Middle Management is the problem. People who must appear busy keeping others busy, but can't join and help to keep up an illusion of superiority. The workers work and care about doing a job for a reasonable raise, the owner-operators/C-suite-w-stock-optuons care and actually have to have some distance for strategic purposes, but also care that current work is done and, so called managers:
Biding their time, sucking resourses away, implementing counter productive rules to 'tame' when they should be trying to help, problem solve even personal issues, so that every one is working at max efficiency. They are often incentivized by bonuses for certain metrics & after that never 'manage up' by getting things for their workers against their management.
I visited my older cousin on Army base 10 years ago and his discription of being a Sargeant always stuck with me. Basically that he had damn near 40 'kids' who he knew everything about so that he could help with issues, even & especially family stuff (housing, schooling, benefits, etc.) Because when they were deployed, he had to make sure their mind is on the mission, and not whether their kids had been left back in school over some bad paperwork.
Are you just going to keep reminding Johnson about the PTO policy & his dwindling hours or are you going to try to work with him while his wife goes through chemotherapy: lose no value, but maybe a little efficiency by just using your brain to reorganize & accommodate.
The MBA culture in this country is slowly strangling it. 63% of people living paycheck to paycheck?I have some friends who have just MBAs & some with advanced degrees & then got an MBA. A few did joint programs, because once you are going to medical school, getting an MBA is like having one extra class. The only-
MBAs are rigid & risk-averse because it's the only thing they know, and they only know how to do it the one way: quarterly profits rule all, since they can jump to a completely different industry …widgets are widgets. They were C+ students at best, with no real passion or interest in anything STEM, but knew they'd at least have to manage an inheritance.
Money/Cash is the blood in our economy that provides the oxygen to maintain operations (pay bills) & prepare to operate more/better/differently (research to innovate), but we have blood pooling around the 1000 to 10,000 richest families. And they use a political party (or two, whatever, this isn't the place) to keep a moat which means nothing will ever change. These are “owners” in equity only and bring very little to the table. I mean, I read Warren Buffett yearly letter too but there is only so much Coca Cola you can bring to interviews.
So yes, managers are bullshit, but they are created, manipulated, and infantilized… And cheered on by the idle wealthy who just want to read in the Wallstreet Journal that some over-pion is cracking the whip on the pion pions so that they don't have to cancel their 4th vacation.
“I apologize forhow long this is–I am short on time.”