We can all be a bit crap at management
And all organizations can be a bit crap, too.
Thank you for allowing me to visit your inbox again, after a brief hiatus. These emails take a surprisingly long time to put together. Going forward, they’ll sometimes be weekly, sometimes every other week.
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And now for the feature presentation …
We can all be a bit crap at management
There’s a reason why there are so many books, courses, degrees and podcasts on management, all claiming to have the answer. We humans are just a bit rubbish at running things: or, more generously, running things is a chaotic, unpredictable, hard job, and even the most proficient managers get things wrong all the time. We assume that the grown-ups—political leaders, judges, journalists, captains of industry, and everyone else with responsibility and influence—mostly know what they’re doing. Dip a toe into their worlds and it becomes scarily apparent that they’re making it up on the fly too, suffering from the imposter phenomenon just as badly as do you and I. As writer Oliver Burkeman has pointed out, everyone’s totally winging it, all the time.
Running a team or organization isn’t something you’re good at just because you’re a people person, are smart, or have common sense (whatever that means). Most of us have no formal training in management. And, while good training is useful, it’s no guarantee of proficiency. It helps to have experience of working in several different settings, including at least a couple that are working well (which is why teams led by people who have been there for ever tend to struggle). But more important than all that are two cardinal prerequisites: taking an interest, and not being a dick.
What’s the benefit in reflecting on our universal potential to be a bit crap? There are two. First, it keeps expectations realistic. (There is solace in Sturgeon’s law, named after the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who noted, grimly, that ninety percent of everything is crap.1) Once you recognize that everywhere’s a bit crap, you’re less likely to be disappointed or exasperated by those with whom you deal. And Hanlon’s razor is the principle that we shouldn’t attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity: in other words, it’s more likely cock-up than conspiracy. You can be kind to those who don’t get it right all the time. Including yourself.
The second reason for acknowledging that we can all be a bit crap at this is that it demands two things of us that matter: that we take a humble approach to it (don’t be a dick), and that we make the effort (take an interest). Actually managing—the topic of a future email—calls for planning for the road ahead, accepting that we and everyone around us will often get things wrong, and still planning for the road ahead.
A question for you: you learned how to do your job, but how did you learn to work? How did you learn to manage your working life, to organize your working day, to tend your working relationships, to behave with your boss or be someone’s boss, to make time in your life for things other than work, and all of the other things we working people do? Did you learn from your peers? From mentors? From parents? Did you figure it out on your own? Are you still learning? If you know how you learned to work, or if you don’t, I’d love to hear from you as I develop my thoughts about this. Comment below, or email me at adam@adamsandell.com.
Fiction recommendation: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees. I think Barbara Kingsolver’s one of the greatest living novelists, but I’ve only just read this, her first book. Published in 1988, it’s of its time, full of joy about the natural world and connections between people, and beautifully written.
Prucher, Jeff (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2006.
This article felt very relatable to me. I feel like it's not just management we learn on the fly - being an adult in general. Maybe that's why I still feel like a child sometime (I'm 35), and why my mother reported feeling the same at the age of 55 - it always seems like everyone else has their shit together, and like no one warned me just how hard adulthood can be. Then, looking at the children in my life, I realise why no one warned me - in the same way that I want my nephews to enjoy childhood and be carefree for as long as possible, the adults in my life wanted the same for me. But how did I learn how to do my jobs? At-times-painful experience, observing others, and consuming content (books, youtube, podcasts) about self-improvement and skills such as time-management and learning techniques, all driven by a shit-tonne of insecurity.