How do you become a manager?

[NotAllThere]

I rose through the "ranks" (and some were pretty rank) to management. I was quite good at all aspects apart from the political schmoozing, which I frankly couldn't be bothered to do. The pointy-heads are in charge. Not much can be done about it, except revolution.

[Menelaus]

Management

I became a manager more by accident than by design, and I'd be interested to know if other peoples experiences were the same.

In my first post-uni job I joined as an analyst and did the normal analyst tasks but, unlike a lot of my colleagues who'd joined at the same time, I had no ambition and kept my head down and concentrated on being as good a "techie" as I could be.

Two years in, my line manager quit in a fit of pique, wandering off in a hissy fit of not being promoted. Making the mistake of not being out of the way quickly enough, I became a "manager" - in that, I was responsible for people.

Thankfully, now that I'm a contractor, I only occasionally have to manage people. I'm not a particularly good one, I'm afraid.

[Bagpuss]

IMHO management is glorified admin

[Mich the Tester]

IMHO management is glorified admin

WHS

Leadership however is an entirely different kettle of fish.

[expat]

Most of the Management I've come across use Dilbert as a training manual!

There are many traits required to be a decent manager. Unfortunately, none of these are taught in schools/colleges/universities these days...

They never were.

Charles Handy pointed out that in Britain especially, management is seen as a status rather than an activity.

[sasguru]

People skills.

HTH

[Foxy Moron]

I imagine Rigsby from Rising Damp when I read SAS's posts

[Drewster]

I imagine Rigsby from Rising Damp when I read SAS's posts

Thats wierd - cos I think of Ives when I read SAS's posts.... and Godber was in both....... Spooky!

You are not my sockpuppet are you?

[original PM]

It it is a good question and I think Mitch has hit the nail managment is about leader ship.

A good leader obtains information from his staff - as they are the experts in their field and not him and then when he/she has obtained all relevant data formulates a plan which he then runs back past the team - they all agree this is the best way forward (or point out the glaring errors) and lo and behold all works well.

The bigget problem with many managers nowadays is that they are simply obsessed with budgets and money and as such only ever make decisons based on this information as opposed to taking this into account along with all other factors.

I have a number of funny stories about how managers have been given a budget for the year, have spent all their time trying to spend non of it (as they had a bonus based on how little of the budget the could spend) obviously nothing actually happened during that year as it can be very difficult to move things forward without spending some cash.

Then the Senior managers were extremely puzzled as they appeared to be paying big bonus to people who do nothing. Ohhh the looks on their faces when you point out the basic flaws in their logic.

In my view the only people who should be given bonus based on budget achievement are business generators such as sales people - it should not be given to Accountants, It Managers, Service managers, Admin managers as they are all support services and therefore in essence a loss making centre and not a cost generating centre.

[Svalbaard]

Now think about this. Mitch the tester posted on hear a few days ago about modern management, and in that thread the view point appeared to me that the modern workplace has changed muchly, workers at the bottom of the foodchain are becoming more and more skilled, and hence more difficult to manage. That said, the highly skilled savant-like programming proletariat could not muster the people skills to climb the greasy pole leaving a vacuous gap filled by those less skilled technically and with better people skills.

So this set me thinking. My experience of modern management is that they do not think things through properly, are slapdash and dump on the skilled workforce in a very Dilbert kind of way. Is it possible to have a manager that has come up through the ranks, progressed upwards through natural means, not just landed a managerial role because they have a 2-1 in Business systems from Hatfield Poly and play golf with the chief exec?

I have worked my way up to senior SAP PM from humble Informix programmer by way of systems admin, Z80 & C++ programming, infrasrtructure delivery and management etc...

Plenty of courses but not one of them can replace the experience of a solid background in the trenches paying your dues.