Here is a true story about management. Seven years ago, I was encouraged to apply for a a management position at work. I had not been expecting or seeking such a thing. In fact, I had decided that I was only ever going to be a senior-level accountant, and that this would be all right. I was happy; I was good at it, and I was nearly certain that my abilities would never be doubted. I could see all the way to my retirement. Then managers in my department had opportunities to move up, and management suggested to me that I should apply for one of the positions that opened as a result. It was a challenge, a chance to make more money, and what the company wanted me to do, and at least internally I felt that I was the best candidate, so I didn't hesitate.
But a wiser person than I, whom we shall call "Bill", which may or may not have been his actual name (if in fact it was a he even), asked me why I wanted to do that. Bill had some credibility in the matter, as he himself was an excellent accountant -- better than I ever want to be -- and could have gone into management had he wanted to, but he chose not to, and instead remained a senior-level accountant for about 35 years.
Why take on the headaches, he asked? Why deal with all the different stuff they deal with, and all that stress? Ah Bill, I should have listened. But the truth is that, despite the BS above about challenge and doing what they expected of me, the money is very, very tempting. And the other sad but true truth is that I liked being able to say that I was a Manager, with people working for me, and that I had received a promotion to get to that point. Pride and greed, two of the deadly sins, and in time I paid for my sins.
But back to the point of our story, which is that I received the promotion, and although I was not entirely confident that I could really manage effectively, the transition went more smoothly than I anticipated. I have little doubt about why it went as well as it did, for awhile, until it didn't anymore: Bill was working for me the first couple of years. He made more money than I did, which he deserved, and that was fine with me. He was more valuable. I had one other really top-notch employee as well, and it is no coincidence that it was after my job changed and I lost those two employees that things got really difficult.
I can also think of a couple of times in the last ten years that I worked for someone who clearly did not have my level of experience and ability. The first time really bothered me, until I told my brother about it, and his advice was "Make him look good." I took that advice to heart, and we worked pretty well together after that. That person was seen as a perfectly good manager, and he was smart enough to realize that I was helping him, so I did well. It was not until I was transferred away from him that management began to really see his weaknesses.
All of which leads to a serious question: If you have five accountants, and you want one of them to become manager of the other four, should you choose the best accountant to be the manager? Even if the best accountant would also be the best manager, do you want to take the best accountant away from the accounting and have them attending meetings and answering emails instead? And if you don't choose the best accountant, are you sure that the manager should make more money?
Or engineers, or scientists, or programmers, or teachers. And yet, despite lip service to some other considerations, in real life the best accountant usually gets the job, in part because the management job almost always pays the most money, so you have to give it to them as reward for their efforts. And the management jobs have to pay the most because they have the most authority, and getting paid less might undermine their authority. Still, my experience is that really good people who actually do the work are extremely valuable, and the usual model of forcing those people into management if they want to make more money is probably not very efficient.
One real world model I can think of is the world of sports. No one thinks it would be a good idea to take the best baseball player on the team, tell them to stop playing, and have them become manager. And even though the manager is typically paid less than the top players, he is able to maintain authority over them. It may seem obvious that the things that make a baseball player the best player may not make him the best manager, but the same is clearly true of accountants. What is considered less with business professionals is the lost productivity associated with taking your best people out of the production flow. In sports, that would jump right out -- you don't want Albert Pujols filling out lineup cards instead of hitting.
It's something to think about. I'm pretty sure that I am more valuable as an accountant than I am as a manager, but I will certainly be paid less to be an accountant. The market encourages me to do something that will make me less productive, and I will be paid more to contribute less. There should be a better way.
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