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Av Rhosyn Carhydd.
Managers and other «leadership» positions are the de facto reality of companies above a certain size today, if not an essential part of the «efficient production» mythos. Yet, at the same time, they are a constant source of complaints. Is it due to the usual «slouches» grumbling about the model go-getter, enlightened with a higher entrepreneurial state of mind? Are these positions truly necessary, or even remotely useful?
Any serious answer to these questions would need to be grounded in a thorough analysis of the various forms managers have played, both historically and contemporary, how they developed, and the contradictions they carry. For this text, however, my personal experience will have to suffice. This necessarily implies the text to be absolutely unserious, but I attempt to still present arguments relevant for imagining a better workplace.
Empowerment
People aren’t born managers, they are promoted into it. They are «chosen» for a «higher» position by other «superiors». Language is almost embarrassingly honest here: a promotion is to transcend one’s current position towards the higher «agenda-setting» realms.
What consequences does this elevation hold for the mortals left below? Unsurprisingly, it teaches servility and deference. Their previous coworker now has a say in who passes through the door upwards or simply the exit. Even the most well-meaning manager cannot escape this antagonizing aspect of the role. Their every word and action will be evaluated with this newfound authority in mind – so deference it is. A simple question, such as asking for the holiday plans of a subordinate as they apply for paid leave, will throw the subordinate into doubt over whether their reasons are valid to be granted this leave or not. Generally it will also stunt more creative initiatives as the risk of disappointing is too high; general behaviour is adapted in order to not get on the manager’s bad side.
This, in itself, certainly does not incriminate the person who, perhaps with the best of intentions, happens to land in a managerial position. But neither does it alter the metamorphosis which transforms them into a manager who does end up liberally applying their novel rights.
Old friends and coworkers are suddenly more tense and a lot less opposed to proposals. The conviction that «nothing has changed between us» slowly evaporates into a mirage. There is no more discussion amongst equals; the manager is set apart, listening and collecting others opinions. The rate at which proposals from superiors are approved by subordinates starts to rise and the question arises: why bother discussing at all.
The liberty to silence people they dislike and to overrule the consensus of their subordinatessimply will be used – it is only a matter of time before it becomes second nature. One unlucky argument or a seemingly harmless choice allows the manager an option to use their privileges – a little taste. Like last-minute changes to a document created in collaboration with their subordinates, without consulting those same subordinates, simply due to personal conviction. Such minor instances will be the springboard, then habit and time will broaden their horizon to a nearly endless range of opportunities to exercise their rights. Consistent refusal to use these privileges would require a person so dedicated to democracy, they most likely would not have accepted a leadership position to begin with, or would not be able to hold onto it very long.
I would also argue that this authoritative aspect of the managerial role does not merely constitute a side effect but is much closer to its very essence. This is illustrated clearly in the context of highly standardised production lines. There, the work leaves little room for anything outside the strict confines established by the rhythm, process and output of machines. In such environments, managers hardly do any visionary or planning work – they become simple wardens. Amazon would illustrate this well. There, managers receive courses in union busting and disallow even bathroom breaks, amongst other things.[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/09/27/amazons-anti-union-training-strategy-revealed-in-leaked-video/[2]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/amazon-protests-workers-urinate-plastic-bottles-no-toilet-breaks-milton-keynes-jeff-bezos-a9012351.html The absence of any function except to spot and correct deviations of the production codex exposes the authoritative aspect of the managerial position for what it is – not an unlucky dysfunction but the very core.
Accountability
It turns out though, managers also have superiors they need to answer to. Thus, mistakes from subordinates – especially those that cannot be brushed off as minor hiccups or appear as repeat-cases – ultimately reflect badly on the manager. After all, what is a manager if they cannot manage their subordinates? This feeds into the same kind of dynamic as detailed above and serves as the other side of the coin which equally nudges managers into using and abusing their authority. In this case however, it is the manager themselves who is at the mercy of their superior and will have to think twice about their actions if they would like to hold onto current privileges. Between «tightening the leash» to guarantee their standing or risking their comfortable wage, one choice sticks out to them as safer.
This also explains why a well-meaning manager, who might even step into the role in hopes of being a «shield» and an amplifier for their coworkers, soon has to bow before their superiors and becomes the exact opposite: a shield, sword and spear for upper management – their messenger and enforcer. Solidarity and trust are slowly and consistently eroded by pressure from every direction. All that is left is the manager – exactly as the role demands.
All this, it must be said, is the most optimistic scenario. Given that promotions, instead of through any democratic process, are granted on the whim of those already in more dominant positions, subordinates are not granted even expectations of their new manager – they simply have no say in the matter and will deal with the consequences. A truly kind manager, granted the position when the stars are aligned, would need to stand against the very logic of their role; readily accepting and adjusting to criticism, and acting with full awareness of the power imbalance their position creates. Though how can lower oneself down to the level of their subordinates while continuing to occupy the superior position – a textbook oxymoron.
What mechanisms exist to keep managers in check, if any? A complaint to HR or upper management? Letting off steam in this manner hardly seems like a solution, unless it spells an impending lawsuit for the company, or ignoring it would carry a significantly larger risk then addressing it. Apart from this, one could not expect much more than liberal problem solving which addresses the issue by … acknowledging and promptly archiving it.
So, could we imagine an alternative? A world in which managers are elected on democratic principles by their coworkers? Tempting, but digging any deeper reveals previously hidden tensions. It still lacks a way to hold them accountable. Such a structure would also need the approval from whoever sits at the very top of the company chain. After all, if workers get to choose their immediate superior, why not demand elections for everyone – all the way from the base to the peak of the pyramid. Even worker-owned cooperatives, with equally-shared ownership, despite making elections possible, do not look any less bleak. Democratic or not, market forces continue to claw at the company demanding layoffs, wage cuts and compromises, all to keep afloat. Democratic layoffs are certainly the last thing someone would like to see, or have their hand in. Even wonderful displays of solidarity like deciding on collective wage cuts in order to guarantee full employment are but temporary measures in a world where food prices soar far beyond the reach of wages already.
Collaboration
If under capitalism managers exist solely to keep workers in line, while also ruling out more democratic compositions, we are forced to ask: what other applications is their role meant to offer, except enforcing compliance? And will the answer be reasonable enough for us to continue to grant them a spot within production?
One such role is to facilitate communication between teams, departments and other such groupings of workers – to oil the «machine»; though the machine, in this case, is a stand-in for the worker. Managers are thought to be the joints between the companies limbs, ensuring an efficient and uninterrupted flow of information. But is this really so efficient; and is an alternative really so dysfunctional?
The information that flows between teams is always situated within a backdrop of a very specific context: the specific work that they are performing. This context has to be sufficiently communicated to the manager; else one risks receiving an answer that, while linguistically answering the question, does not really resolve the situation. Once this has been communicated, the manager will decide to contact other managers who may hold the answer and so on – each of them more disconnected from the on-hands work than the next. Then the telephone game reverses and flows the opposite way to hopefully provide a satisfying answer. Obviously, not all such information requests are complicated enough to have such an outcome. Simpler questions though, as for example ones requiring just an already established date certainly do not involve significant experience or multiple layers of managers to answer. It can’t be forgotten that documentation and planning tools already exist to aid managers in answering exactly these questions. These tools are usually restricted to mainly managers in order to keep track of various concerns; but as shown here, they could already today replace some managerial functions if made available to subordinates.
Such communication requests may not appear as too important of a concern as they seemingly don’t inhibit workers for too long. However, that is only the case if other separate tasks exist for them to jump over to in the meanwhile. All other cases still present at minimum an annoyance as the question cannot be immediately resolved. It certainly does not seem efficient. But these annoyances with the shortcoming of this situation already works to transform it into it’s opposite. More complex questions require a communication line between two or more teams to be established, as managers simply cannot answer them. This is already happening today and is quite telling. Whether such a communication line bypasses just one or multiple managers, the fact this is required proves: workers, if nothing else, are able to resolve such questions amongst themselves. But let us not be content with just this conclusion. These communication lines, in fact, usually require the relevant managers to also be included – to be «kept in the loop». Though they don’t provide any meaningful presence for the discussion, they simply play the role of an overseer. An overseer whose presence is not simply devoid of value, but a substantive negative. When discussions become too detailed for them to follow, arguments like «let’s discuss such details within the teams after the meeting, let’s stick to topic» are uttered. This, despite the necessity of clarifying those same details in order to communicate relevant context and establish a common level of understanding. Additionally, if some points raised are interpreted to go against company rules or previously established decisions, they are promptly shot down. Only after sufficient resistance is shown, which may have to last months, does management even conceive of the possibility that these abstract rules may actually require changes in order to align with reality.
Expertise
But managers have years of experience in the field before getting into these positions, they say. Yes, certainly those years did happen – in the past. Administrative work, meetings, spinning up datasheets and «planning» – a drastically new reality. All of this, and explicit «manager courses», are given to properly educate and shape the person into a true manager. Living and breathing the manager life while being bombarded with managerial guidelines certainly starts drowning out that past experience and it becomes but a relic lost to time. In many cases, like software development, this knowledge is also explicitly outdated, or at the very least significantly lags behind, within the span of just a few months.
As a side note, this also illustrates that it is quite silly to qualify managerial positions with a higher salary as if there was a linear relation between them and non-managerial positions. It is simply a qualitatively different role with different, though as I have and will continue to argue, irrelevant requirements to abilities. While it certainly requires experience, else even the justification I mentioned above becomes invalid, there is no justification for administrative work to deserve such an increase in wage except to buy loyalty. Intellectual work is absolutely relevant, but it isn’t higher, better or more important than manual work by itself. One does not exist without the other.
But it is not solely that managers lack a useful and common base of understanding with their subordinates. I would go further and make the claim that having workers communicate directly, and thereby exclude the manager completely, is both simpler and would benefit workers and production tremendously. Here, workers would be exposed to vastly more knowledge on the details of broader production and how they interlock with each other. The last part especially is important to highlight, as this interlocking aspect allows the workers to relate this information to their direct experience, and to digest it in ways managers simply aren’t able to. Instead of depending on the words of a singular superior who lacks the details and simply receives a deadline based on that same detail-less perspective, workers would, in this way, be able to plan deadlines and manage expectations significantly better. Additionally, it would also circumvent the extensive back-and-forth between managers as they shuffle to sort through the information, and decide on whether they agree to adjust their plan. Such an alternative would allow deadlines to be less about what management desires as they overlook production and more about what is realistic.
But such broader understanding and decision-making also makes it easier to deal with mistakes. Mistakes would then not be the fault of some superior, which often is incredibly hard to track down due to the convoluted nature of this decision-making structure, but of the collective. All arguments have been laid out, have been acknowledged and discussed, and there is no singular person which made the decision. The collective is at fault, and so the most obvious next step is to learn and try to correct what is possible.
Vision
There is one more fundamental task which managers are meant to fulfill: collecting data, creating reports and reporting this information to their superiors.
A real explanation I was given went something like this:
Manager X comes up with rough ideas and hands them to Manager Y. Manager Y then delegates those tasks to whichever Manager Z is deemed relevant. Manager Z then gives input on feasibility and is responsible for converting these ideas into reality.
Put differently, we have the master-mind, an intermediary and the executor. While I am almost tempted to let such a fantastically simplistic conception remain as is, it is very telling as regards the managerial perspective. While explicitly obscuring the very people who work to make those ideas a reality – seemingly empty cogs that will move as told – it also illustrates the incredible self-assuredness that exists in this environment. A single person, or a small minority, conceives of a plan that spans the entire production in rough, abstract terms; then they simply have to wait for either feedback on necessary changes or the fulfillment of their wish.
As I have explained previously, the data which managers gather is often highly abstracted and simplified – far from nuanced enough to make such sweeping decisions. Why is it that a managerial minority should make these decisions if workers stand in the perfect spot to observe production both in the narrow and general sense. This would also avoid constantly filtering information and decisions through both a bottleneck and filter, which only slows down production, dilutes information and increases miscommunications. More opinions, as would be had if all workers were involved in the discussion, also guarantee to identify far more potential pitfalls in advance.
But even today, as they sit in their comfy seats and dream up ideas, we hear complaints about the difficulty of all this planning while having to consider the entire sum of information. It would seem that such a task is simply too much responsibility for a single person. We at least have to appreciate their honesty.
Workers are, quite plainly, in a far better position to design the big picture. Even if the concern about being market oriented, and needing customer research, is invoked, we simply have to realise that this is simply done by another set of workers, equally abstracting and summarising data for management. Thus, even this information can be communicated between workers – all of which are able to touch grass on the ground floor.
The combination of most aspects I have covered: the authority use and abuse, managerial courses and the general immersion in managerial life, also fundamentally changes the managers world view. This is how someone who once always stood by their fellow coworkers and put their well being first, will turn into someone who argues for the need to work hard and be more productive, all in order for the company to achieve monopoly status – a supposed safety which protects the company from being bought out. Their vision has become the company.
Mentorship
Another consideration which I believe is relevant to bring up, though more specific to only some industries, comes to us in the form of evaluations. These exist both for new hires, juniors, and the average worker, and are highly disruptive.
These evaluations, which are done by workers and managers, through dialogue, setting goals. These goals are meant to clarify what the worker needs to achieve in order to get hired, promoted, continue to be seen as worth the wage, or generally become a «cherished worker».
They could be truly anything, though as per managerial dogma they should at least be «measurable»; despite often not being even that. I have seen anything from «complete x number of tasks that are related to topic y», «participate in at least one seminar», «show more initiative» and «learn more about topic z». These tasks give the worker game-like sidequests which typically do not directly benefit the workers ability to do their job. This is mainly due to a disconnect between the future-oriented planning of such goals and the actual demands created organically during work. It must be said that this «disconnected» knowledge can certainly be relevant in the right circumstances, but it is difficult, impossible even, to prophecise in this manner and context. It also does not consider, due to a missing time-machine, whether the worker will have the opportunity to fulfill them. They may simply be too busy with the work they are ordered to do, which certainly also takes precedence for their manager who gave the order.
It’s only a source of stress for the worker, and a source of arbitrary criticism to use for the managers. Requiring the fulfillment of these goals forces the worker into a mold. An abstract mold conceived neither by the worker nor the manager.
Transparency
I would like to quickly acknowledge the variety of managerial behaviour and tasks between companies and industries. In some companies for example, managers may do barely more than administrative tasks: ordering new equipment, passing along information on the next job, and so on. If anything though, this simply reinforces my argument that managers are not necessary as a separate role. We already have accountants and a wealth of communication equipment which would allow proper information flow.
As I am unable to speak about these variations confidently due to missing experience and data, I would still like to claim that many of the arguments I provide throughout the text apply to some capacity.
Enough with empty buzzwords
So, we are at a loss. What is the alternative, if there even are any? Fortunately, there is one – battle-tested even. Something that involves deliberation by the entire member mass, delegation based on a democratic vote and the ability to recall delegates and decisions at any time. In short, a solution that directly addresses the problems presented within this text.
Now, you might remember that I previously indicated a solution such as this to be impossible under capitalism? You would be correct. This is, quite frankly, propaganda for a communist alternative – workers’ councils. A vision of the future sprouting directly from the problems posed today. But don’t restrict yourself to only conceive of workers’ councils in relation to production. It allows us to dream much bigger: direct involvement in our lives and society, real democracy, an end to alienation, and a path towards communism. Let me be clear, workers’ councils and councils generally are not some instant fix to stabilise capitalism – they are and must be revolutionary.
If one wants to do the council idea justice, one must not forget its revolutionary origins. All attempts to build council organizations within the framework of bourgeois society and on the grounds of capitalist production will either create distortions or they will not survive. […][ A] council organization is a proletarian and socialist means of struggle, destined to remove capitalist production and the authority of the state based on capitalist production. The council organization strives for socialist production and self-managed communities.
Literature
Kuhn, G. (2012). All power to the councils!: A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919. Pm Press.