HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us : http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates...

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently : http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684852861/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?qid=...

Managing software projects : The TimeBlock Method by Me :) http://timeblock.com

Yikes. I have read First, Break All the Rules ( affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684852861/ref=as_li_tl?ie=... ) which argues for the behavior of playing favorites. This would/could cause the exact problem his paper examines... Different treatment. Now what do I do?

This does not disagree with the point. I've encountered some of the research that they are referring to in http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/0.... What Gallup has done is developed their own methodology to identify who will be effective managers, and their claim is that the managers that they identify as effective have a huge impact on performance. But their identification has a fairly low correlation with what most in the organization perceive as who is effective.

If you re-read the blog keeping what I just said in mind, you will see that it fits. And you will further see that your point is in complete agreement - the people who are perceived as having good management potential have a low correlation with actual performance.

The blog points out that this happens at the bottom level because people who are good at non-management tasks get promoted to management and may or may not be a fit. But as you go up the latter you find that a lot of what tends to get rewarded is visible success. Which gives an unfair edge to self-promoting narcissists who manage to make their occasional successes more visible than they should be. The result being that perception and reality tend to diverge.

There was a book in the late 1990's, "First Break All the Rules: What the world's greatest managers do differently" which was the write-up of a Gallup study about manager effectiveness. One of its conclusions is the point made in this article almost verbatim, that people leave their managers not their jobs or companies. One of the most powerful sections for the book for me was the opening chapter where they explain their assessment methodology. They compiled it down to a catalog of 12 questions and they found that if these questions were answered positively it correlated with high employee performance, good financial results, good retention, etc. The rest of the book dives into more detail on the reasons for this, one being that each employee's talent is different and managers should try to align talents with business need, focusing on employee strengths rather than weaknesses.

Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/0...

It is good to see this discussed, but the principle is not news. In http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/0... the point is made that average managers try to bring up their bottom performers, while the best managers long ago concluded that you get more mileage out of investing energy in the top ones.

Of course the world is full of average people. They have to wind up somewhere. And organizations full of average people are never going to be able to take the advice to work the superstars.

I'll believe that the slogan invest in your best has been internalized by our society when we devote serious resources to making sure that people with IQs in the top 1% stop dropping out of school faster than people with median IQs do. Anyone care to give me odds on this happening in the next 20 years? I'll take the "No" side.

⬐ greenmountin

This is already happening, in a sense. Elite colleges face extreme pressure to keep their 4 and 6y graduation rate up, in part because successful parents are turned off by sending their kids to schools for outrageous tuition only for them to leave without a degree.

Caltech is perhaps most known for this problem, with graduation rates that were <85%, but changes were made to stop people from "flaming out". Harvard has a 98% 6y rate -- University of Oklahoma is 64%

⬐ goldfeld

Do you really think people with higher IQ dropping out of school is an issue? Firstly, there are some many other factors at play making a person a "supertstar" (emotional stability, finding out what they love, creativity) but let's agree IQ is one of them and an important one. I'd argue that people on the top 1% are statistically people more interested in learning varied subjects. So unless the person had serious family issues, which is something hard to devote serious resources to pinpointedly correct, whether they drop out of school is not as relevant as them finding what they love and having the tools to learn it, on their own if they're so inclined.

⬐ btilly

I agree with you that IQ is far from a complete measure of what matters, but I do think that it is an issue.

The reason why is because jobs that are likely to use the abilities of a high IQ person generally require a high school diploma, and frequently require a college degree. Therefore denying these people an equal opportunity to get those credentials limits how effectively society benefits from their abilities.

Also I should note that the matter is personal. I have a good IQ and yet I came within an inch of failing to complete high school. Were it not for a teacher named Bernie Bowker, I would not have graduated, gone to college, or had any prospects of getting jobs where my abilities would be useful. I think that that would have been a tragedy, particularly for me.

This reminds me of First, Break All The Rules (see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684852861?ie=UTF8&tag=... to get the book). They point out that many promotions require different skills, and that sometimes works badly. This is particularly true when people are promoted to manager.

To avoid this problem they recommend giving people promotion possibilities within job roles AND requiring that moving into management always come with a pay cut to make people honest about whether they are seeking the job because they think they would be good at it, or because they want a raise. (A manager who is good would likely make up the pay cut with interest over time.)

⬐ pyre

> requiring that moving into management always come with a pay cut to make people honest

What about people that can't afford a pay cut financially?

⬐ btilly

What about people that can't afford a pay cut financially?

Isn't it obvious? If you can't afford the pay cut, don't try to become a manager.

Stop and think about it from the employer's position. If your star programmer becomes a manager, the only guarantee is that you've lost a good programmer. The odds are low that you'll get a good manager out of the deal. So why should they pay more for less value?

Remember. Smart companies don't hand out money out of some notion of what is fair. They pay money because that is the cost of the value those employees are expected to provide. (Note that companies avoid paying the actual value provided, because doing so is a recipe for going bankrupt.) If the deal that they are willing to offer you does not meet your needs, you are free to find a deal that is more to your taste.

⬐ hugh_

If you can't find a way to deal with a pay cut, you're probably not cut out to be a manager.

If you're spending 100% of your income then you're not good at planning ahead.

If you can't find things to cut in your personal budget, you'll suck at managing the company's budget.

And if you can't talk your wife into making do with less, you're not persuasive enough to handle employees.

⬐ alttab

I don't understand the down vote at all - every single one of these points is true.

It sounds so trivial, but actually applying it is the difference.

⬐ btilly

Ironically the research that book was based on found that most of the skills you've listed are not important for good managers.

⬐ pyre

You know... sometimes life throws you curveballs. If you believe that planning will prevent any and all financial problems from appearing then I have a bridge to sell you...

⬐ ZeroGravitas

The second paragraph is good, but doesn't go far enough. We're stuck in an aristocratic management culture, where moving up the pyramid makes you a better person. Not a better manager, better employee or more productive, but a better class of person. All the standard ills of e.g. good engineers needing to become substandard managers in order to progress flow directly from that one unspoken assumption.

Why does your manager get paid more than you? It's a simple question that people simply don't ask. The Coasian model of the firm suggest that employees need managers to prevent the other workers slacking off and free riding on your effort. I'd love to work for a business where the really scare talent treaded the managers as the interchangeable, and easily replaceable, support staff that they really are.