Bulldozer00's Blog

A friend and colleague sent me this terrific link:  “The Wall Says It’s Time To Go“. He asked me for my highly esteemed, expert opinion on the manager described in the “You’re On Your Own” story. I told him that the manager’s behavior was a great example of the rarely-seen-in-nature, PHOR species. Here are a coupla snippets from which I formulated my unassailable opinion:

While his staff worked away, he sat with his feet resting on his desk reading the newspaper. The only time he got up was when an employee came in to ask for help. Then the manager dropped his paper and embraced whatever problem the employee was grappling with.

…a manager’s job is to be a mentor, and although the manager spends most of the day with his feet up, his role is more important than any work being done in the office. His job is to enable his employees to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure their continuing value to the company.

OK, so there’s no context for this example – we don’t know what the nature of the work is, or what products/services the enterprise creates and delivers. Nevertheless, in any setting, I’d prefer to have managers sit around doing mostly nothing until they’re needed instead of jetting around to one useless half-hour meeting after another feigning business and importance. But that’s me, and maybe only me. What about you?