Worst Management Advice: What’s Yours?
August 20, 2008 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
Quick question: What’s the WORST management advice you’ve ever gotten? Please leave a sentence or two in the comments with your worst management advice.
I’ve got 2 that resonated especially well poorly for me.
“It’s good to be king.” The manager that offered this took great care to remind me that once I was manager, I could get lots of perks, including the ability to hire and fire people at will. This worked really well for me…not!
“You’re the manager and you have to know more about everything than everyone on your team to keep their respect.” Same manager as the last bit of advice, and same results. I’ve found that I need to know enough about everything to understand it, but I need to rely on my team and others (the real experts) to make a difference. I’ve also found folks HATE know-it-alls, so not knowing actually makes folks respect me more and allows others to shine brightly because they do know the answers.
Those are the best worst pieces of advice I’ve received. Now it’s your turn.
Hi Phil,
“It’s good to be the king” is a classic. Unbelievable!
The worst advice I heard has come in a number of variants: “You have to monitor your employees like a prison guard or [insert negative here] will happen.”
The most extreme instance was when I took over a troubled McDonald’s in downtown DC. The incumbent manager told me: “You have to watch this gang [crew and management] like hawks — they’re all thieves.” Of course, it turned out that only two were thieves (and the other thief was a vendor).
The “KGB way” is used as the lazy manager’s substitute for detecting, analyzing, and correcting exceptions and opportunities. In my example, the incumbent had alienated her crew and management team. Showing a little trust and spending a day doing a root cause analysis (they teach you this at McD’s BTW), allowed me to focus on appropriate “suspects” and established my credibility (the crew knew very well who had sticky fingers were).
The kicker was that this “gang” contained a future McDonald’s franchise owner, a future McDonald’s executive, and two future Marine officers. Not bad for a bunch of thieves…
Man, this ended up long…I may have to convert it to a post of my own.
Best,
Paul
“Being a manager (or supervisor) means you are a baby-sitter.” And that is exactly how the manager treated everyone! Of course we had a rotating door policy – people would leave soon after putting up with enough B.S..
Not sure if it qualifies, but it was advice from my manager. He found out I was getting up at 4:00 in the morning to go to the gym and he told me, “If you didn’t spend so much time at the gym you could get a lot more work done.”
This, while I my typical day was to arrive at 7am and leave the office at 6pm. I don’t work for that guy any more, needless to say.
My favorite was from a former boss who was the company HR Manager. She told me that getting an advanced degree in Organizational Development/HR was absolutely worthless. In retrospect I think she was just jealous.
MB
@MB – I have to agree with you on that!!! I hold several computer certifications as well as an MBA. The only thing that my management has done is question “What are you going to do with that?!?” – If they only had half a brain they would take advantage of my knowledge and spark. Instead they throw me in some dark corner so they can ignore me (out of sight – out of mind). The result … I’m looking for employment elsewhere! As a fellow employee and friend told me “If they don’t appriciate you they don’t deserve you!”
From what my friend has told me, it now takes three people to do what I was doing and the customers are not very happy with them – the customers have told me to my face that they “want me back,” “what the h3ll were they thinking!?!,” and “when are you coming back?”
This I can tell you, my employer DOESN’T think! Some of the things they now have taken over are going the h3ll. What once took 10 minutes now takes two weeks to accomplish because of all the layers of bureaucracy. BTW – they call it efficiency! Of course this comes at the cost of the customers …
Hi Phil,
The worst management advice I ever got was in my last job by the head of my deparment:
“The best way I know to manage is to keep piling work on people until they come into my office crying their eyes out. That’s when I know they’ve got too much on their plate.”
She was a real peach.
Paul – The KGB Way is new to me. Thanks for sharing it. Painful and terrible.
CK – wow, that’s terrible management. No wonder folks would leave.
Dwayne – I think that qualifies as bad management advice. Thanks for sharing it.
MB – An advanced degree is worthless? Hooey!
CK – You are hurting man. So sorry to here you’re a mushroom (feeding you crap, and keeping you in the dark). YUCK!
Patty – wow! What a fantastic manager! Glad you’re not working for her anymore!
Phil,
I’m a little late to this party, but how about the “management by squeaky wheel” advice that was bestowed upon me at a time management class…
Don’t respond to a request from team members until you get the same request for the 3rd time. If it’s really important, they’ll keep asking.
We have a quarterly meeting coming up next week. I am supplying the “B.S. Deflectors” and “Smile-on-a-Stick” while upper management yammers about how great they are!
“Never delegate. Your staff are rubbish so do all the work yourself”
Advice I never accepted!
Andrew