Some years ago a study was done which found significant differences between effective managers and successful managers. Successful managers were defined as those who gained rapid promotion relative to their length of time with the company, whereas effective managers were those who actually did the work to make the company work.
Whereas successful managers spent most of their time on networking and politics, effective managers spent more time communicating with the people who reported to them, in planning and in getting things done. The sad thing is that the successful managers were promoted more rapidly than the effective ones.
One of the many dangers that organisations experience is when those who lead them are mediocre in their performance. Because of their mediocrity, they do not deal with the mediocre performance of those who report to them, whether this is because they do not recognise that anything is wrong or because it is too much trouble to deal with. And as a result they find themselves surrounded by mediocrity. And the mediocrity continues to flow ever downwards. Such managers find the mediocrity of those around them comfortable since there is no risk of anyone performing better than themselves and it allows them to hide their lack of performance.
The one thing they fear is someone who reports to them who is actually effective. An effective and conscientious manager who is surrounded by apathy and incompetence, may end up trying to resolve issues outside of their area of responsibility and as a result generate hostility from the less competent managers, And they may be seen as threatening by their own manager since they ask the awkward questions that such a manager would rather not answer, and because they know where all the skeletons of things which have gone wrong are buried.
So paradoxically, the manager who actually keeps the organisation afloat may be the very manager who is resented the most, all the more so because they cannot be eliminated because their contribution is also the only thing that keeps the mediocrity of the more senior manager hidden.
I know of organisations where senior managers jump to making decisions without any data gathering or analysis, without considering the implications and consequences. And when a manager tries to put the brakes on and raises issues with what they are doing, they are seen as being obstructive.
Not a pretty picture, but this dynamic explains a lot of what has happened recently in the finance and airline industries, as well as the financial problems in the Eurozone: when people who are successful because of networking and politicking rise to positions of power for which they are ill-equipped, the results can be catastrophic.
Further reading:
Successful vs Effective Real Managers Fred Luthans
Real Managers Luthans, Yodgetts & Rosenktrantz
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