"Why I Am Not a Manager" by Robert J. Samuelson
The Washington Post Thursday, March 18, 1999; Page A21

In 1997, reports the Labor Department, there were 18 million executives, managers and administrators in the United States. I am not one of them. I have never "managed" anyone or anything. No one works for me or is supervised by me. This is the way it's always been and, almost certainly, will always be. At various employers, no one has ever hinted that I deserved greater power and responsibility. Perish the thought.

All this may explain why I have a certain grudging respect for managers. I am obviously unfit to do whatever it is they do. They seem to relish responsibility, while I dread it. They have, or feign, confidence, while I shudder at putting a subject and verb in every sentence. What also baffles me is why people want to be managers. Granted, some rewards are tempting: power, money, status and (possibly) the respect of co-workers. But the drawbacks seem as plain: resentment from below, pressure from above, loud criticism of failures, silence over successes. No thanks.

Now, "manager" is a marvelously elastic title. It covers a lot of ground, from exalted CEOs (chief executive officers) to plant managers to school principals -- to produce managers at supermarkets. Almost half of all managers now (44 percent) are women, says the Labor Department. In 1997 it counted 711,000 marketing and advertising managers, 535,000 building and real-estate managers, 108,000 personnel managers. But along the spectrum of pay and power, many managers face two contradictory demands.

First, they're supposed to get results -- to maximize profits, improve test scores or whatever. Everyone must "perform" these days and be "accountable" (which means being fired, demoted or chewed out if the desired results aren't forthcoming).

Second, they've got to motivate or manipulate their workers. Gone is the era when machines determined how most work was done. Jobs today are looser. They require initiative or allow leeway. If workers do poorly, the organization suffers. So managers have to command and coddle. They're supposed to be sensitive to workers' problems and "feelings." They should be nice and not nasty. Petty tyrants are disapproved.

The manager mediates between the hard demands of the stock market and the soft demands of workers. On paper, there is no tension. Workers will be committed and creative if they are respected and consulted. Good ideas will bubble up from below. Managers will be rewarded for their openness and understanding. But in real life, conflicts abound. Galvanizing consensus is often time-consuming. Sometimes it's undesirable, because some ideas are better than others. And getting people to obey without alienating them is hard if they: (a) disagree with you, (b) hate you, (c) are incompetent or (d) spend the day surfing the Net.

Little wonder, then, that no group in America is more advised and analyzed than managers. I know this, because I receive a steady flow of review copies of management books. Just who reads these books has always puzzled me: If you manage something important, when would you have time? But someone must read them (or at least buy them), because the publishers keep pouring them out. Of course, the publishing industry has a well-deserved reputation for being dimwitted. But it can't be that dimwitted.

Here, for example, are two recent arrivals -- "Profit Patterns: 30 Ways to Anticipate and Profit From Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business" and "The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations." As management books go, these seem to be more informative than most. But exactly how will they make it easier for managers to manage?
"Profit Patterns" reminds us that some companies have clobbered others in head-to-head competition. In 1989, both Apple Computer and Microsoft had stock-market capitalizations (the value of all their shares) of about $4 billion. By 1998, Apple was still worth about $4 billion, while Microsoft had zoomed to $220 billion. But Microsoft benefited as much from the blunders of rivals as from its own efforts. IBM let Microsoft keep the licensing rights for the original PC operating software. Big mistake. And Apple didn't license coproduction of its computers; this stymied sales and software development.
Companies should spot how "the strategic landscape is changing," says the book. This is a bit abstract. Microsoft's real lesson is simpler: Pray for dumb competitors. If IBM and Apple had been smarter, Bill Gates might be a nobody.

In "The Dance of Change," we discover that companies often fail at organized efforts of self-improvement. By one study, 70 percent of "reengineering" campaigns founder. Another study estimated that two-thirds of "total quality management" programs do likewise. These failures implicate the capacity of middle managers. Are they guiding change or simply being swept along? "Our core premise," write the authors, "is that the source of these problems cannot be remedied by more expert advice, better consultants or more committed managers." What then follows is 573 pages of musings from experts, consultants and managers.

The enduring popularity of self-help books like these, I suspect, reflects a widespread insecurity among many managers as a class. (But I also suspect that the best managers disdain these books. They trust their own instincts and knowledge.) The common craving is control; the common fear is chaos. But the latter is rising while the former is falling. Someone must have an answer. In one way or another, all these management books hold out the chimera of control. The fact that they don't deliver may not diminish their appeal: If you're confused, it's reassuring to know that everyone else is, too.
Perhaps managers could once succeed -- or at least survive -- on status and technical competence. There was a chain of command. Authority was respected or feared. Machines regulated production jobs. This era has ended. The almost-universal task of managers today, in our culture, is to serve twin masters, each of whom has grown more demanding. There's the Organization, with its imperatives; and there's the Individual, each with "needs." This is a tough job, and somebody's got to do it. But not me.