What I would have posted from my management class...

[owlectomy]

If I still took my laptop to school, which I don't, because it's heavy, and the wireless card has decided it dislikes me.

The thing is, I am way, way too cynical for my management class. They use "proactive" without irony. They talk about happy productive teams and win-win solutions. And maybe I've read too many management books from the parental library--really, I will read anything put in front of me when I'm sufficiently bored--but it all seems utterly simplistic and inane, and inadequate for the majority of situations.

I don't think I'm cut out for management.

This will not come as a surprise.

Comments

You may not be cut out for management...

[meaghanchan.livejournal.com]

But neither, I have felt, am I.

And sometimes, despite yourself, you can get yourself into a situation where for some unknown reason, someone puts you in charge of a group of people. And you have to- gasp- manage them. And you'd better figure out how to do it.

My lessons from management; Being thrown right in, for a year now, with no management experience and less-than-amazing people skills:

1. When overtime is necessary: If you come in first and leave last, the people you're managing will mind working late a lot less than if you leave at 5 on the dot every day.
2. Where productivity is linear, if there is a bottleneck in production, try to fix it. This will help productivity.
3. Sometimes there *is* a win-win solution. If someone's not doing something very well, try to find out why. Maybe you can have them do something they prefer *and* that they're better at.
4. It's important to strike a balance, when you're in the middle of people who you work for and who work for you, between appearing to your bosses to be their buddy cracking the whip and making production go faster; and between appearing to your subordinates as being on their side against the evil forces of your bosses' unreasonable demands.

Yes, management class must seem silly. I, personally, can't use proactive without irony- But I have seen win-win solutions, as well as happy productive teams. Of course, it's hard not to be at least a little happy when you work on cartoons for a living.