Hi Mike,
Boy do you know how to press my buttons. I could not have said what you have here any better. You reflect all my thinking re the continued existance of Unions. It has been my experience that wherever the Union is strong that the management team are office dewllers and manage from behind a desk. On one occasion when challenging one of these imortal souls they produced a text book and quoted from it. On another occasion a piece of paper appeared on everyones desk as "Do you have the right kit?" No one knew what was meant by this and after some research it was discovered that this form was a photo copy out of some management text book! What he was really asking was did we have the right equipment and resourses to do what we had to do.
Desk jockeys no less. But hey they had been appointed as managers therefore they must have management skills. Just how wrong can one be?
Unions still exist today because management does not do the right thing. Witness here the enormous salaries paid to bank executives or telco giants. Show me the man that is worth $8,000,000 a year. I I will show you just how little this man does for his money. We need to ask the union question and that is just who does earn the monies? Yes it is usually the coalface worker not the chief executive, supprise supprise. As an auditor I found it an eye opener to perform a quality system audit in a large company where the responsibility for "quality" was delegated. Working in this environment only demonstrated to me at least that there are very few managers. I mean real managers.
It seems when one becomes a manager then this is the time to disassociate from staff, staff do what they are told and I'm the teller. If then we look at this situation where a number of staff are employed it would not be uncommon to find that they were all members of a Union. What a supprise. Big business has grown up with the confrontation of the Union and so they accept that it will always be confrontational and thats the way it is.
When in truth the existance of the union is usually a pointer to poor management practice.
You are also on the money when talking about professional development. Essentially we do these to gain a tick in a box just to prove how good we are as managers. Have you done your PADs yet? Yes, how many have you done ? About 30%
Management now issue the order to complete all PADS. The system shows all PADS are completed. The Quality Manager reports to the executive that the numbers are good and that all PADS have been completed.

No one asks the staff member what they thought of their PAD and was it mutally beneficial? How many CEOs check with their front line on a one on one basis? The usual response is I don't have the time. Well as parents we all know what happens when we don't have the time for our families don't we.

The managers role is to be the mother to the company. It really is that easy. Trouble is not many know how to wear a skirt!
Just Smile makes the day go better.
Love it Mike all credit to you for saying it.

Rob Langdon
Quality Manager
Biomedical Technology Services
Brisbane
Queensland
Australia

Mike, I enjoyed your first book, and Lean ISO 9001 is even better. We are using it as design input for the next major release of our product, good stuff.

I couldn't agree more about unions, although if management has made progress, why is Dilbert so funny? In fact, I've often wondered how management gets to be management. I mean someone has to say to themselves, "let's put this person in charge." I can't imagine making an argument that most of the time that process is based on leadership skills. In fact, it seems to me like good leaders are the exception rather than the rule.

Why is that? How many venture capitalist are calling you and saying, "Mike, you wrote the book, you obviously have the knowledge and principles down to make a good leader. We want you to run this start up for us."

Do you get a lot of calls like that? It seems like you should, but if you don't, I wonder why not?

David Smithstein, Founder and CEO
Lean & Mean Business Systems, Inc.

Nice reference to the skirt Rob. But I suppose some of them don’t know how to wear it because they don’t know how to deal with the other half who don’t wear the skirt. This element resent the skirt no matter who wears it and will do anything to undermine the success of the skirt.
And I think Mike has provided us some prime examples. In fact the biggest one stands out without even getting to his numbered examples: The biggest example of undermining the success of the manager is to play the respect card. Let’s look at just a couple examples from a different point of view.
1- suggestion systems exist because people do not consider it their duty to try and improve things. Because they have a sense of entitlement that says there is some kind of bad deal if they do not get something. The union creates and supports the sense of entitlement.
2- The “get as much out the door before the end of the month as possible” attitude, taking away one’s pride in work. – Now whose pride in their work is so small that they let it get taken away by an external factor? I know lot’s of union employees. Those that have real pride in their work don’t let this happen. That’s what pride is. Only those that are looking for something to complain about let this happen.