On having one’s performance managed
Stefan Stern posted an article in response to Bob Sutton’s piece entitled “Why Mangement is Not a Profession”. Both articles have important insights into management-as-a-profession (of which I’ve been a constant critic). Sutton writes:
There is remarkably little conversation about whether [MBA school] teaches people to do a better job of helping and serving clients, employees, or anyone else. Yet sociologists will tell you that a defining feature of a profession is that members are trained and socialized to put their client’s interests AHEAD of their own. That is what lawyers and doctors promise to do before they start to practice, for example.
In contrast, the societal message — and it is often quite explicit — is that the most effective managers take as much money as possible for themselves from their clients. There isn’t even the pretense of putting other’s needs ahead of your own in most talk about management education. Look at your cell phone or credit card contract if you don’t believe me, or think about what it means to succeed in a hedge fund or private equity firm — it is all about managers taking as much for themselves as possible, and leaving clients (and in some cases employees) with as little as possible. The people who run these firms will protest, but look at the financial structure.
Ouch. Stern’s article examines the issue from the side of the professional who is being “managed”:
Richard Sennett, a professor at the London School of Economics, argues that many professional people have lost “a sense of craft” in their day-to-day work. They are being judged according to their position in an occupational hierarchy, not by what it is about their work that makes them feel professional: their dedication to their craft.
“We have misunderstood the idea of quality, and how people go about doing quality work,” he says. “A most important motivator for professionals is being able to do a good job for its own sake, rather than just to meet a target. If you take that ability away from professionals they get very unhappy.”