Everybody thinks managers make decisions, but that decision-making is important. The bigger and more painful the decision, the bigger the manager must be to make it. That’s very deep and obvious, but it’s not actually true.
The name of the game is to avoid having to make a decision. In particular, if somebody tells you “choose (a) or (b), we really need your to decide on this”, you’re in trouble as a manager. The people you manage had better know the details better than you, so if they come to you for a technical decision, you’re screwed. You’re clearly not competent to make that decision for them.
So the name of the game is to avoid decisions, at least the big and painful ones. Making small and non-consequential decisions is fine, and make you look like you know what you’re doing, so what a kernel manager needs to do is to turn the big and painful ones into small things where nobody really cares.
So when you find somebody smarter than you are, just coast along. Your management responsibilities largely become ones of saying “Sounds like a good idea - go wild”, or “That sounds good, but what about xxx?”. The second version in particular is a great way to either learn something new about “xxx” or seem extra managerial by pointing out something the smarter person hadn’t thought about. In either case, you win. One thing to look out for is to realize that greatness in one area does not necessarily translate to other areas. So you might prod people in specific directions, but let’s face it, they might be good at what they do, and suck at everything else. The good news is that people tend to naturally gravitate back to what they are good at, so it’s not like you are doing something irreversible when you do prod them in some direction, just don’t push too hard.
Things will go wrong, and people want somebody to blame. Tag, you’re it. It’s not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people kind of realize that it wasn’t all your fault. Which brings us to the best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You’ll feel good for taking the fall, he’ll feel good about not getting blamed, and the guy who lost his whole 36GB porn collection because of your incompetence will grudgingly admit that you at least didn’t try to weasel out of it. Then make the developer who really screwed up know in private that he screwed up. Not just so he can avoid it in the future, but so that he knows he owes you one. And, perhaps even more importantly, he’s also likely the person who can fix it. Because, let’s face it, it sure ain’t you.
Taking the blame is also why you get to be manager in the first place. It’s part of what makes people trust you, and allow you the potential glory, because you’re the one who gets to say “I screwed up”. And if you’ve followed the previous rules, you’ll be pretty good at saying that by now.
You want to manage people? They’re not going to like you.
Management is a set of principles relating to the functions of planning, organizing, directing and controlling, and the application of these principles in harnessing physical, financial, human, and informational resources efficiently and effectively to achieve organizational goals.
Pietrie define management as working with human, financial and physical resources to achieve organizational objectives by performing planning, organizing, leading and controlling functions.
Management is an art of knowing what to do when to do and see that it is done in the best and cheapest way.
Critics of Lean argue that this management method has significant drawbacks, especially for the employees of companies operating under Lean. Common criticism is that it fails to take in consideration the employee’s safety and well-being. Lean manufacturing is associated with an increased level of stress among employees, who have a small margin of error in their work environment which requires perfection. Lean also over-focuses on cutting waste, which may lead management to cut sectors of the company that are not essential to the company’s short-term productivity but are nevertheless important to the company’s legacy. Lean also over-focuses on the present, which hinders a company’s plans for the future.