And if you can describe an empirically detectable difference, I WOULD appreciate it.
I am not quite sure what are you asking. What is proper management training? How to recognize it? Are you doubting that management training is a legitimately useful activity?
By the way, having irreplaceable people is bad, but not because they are a threat. The issue is the “hit by the bus” problem (will your organization survive if the irreplaceable person is hit by a bus tonight?) and the solution is to train more people to the same skill/competency level.
Oh, and, of course, anyone you can fire is not really irreplaceable.
By the way, having irreplaceable people is bad, but not because they are a threat. The issue is the “hit by the bus” problem (will your organization survive if the irreplaceable person is hit by a bus tonight?) and the solution is to train more people to the same skill/competency level.
Absolutely. My proposed solution was to reassign the ‘irreplaceable’ to training potential back-ups, and only firing those that refuse to do so. (A lot of people found this idea problematic, because it could lead to them creating unofficial coalitions and favor networks that did not respect the command structure).
It wasn’t a single organization; these were consultant seminars, which is why I felt comfortable making somewhat broader generalizations about the corporate environment.
Note that at the time, the subset of consultation I was involved with had something of a hero worship for “Neutron Jack” Welch and was rather obsessive about “innovative business and accounting practices” of the sort that Enron had just been hit hard for.
I am not quite sure what are you asking. What is proper management training? How to recognize it? Are you doubting that management training is a legitimately useful activity?
By the way, having irreplaceable people is bad, but not because they are a threat. The issue is the “hit by the bus” problem (will your organization survive if the irreplaceable person is hit by a bus tonight?) and the solution is to train more people to the same skill/competency level.
Oh, and, of course, anyone you can fire is not really irreplaceable.
Absolutely. My proposed solution was to reassign the ‘irreplaceable’ to training potential back-ups, and only firing those that refuse to do so. (A lot of people found this idea problematic, because it could lead to them creating unofficial coalitions and favor networks that did not respect the command structure).
What’s up with the fetish of “the command structure” in your organization? The preoccupation with power politics seem very dysfunctional.
It wasn’t a single organization; these were consultant seminars, which is why I felt comfortable making somewhat broader generalizations about the corporate environment.
Note that at the time, the subset of consultation I was involved with had something of a hero worship for “Neutron Jack” Welch and was rather obsessive about “innovative business and accounting practices” of the sort that Enron had just been hit hard for.