“Get rid of the managers” this was the second point in the Article “9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money” at Inc.com, i have been thinking about the real need for managers, as a minimalist myself, was thinking do we need them for a tech companies?

Introduction to popular kids game:
As a kid, me and neighbor’s kids would play a game, game would work like this, you need to tell a meaningful and lengthy message to another kid in your team and message is passed on from one kid to another and when it reaches the final kid, you need to compare the initial and last received messages, often time it would loose the core message and end up very hilarious messages.

Normally business would need two key people, the business owner and the technical specialist, the business owner comes in with the vision of getting some work done, and technical specialists will get that vision to product, business owner pay for that service. As business grow, business owner had problem talking to large crowd of technical specialists, then he developed two senior most from pool of technical specialist as his point of contact, to talk to other technical specialists, things are still fine until those new point of contacts started to develop 100 new point of contacts, eg: for a team of 30 member there are 5 managers between the technical specialist and the business owner.

most of the time the business owner is only good to communicate his vision to his team, that just gives the enough jolt of motivation to act in the direction, but the problem now is the kids game described above, we cannot ignore the fact that the news get diluted or worse modified from business owner to the last technical specialist, with so many middle managers, also vice-versa, business owner may not be properly informed about the exact problem that technical specialist sees.

we cannot eliminate managers, they are required when company is growing, but many business owner forget it is a luxury, they need to have them only when it is absolute necessary, we should keep the managers count at the very least possible, else we are nailing our business’s coffin. As a business owner we need to regularly talk and connect with our technical specialists, and cross check (never in presence of your manager) are we communicated properly –  similar to this one

Good:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard A and said B

business owner: yes, i heard B

Okay:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard gibberish + A + gibberish

Bad:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard Z and i said Y

business, no, i heard L

 

if you think you are not communicated properly, you know what need to be done.

yesterday i woke up to the thought about the teachers influenced my life, i don’t remember their names but i do remember the key lessons i have learnt from them.

Teacher 1: i think her name is Geetha or Usha, she was my class teacher when i was in my class 2, i had difficulty in reading and writing english, she taught me to do so in non traditional way, which isnt available in text books by then, she taught it in the form of games…she would tell a word to write it down, i would write with so much spelling mistakes, instead correcting me with what is correct spelling, she would ask me to improve it one letter at a time, until i finally arrive at nearly closer spelling for the word, sometimes i would write ‘check’ instead of ‘cheque’, she would defend me saying it is correct as long as it is still conveying the message…maybe its her influence i give a dime about grammar as long as i am conveying what i want to convey.

Teacher 2: i dont know her name, but i still remember this lesson she was teaching, it was about Winston Churchill and the quote is ‘never never never give up’ it would have ended up as another lesson but it isn’t she was very passionately chanting that quote and let us say it loud, then she explained how it isn’t about giving up to others but giving up to ourselves, eg: we want to wake up and do the reading, but we would say i will sleep some more, that is giving up to ourselves, only losers give up to themselves, do you want to be a loser? Damn it struck me so hard!

Teacher 3: my high school principal, his name is Babu, high school isnt smooth ride for me, i always will end up in trouble and end up in principal office, the reason i reported to his office this time is ‘i didnt bring the record book on the day of practical exams’ normally he would beat with a long stick, but he didnt maybe he got so tired of beating me or he wasnt in mood to get up from his chair, he just said this words ‘do whatever you want to do, but never let someone to point their finger at your face and question you’….

Teacher 4: at the start of my career, i had to under go training for contact center job, there i met this awesome teacher ‘Talat Anwar’, among so many teachings from her this one thing settled in my head: ‘sharp tongue never sleeps hungry’ and ‘nobody wants to buy your product, but everybody wants to buy benefit, always sell benefit’

Now tell me about your teachers in your blog and leave me a link in comments.