
Good Managers Are So Rare - hollaur
https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-good-managers-are-so-rare
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discreteevent
Unfortunately in a lot of environments if you are the kind of person who likes
to spend most of their time focusing on politics you can get very far. This is
because most of the other people are too busy working to have time to compete
with you on a political level. I think this is why we see a certain percentage
of destructive people in leadership positions. The only way to sort this out
is from the top. But often the people at the top are also too busy to figure
out what's going on. It's a weakness in the system that incompetent people can
exploit.

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fartblaster9000
What do you suggest we do? Have leaders that aren't good at politics?

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iovrthoughtthis
Separate the reponcibiltiy of leading and managing?

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mathattack
Good management is rare because the payoff can be longer. The benefits of an
hour of week of investments by a manager today mostly accrue to others in a
longer time horizon. It rarely helps this quarters numbers.

Good management is also very hard to measure, as it’s not on a scale like
technical skills. A good manager in peaceful times can be too soft in tough
times.

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tboyd47
This is all true and extremely relevant to the software industry. If anyone is
interested in learning more about effective management based on these ideas, I
recommend the book, "First, Break All the Rules," which is based on the same
Gallup research that informs this article.

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myaso
Not that I'm a manager but I enjoyed _High Output Management_ by Andy Grove.
It's short and sticks to KISS, I don't really subscribe to the belief that
dealing with people is something you can learn from books -- The Art of War
won't kindle a non existent fire, instead it amplifies something innate. A lot
of methodology seems overly rigid and stiff to be useful for anything but
sounding good in theory and failing in practice.

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polote
By definition "good" has to be rare, otherwise it wouldn't be good ...

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jonex
"good: adjective, 2. having the required qualities; of a high standard."

I don't see "rare" being a part of the definition.

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zo1
It's not in the definition, it's in the distribution curve that is implied.
Good = better than average = rarer than the average.

