We are accustomed, of course, to turning to experienced managers for advice on how to approach the profession, and this is often a viable method for learning. Less viable, but at least as common, is turning to scholars who offer lessons drawn from the putatively academic rigor of research and analysis. Beyond basic education – even to the masters level – this is an awfully risky way to learn how to manage. There are good products here, but they are difficult to find amid the plethora of self-involved dross that is out there.
But we keep trying to find them, because we want to be better at what we do. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that inclination. But how about the impulse to search for these lessons among people who are presumed to be of higher status, experience, or learning than we are? That’s a perfectly ordinary instinct, but how helpful is it? How balanced are their lessons, anyway? What exactly, do they believe they have learned that they are specially capable of passing along, and based on what experience – business numbers, share prices movements, market growth?
Those are fine as far as they go – but only that far; it is important to keep in mind as you absorb and evaluate those lessons the specific backgrounds upon which they are based. One thing argued in these pages is that we must learn from everyone in our organizations at every level; those who feel they cannot learn from people below them in the hierarchy are both correct in that assumption and, almost certainly, bad managers. There is an element missing in all of this, and it is, at least in part, employee feedback.
In the Wall Street Journal, today, is a review of a book written by an author whose credentials for offering management advice aren’t based on managerial or academic experience – they come from his being a crew member at numerous fast-food restaurants around the country, at which he never earned more than $6.50 an hour. The product of this experience, according to the reviewer, who is a former White House chief of staff and a former hamburger-flipper himself, is an intelligent assessment of managing and team-building that is both acutely observant and respectful of the challenges, the accomplishments, and the people involved.
Leave the professors and retired executives in their self-reinforcing certainty; try learning from someone who feels the personal and professional impact of what we do, and who sees it where it matters most: on the margins of a company in a challenging business, where it interacts with its demanding and fickle customers.
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