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else.

I often hear the phrase “project management” used interchangeably with the word “management.” That’s ok, since everything that we do is a project…right?

Well, no. A great deal of the work that we do isn’t organized into projects, even if it could be. And that’s a problem, since the project form of work confers a number of important benefits on the organizations that do them, and the people who participate in them.

Projects are a powerful tool for selecting work, motivating staff, aligning technology with business, and building client relationships.

Here are a few of the important features of projects that distinguish them from other forms of work organization.

1. Unique output. Every project produces a product, a product that’s unique. Other forms of work are designed to carry out repetitive tasks or mass produce identical output, but projects always focus on building something that’s one-of-a-kind.

2. Conscious constitution. Every project must be started with explicit management decisions to invest time and resources. Projects never just start. They never spontaneously generate. A decision must be made to create a project team to build the unique output.

3. Time boundaries. Projects have distinct beginnings and endings. Most other forms of organization are designed to endure and self perpetuate. Project teams are assembled based on the conscious decisions of managers and should be disbanded at the completion of their work. Otherwise they become departments or committees that attempt to live on after they have delivered their value.

4. Specific goals. Well-managed projects have clearly articulated goals that explain what problem the project will address or opportunity it will exploit. Many other work structures are designed to carry out tasks rather than to achieve a goal, but tasks may or may not contribute to the success of an organization.  It can be tough to tell whether a set of tasks is actually valuable. Goals on the other hand are much easier to evaluate.

5. Change focus. Every project is focused on creating some form of change within an organization. Technological projects are usually focused on changing the way the people work or the products that they sell. Very few projects are initiated to maintain the status quo. So every project must account for the human responses to the changes they plan and implement.

So when you are planning work or organizing people, think carefully about whether you are building a real project or whether you are creating something else.