Many professionals believe the goals of management aren't related to achievement, but on perpetuating one's own position. The management process is a bewildering experience for freshman employees and a cause of anguish to experienced professionals. Common sense says a manager should be a well-balanced individual, unselfish, able to accept information, and adjudicate situations. A manager should be selected based on a proven track record that demonstrates responsibility toward everyone, common sense, lack of favoritism, attentiveness to detail, and a desire to achieve business objectives with a minimum of waste.

Some 20 years of shared experiences has proven these naïve notions to be counterintuitive and completely opposite to reality. Burnout among IT personnel is increasingly evident. Look at the number of publications reporting it. Evidently IT personnel have a cynical view of their profession and management. One is more likely to be confronted by a manager who lacks ability in technical and human terms than not.

Why has shoddy management become the norm rather than the exception?

A possible answer might be how managers get their jobs. Current business practice puts more value on degrees than experience. Business school advocates claim their curriculums can make a person management material regardless of the field. The fallacy of this logic is obvious to people who possess career experience over the ponderings of the learned and inexperienced. How can an executive manage people without a rudimentary knowledge of the task at hand? More likely you'll find yourself explaining something that's taken years of effort to grasp while the manager seems extremely confused and nursing a bruised ego. Not that this writer is against gaining a degree. But possessing a degree implies one can learn, not the right to manage. Unfortunately, business leaders have taken reality out of the equation and deem experience without merit. Industry reports indicate most IT projects wind up abysmal failures, though the problem is erroneously addressed by across-the-board cost cutting. Most professionals comparing experience say that management doesn't grasp reality or is swamped by ever more complex procedures that take on a life of their own. The problem is simply over-complication created by management ignorant of the realities of their own business.

Managers aren't trained properly by their companies, nor do they work their way up the ranks as common sense dictates. A manager should be a subject matter expert trained to manage versus simply having a management degree. We have created people trained to be self-centered, close-minded, and lacking any association with the people they manage not to mention the actual business at hand.

On the human side of the equation a common complaint centers on the information barriers between management and personnel. Professional consultants often complain about management's inability to listen, process information, and take reasonable action. The answer isn't because the manager is less intelligent, but because the goals of management are different than the staff's. By eliminating these differences you can actually form a team, though most executives don't see that.

The net effect of employing an illogical basis for choosing and promoting managers wastes resources in most IT departments. Directives to tighten up and limit IT costs have resulted in more administrative processes than before, though once again the processes are flawed by a lack of actual development or administration experience. The typical response to the failure of the first process is to just reinvent it in another form, albeit more complicated and wasteful than it was. The net result is that people become confused by directives and processes that have little to do with the daily business. When your staff seem exasperated there might be a reason, but most managers don't realized that they are the problem or seem concerned in the least.

Not that this situation hasn't always existed. The problem is practically biblical. Human nature is the root of the problem and our society has yet to address it. The answer isn't easy, but - be assured - it might be found by applying a few basic principles such as:

1. Minimize the myriad levels of management to a near-flat organization.
2. Allow groups to manage themselves with review by their peers.
3. Management promotion should be based on achievement.
4. Process design should originate from the bottom and not the top.
5. Managers should be reviewed by consulting those they manage.
6. Allow employees to be inventive and foster discussion.
7. Don't use ruses to dismiss employee frustration. Having a group lunch does nothing to resolve business problems.
8. Act constructively to resolve situation and earn respect.
9. Simplify all procedures and openly document them.
10. Treat your staff with respect.