The United
Kingdom’s (UK) new Prime Minister has been having a very tough month. In the latest
move, she had to sack her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Kwasi Kwarteng after
38-days on the job. The move comes merely a few weeks after Mr. Kwarteng announced
a “mini-budget,” which included things like a tax cut on the very wealthy and
the removal of caps on bonuses for bankers. The move promptly tanked the pound
and earned the UK a rebuke from the IMF, something which one associates with
third world backwaters rather than a G7 economy.
You could say
that Ms. Truss was doing what any sensible manager does when dealing with an
incompetent subordinate. However, given that Mr. Kwarteng had been seen as
close to Ms. Truss, nobody believed that this was a case of sacking an
incompetent subordinate but find a scapegoat for one’s own incompetence:
https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/jeremy-hunt-appointed-new-uk-25264755
One of my
earliest encounters with “Tai Chi Management,” was in the army. I was the Guard
Commander on duty when my Battalion Orderly Sergeant (BOS) found that the live
rounds that were under my care had been dented (implying they were damaged or
someone had tries to use them). During the inquiry, the Regimental Police (RP)
Sergeant said to me, “Too bad your BOS found this, otherwise you could have
pushed it onto your men.” It never occurred to me to push this onto the men
because at the end of the day, I was the commander responsible for taking
things over and the issue ended up becoming between me and the previous Guard
Commander, who was from a different unit.
However, while
it had never occurred to me that “pushing it to the men,” was an option, it was
clear that the practice of pushing the blame to subordinates was not new and
seemed to be the practiced doctrine of leadership rather than the things about the
leader being responsible as was taught in the command schools of OCS and SISPEC
(now rebranded SCS).
When I went out
into the “real world,” this became even more prevalent. It was not uncommon for
bosses and supervisors to tell the client that things could not be delivered
because the subordinate in charge of the item had screwed up. In one of the
most prominent cases, I was actually involved in a liquidation of a restaurant
where the CEO blamed everything on a “Managing Director,” he hired.
When I think of
all the incidents of “Tai Chi Management Style,” that I’ve encountered, there’s
one question that comes to mind, which is “If this subordinate was so incompetent,
what does it say about the boss?”
As a rule of
thumb, people get hired because they can do things for the boss. The value of
an employee comes from freeing up the boss’s time. Look at it this way, business
functions can be divided into two – you are either “getting the business,” or “doing
the business.” The boss is more often than not the one responsible for “getting
the business,” and so he or she needs to hire good people to “do the business,”
so that they can focus on bringing in the business. The less a boss has to
focus on the doing part, the more they can focus on getting the business.
However, while it
may be relatively easy to tell if a “seasoned” employee is any good, it’s a different
story when it comes to juniors who do not know anything. Hence, it takes time
for companies to “train” up their employees so that they can reach a certain
level of competence.
Now, there is
such a thing as employees who don’t get it. I remember dealing with an employee
at the Bistrot who proceeded to annoy everyone from the boss down to the
customers. There was one night where we were so crowded that Raffy and I were
running ourselves ragged. A customer asked what happened to the staff, then
said “Oh, that Indian chap, he’s no good, so you two are better off without
him.”
Tried to counsel
the poor guy but in the end, it was clear he wasn’t going to fit in and I
became the only part time worker who had the authority to fire people.
Like it or not,
there are employees who don’t perform. There are employees who cause dissent in
the ranks. In such cases, firing them becomes like an act of amputation, where
you cut off a cancer to stop it from spreading.
However, until
the point where the employee is removed, his or her competence actually speaks
volumes about the organisation and the boss. The two usual questions would be,
how did the employee get hired in the first place if there were early warning signs
and what did the boss do to ensure that the employee reached a level competence?
So, when bosses
bitch about their employees, you got to ask, what’s wrong with them. Surely,
they would have screened properly and tried to train them up. If not, why do
they keep an employee who is incompetent unless it is to cover for their own
inadequacies.
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