You can't manage

[nancylebov]

[Poll #1613042]

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

The world is full of people managing what they don't understand, sadly. They're called managers, and I've worked for some of them. :/ Fortunately, not all managers are like that.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think the idea of "management" is largely a myth perpetuated by people who make money out of it like business schools and their products. I understand "leadership" and I recognise a range of technical skills that people with management titles use. I'm not sure they add up to "management".

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

Um, all of the above.

I am paid to be a manager, which includes a chunk of "measuring the unmeasurable"-annual performance reviews. I meet with each of my team 1-on-1 every other week and focus on how things are going. To me, this is the minimum to have an intuitive opening into any kind of quantitative assessment.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you can manage what you don't understand: like the producer of a film, who gets the resources in place. But if you can't perceive, I don't see how you can support.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

There are definitely things which can't be measured, but can be managed at least to some extent. The first one that comes to mind is staff morale; you can't quantify it, but there are lots of things a good manager can do to improve it, and even more a bad manager can do (or neglect to do) that will make it worse.

It's easier to manage things you can understand, but it's not impossible to manage the ones you don't understand. Plenty of people end up managing experts in fields other than their own; otherwise cross-disciplinary projects would be nigh-impossible (beyond a scale that can be managed by consensus, at least). You just have to be a good listener, and be willing to admit to the gaps in your knowledge.

But something that you can't perceive at all, yeah, it's difficult to imagine how you would ever get to grips with that.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It depends what you mean by "manage."

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, what do you mean by the distinction between "perceive" and "measure?" Perception is a subset of measurement; like other kinds of measurement, it can be direct or indirect, more or less detailed, valid or misleading. For some situations (what my QA textbook called the "small craftsman" approach to quality), experienced human senses can be the best way to manage a process where subtle differences in color, sound, or smell are important.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between trying to manage something you [the manager] can't perceive, and trying to manage something you [the generic you] can't perceive.

Indirect perception is very real and important. When I'm sitting inside, I can perceive a strong wind by looking out the window and seeing the dust moves. I can see how pedestrians hunch forwards into the wind, and how their hair and clothes are blown around. I perceive the wind by seeing how it affects other people and other things. When somebody comes in and says, "Wow, that wind is getting colder," I can perceive that too.

I used to work in a company that made, among other things, colored inks. My color vision is not very good, and I had a hard time with QC issues having to do with color. I just couldn't SEE the difference between cyan ink that was the right color, and the cyan ink the customer was complaining about. So I went through the (rather small, disorganized) company, and found a few people who could see the difference. And I sent the customer a new bottle and an apology. And we used my weak color vision to make a new QC test (with the manufacturing guy who could see the color difference.) He had samples "Too bright-good-too dull" and "too green-good-too yellow" and "too light-good-too dark," and they looked the same to me.

I didn't need to perceive the color difference directly. I needed reliable witnesses who could perceive the color difference and tell me about it.

If we're talking about something NOBODY can perceive, directly or indirectly, I have to wonder why anybody needs to manage it at all. It's hard for me to think of an example.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Fair point. Perhaps it would be better to say that you need at least to believe people who tell you that they can perceive X and that it has the potential to be important.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You have to be able to perceive to measure, but there are also things you perceive that you don't measure.

This survey is partly a result of a conversation between bradhicks and me, and partly from hearing "You can't manage what you can't understand" at The Big Uneasy.

The conversation started with Brad saying that you can't manage what you can't measure. I'm not sure whether that was something he believed, or a management motto he'd heard.

In any case, I suggested making it "You can't manage what you can't perceive", and he told me a story about McDonnell (of McDonnell-Douglas), who loved his factory so much that sometimes he slept there, and if he woke up in the small hours, he'd wander around in his pajamas, listening for the sound of cursing.

Cursing meant that someone was trying to put part of an airplane together, but it wasn't possible-- not enough hand space or somesuch. McDonnell would leave a memo on the appropriate vice-president's desk, with the expectation that the assembly problem would be dealt with promptly.

I'd say that measurement is a subset of perception. Did your QA textbook mention binary situations like cursing/no cursing?