It seems that managing knowledge workers ain’t that easy. Problem is, managers still don’t see this. They think it’s a stroll in the park when it’s more like jungle tracking in the Amazon. Just after the post about pitfalls of technical leadership, an article titled How NOT to lead geeks came to my attention. Again, issues highlighted really do connect with me, and based on discussions among friends, they are a common problem. Of course, that’s not to say bad management is alien in other fields, but I think geeks are less forgiving when it comes to incompetency (sorry if I ruffle your feathers). Working with computers where precision, speed and correctness is the rule, we just can’t stand bad managers :).
Really.
On a more general note, I just remembered a Harvard Business school article I got from their newsletter, aptly titled Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation that I’d love to share right now. It does hit all the nails on a more general note, listing out 3 key reasons (yes, just 3!) why people work. I’ll just quote the article:
- Equity: To be respected and to be treated fairly in areas such as pay, benefits, and job security.
- Achievement: To be proud of one’s job, accomplishments, and employer.
- Camaraderie: To have good, productive relationships with fellow employees.
It goes on to elaborate that all 3 must be met. For example,
- having only good relationship won’t keep your stomach full
- getting well paid but doing work that does not give a sense of achievement guarantees high turnover
- challenging work, excellent colleagues but no respect is also a sure way to lose an emplyee
It’s because managers fail to provide or underestimate the importance of these 3 factors that employees lose the drive to work, even quit. I’ll let you read the whole article for more info. Ironic how these problems looks so simple, yet the common manager hasn’t a clue about why the underlings leave.
