Waging the War on Bureaucracy: Is Management Obsolete?

Sorry if you choked on your doughnut while reading the title but, really, there has been so much written about CEO’s and their lack of ethics but their abundance of perks; about how leaders are failing every stakeholder they answer to and about how, like the dodo, management as a practice is becoming extinct.

How did things get this bad? Like Wile E. Coyote, didn’t we see Roadrunner aiming that anvil right at our heads?

Here’s my theory: we brought it on ourselves; we asked for the anvil. Why?

• We continue to hobnob with people who look like us and think just the way we do.

• We ignore social media as a passing fad or something IT needs to eliminate from employees’ Internet permissions.

• We haven't picked up on the fact that people are organizing online in communities that criss-cross time zones, date lines and borders to innovate, collaborate and create their own products and services. What's irrelevant are buildings and organization charts and titles.

• We talk engagement but secretly believe “they” are lucky to have a job.

• Change is for everyone else.

• We've been drinking the Kool-Aid of “shareholder value” as the only means to an end.

• And follow it up with a chaser of re-engineering as a synonym for de-layering, downsizing and off shoring (but, oh, that short term lift to the bottom line!).

• We are rock stars, aren't we?

I held management positions for twenty years; I know what it’s like to slog away and then be rewarded for my efforts with a fancy title and a fancy car. The problem is, the Roadrunner is on our tails, with a stick of dynamite.

I am really raving about this issue because there is so much more that managers can do not only save ourselves but also to make a difference in our companies and to the employees who report to us. For a less heated rant, I recommend an article titled, The End of Management by Alan Murray, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 21st.

In my next blog, I may rant less and offer a few solutions to an issue I didn’t know meant this much to me – until now.