I think it is the Managers; all other problems are direct or indirect by-product of the activities (or lack of it) of managers.
They dominate everywhere; in shops, offices, councils, hospitals, banks, schools, universities, companies, governments, charities. They are present in every country in the world. America created them, Britain adores them, France nurtures them, China mass produce them, India wants more of them.
They know everything; they know what is required for treating the patients, better than doctors. They know what students and researchers need, more than the academics. They know the factory better than the engineers, the schools better than the teachers.
They do not need any special skill, education or training. One or two year’s course in mighty management apparently makes them more worthy in any field than anybody with years of training, education and experience in that field.
They are champions of managing budgets and cutting costs. Any organisation in need of a cost cutting drive, appoints a manager first to supervise the whole process. Although the manager charges a fortune, he always comes up with innovative ways of cutting “unnecessary” costs.
They advice hospitals to reduce number of doctors and nurses; technology farms to cut budget on equipment buying and upgrading; universities to cut research funds; postal services to close branches; councils to collect waste biweekly.
I wonder how the human civilization managed without them for so many years. Surely, Einstein could have done much better under a manager advising him on time management, setting a direction for research and motivating him to think out of the box.
This culture of having managers everywhere is basically a way of worthless people with good contacts to earn a fortune without doing any work and it is causing havoc to the society. A patient died after operation due to excessive loss of blood; the hospital did not have sufficient blood in stock to do the transfusion. But apparently, the hospital was compliant with the checklist provided by the health managers simply because the checklist did not include the stocking of sufficient blood!
This is what happens when incompetent people without the education and training of the subject are made responsible for taking decisions.
A hospital budget and practise code can not be decided by managers without a medical background. A decision about upgrading a factory can not be taken by a non-engineer manager. Though these decisions are “administrative” and does not involve treating a patient or running a machine, still it needs thorough knowledge and experience of the field. These are the jobs for specialists, not for a bunch of talkative mediocre with zero knowledge on the subject.
Management by itself is a vague word; it does not mean much unless you specify what is being managed. To work effectively, management should be tailored according to the scenario; all encompassing blanket management achieves nothing. And this tailoring can not be done without the subject knowledge.
Hence senior subject specialist can do a much better job, as they have historically done in the past, than any stand alone manager.
The sooner we acknowledge this fact, the better.
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