Management 2
The Idiocy of “Managers”
Bloomberg: “Stellantis CEO Struggles to Sell Jeeps in the Golden Era of SUVs.”
Has there ever been a statement more apt in showing the foolishness of management in its current form? Carlos Tavares, head of Stellantis, is of course, the eunuch in the harem.
SUVs and CUVs are selling like hotcakes, except in the original SUV company, and that goombah wanders around clueless.
Yes, we always do have to keep an eye open for ulterior motives, and, as we’ve previously discussed, they seem to be deliberately grinding North American companies into the ground... Is it possible that we mistake their purpose and can’t understand how Tavares keeps his job, when it’s their intent to bugger America?
We don’t want to be dumb for thinking that they’re dumb.
But, setting that aside, there are plenty of companies that want to survive, but don’t survive their management.
The Expanding Corporation
Why must corporations keep expanding? In a wiser era, they couldn’t. They had a set purpose and had to dissolve after accomplishing their charter goals.
Which is how it should be today, with few no exceptions. One might think, “Oh, we need General Morons to survive so it can keep making parts for my ’68 Chevelle,” but no. Obviously the old dies and plans should be sold off to a different private company, which itself can go under when the last classic Chevelle meets the crusher.
Now consider the kookiness of their single-minded pursuit of more and more profit, as though they want all the moneys, as though each and every one of those weaselly, chiseling companies wants everything for itself. How, in any reasonable world, should that be permissible? All that is required is that they bring in exactly enough to do their thing, employ people to that end, and sock away enough extra for a rainy day and some R&D. Why, if they’re bringing in a profit, do they need more all the time? It’s not sustainable, and it has the ill effect of attracting only slavering, profit-crazed leeches in management and as shareholders.
Don’t skim, but take a moment to really ponder this. It’s one of those points that needs savoring. If you’re in a business that is in demand, providing an important good or service, why would anyone (that’s not insane) need to take it beyond that? All the intrigue, machinations and endless scrambling for more-more-more isn’t rational.
Just recently, there was a video produced by those morons at Stellantis, talking how they’re planning to double net revenues by 2030, the ramblings of madmen. They are beneath contempt, already crashing and burning, and still strutting about like roosters, but with heads darting randomly about in frantic search of another grain of feed.
Okay, maybe it is just the posturing of incompetents trying to salvage their reputations and vomitous egos after setting all the car brands under the Stellantis umbrella on a path to ruin, but you don’t plan your profits, you plan to do the very best you can, and produce something useful for people, and maybe then the profits will come. (And otherwise, even if you do profit, it will just be an ethereal fluke that you can’t count on to continue.) Remember those fools are already shedding customers like a mangy dog sheds hair.
The Profit Motive
Today’s corporate system is a dirty shady con and farce, with, against all reason, every corporation trying to be the biggest and most profitable, without a damn care for what they’re supposed to really be doing.
And we, the consumers, are getting screwed left, right and center, while the swine pursue profit “without let or hindrance.”
But we always hear that “the purpose of an organization is to maximize profits to shareholders.” This sort of nonsense goes unquestioned, regardless of its absurdity.
So, is it the responsibility of “the corporation” to do that? Screw the customers for an extra buck...? Well, yes, it does seem that is the de facto mandate of corporations.
Profit maximization is also a BS notion because only certain shareholders get the benefits, for example the “preferred shareholders.” The ideal would have employees as owner/shareholders.
But is the saying, “employees shouldn’t be involved in the management of the corporation they work at,” true? (Yet somehow shareholders – that is, anyone with a few bucks to throw around to buy the stock – can be involved?)
Nope, can’t have employees, who have knowledge of the business, involved in managing it!
Actually, though, it’s quite true that employees can’t handle management — and there’s an immediate example that comes to mind: Hulk Hogan at WCW Wrestling. He was given “full creative control,” and buggered that organization quite well. It wasn’t all Hogan, of course, but nevertheless, it wasn’t long before WCW collapsed and was bought up by Vince McMahon.
“We can’t have employees involved in management,” is a statement both true and false.
To elaborate, we can’t have employees in management, under the present, wacky, organizational system.
Pyramidal Management System
One impetus for perpetuating the pyramidal arrangement was revealed in an article about operative and classical conditioning. That article explained how employers want conditioned employees.
That’s easy to understand, for there are some countries, where people often just don’t bother to turn up for work. They’re hung-over or something, or just don’t feel like it.
Which actually might be a healthier attitude than the “Western,” “get to work at all costs” sort of viewpoint, but nonetheless, you can see how companies wouldn’t want that. It can shut down a small company for the day.
All very well and good, but wanting the brainwashed is just an excuse, when it’s the system itself that is proven totally incompetent.
The now defunct General Morons went under a few years back. The pyramidal organization and managers ran it into the ground. The GM you hear of these days is a new entity with the same name. And it, too, will go under, relatively soon. Give it time.
Actually, it’s even worse than first thought. Mark Graban’s LeanBlog has a number of horror stories of that abysmal company. Lip service to quality and the importance of the customer by an incompetent CEO, bad industrial practices, raving incompetent managers, and the always execrable but ever-reliable blaming the employees for doing the exact thing management told them to do.
(By the way, has the thought occurred that these monoliths may go bankrupt on the low, and not mention a thing? A quiet bailout loan, or free money, under the table, who the hell knows? They don’t have to publicize these things.)
Cars can be an easy thing to make money at, once you’re underway, and you have a desirable product, or so it would seem (don’t forget, they also make money off of parts, upgrades, financing, consulting to other companies, and more). However, because there are huge barriers to entry, there's not a lot of competition (unlike in the early 1900s, which counted over 500 American makers for a brief period).
But as soon as you introduce legit competition, things become a little harder at a car company, because it then has to constantly improve and innovate. This was crucial once the Japanese manufacturers got a foothold in North America, but to that end, you have to have competent management and a good organizational structure.
GM was the largest industrial conglomerate in the world. Very profitable, it held over 50% of the US automotive market at one point in the 1960s, when it had better managers. When GM died and was resurrected as a new entity, a lot of the bad managers still remained with it! When it was “bailed out,” they were effectively saying that deadwood bigwigs were “too important” to be accountable.
Radio Shack suffered two bankruptcies in two years, 2015 and 2017! Now the name seems to have been sold to some sort of scammer operation. The “suits” of the original company wanted a high stock price, but did not want to foster a good business. More management failings. They were dominating the hobbyist market for years, but somehow bungled that.
When Lee Iaccoca was called in to rescue Chrysler, he fired something like 94% of the vice-presidents (VPs) – 33 out of 35, and a slew of other managers!
Chrysler became profitable again not too long after the rout.
On the other hand, there was a conceptual problem there: Iaccoca should really have fired the idea of having VPs. And what if there were some good designers in that group of fired VPs, some good welders?
Of course, after flying high in the white-collar ranks, that would have been too big a fall, to take up a welding torch, but we’ll, in the future, look into some techniques that would make it perfectly sensible to use people’s skills in a productive, positive way, whatever their baggage.
Of course, most owners and managers are so into their ego trip, how will they ever follow any instruction? And they won’t, even at the expense of their own business. Reminds me of a weird character who ran a company, and was for some reason proud of going bankrupt three times, giving IQ tests to interviewees. If he tested himself in that way, and failed, would he fire himself?
After-the-Fact, or Crisis Management
Only when a manager himself is embarrassed, not his staff, no matter how shamefully, does the manager do some managing. The staff has to “suck it up.” Avoidable crises occur, for the most part due to lack of managerial planning or policy, and a reluctance to tackle the “hard stuff.” As well, managers think they are in that position as a kind of reward, and they don’t have to do any thinking, or much of anything at all. I’m reminded of a “manager,” whose single contribution, if you can call it that, to my time spent doing some routine and smoothly progressing development work was to walk over and insistently ask, “When you going to have that done?”
For the benefit of any IT manager reading this, as long as the programmer is making headway and engaged in the task, such queries are stupid, and you have to rely on your trained and experienced staff to do the job, and not plague them with nonsense. (Software development can be particularly finicky and requires that you don't jar programmers out of their “headspace.”)
Returning to the original point, Crisis Management only occurs because these clowns invite it since they have no idea what they are doing. They are “managers,” in title only. Again, where is the Theory of Management? It seems that there is none, at least nothing workable and sensible, or we wouldn’t have these issues of bad management so often.
There needs to be a system, a working formalism, that avoids the crisis of bad managers.
Telecommuting
A good idea, but despite the obvious benefits, telecommuting is still not widely accepted by managers, because so many are control freaks.
There is an issue, obviously: the privilege has to be extended only for those who adapt well to it. Those who are more productive in a controlled work environment need be restricted to that.
Evil Moguls
There’s a weird dynamic in play, where many employers aren’t truly that interested in a good work environment, or in producing a good product, or in engendering a good company. They have an idea in their heads that they are in control, and that is the only aspect of their jobs that appeals, which is probably what attracted them to be an owner or manager in the first place.
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