Lazy Manager Theory

Some people have asked me how I did a PhD, and wrote and taught a subject, while I was also manager of a department of graphic artists, receptionists, and animators, and did the annual report and various other publications. The answer is:

Lazy Manager Theory

The principle is: if you are working too hard, you are working inefficiently. The most efficient manager does almost nothing. This is because you should allow your staff to do their work unimpeded, and only get involved when one of them is having trouble (usually, if you have employed the right people, due to some client, not their capabilities).

Below the fold are the Rules of LMT.

Rule No 1: Never do any piece of paperwork when the person who asked for it isn’t there and holding it when they make the request. If they don’t care enough to come see you, they probably don’t need it done. Also, you put faces to names and develop a good personal relationship with those who come to see you, so it’s win-win.

Rule No 2: If any piece of paper falls off your desk for any reason, throw it away. This is God’s way of telling you it is unimportant.

Rule No 3: Do what you want to do even if it contradicts Rules 1 and 2. You have a brain, so use it. When it matters to you, then it is important enough to do. This will get your paper work down to 5% of what it presently is, and allow you to focus on what matters (i.e., internetting or studying history and philosophy of science).

Rule No 4: Never do the most urgent thing on your to do list. If you are constantly worried about getting things done, you will lose your game. You are much more productive if you do the second most important thing. There’s a frisson of guilty pleasure, and anyway, the most important thing will become the second most important thing soon enough.

Rule No 5: Remember that compliance helps those who seek it, not you. Assume minimal compliance – things that are required by law or which might get you fired if you don’t do them are the most you should ordinarily do. If you do any more, either it had better serve your needs, or be something you just love doing. If there’s no payoff to you, simply put it to the bottom of your pile (and then see rules 1 and 2). This way, people learn about what you will do and what you won’t, and will start to behave accordingly. Do not think that someone else’s problem is your own, unless it really is.

Rule 6: Do not volunteer for committees. Committees are almost always a way to not do anything important. However, if there is a chance that a committee will interfere with what you are employed to do, either make sure a member of staff is on it (which can help their career too), or if you must, go yourself.

Rule 6a: Never be an office bearer on a committee. Codicil 1: If you must, be the secretary. You get to write the minutes with no requirement for actual activity.

Rule 6b: Always sit on the left side of the table, at the far end from the secretary if you aren’t that person. This way when tasks are being handed out, you are less likely to be volunteered, as you are not in the immediate line of sight of either the chair or the secretary.

Rule 6c: Never miss a meeting, or you will be given a task.

Rule 7: Ensure that you are friendly with the personal assistants and the security staff. They are able to make your life either very hard or very easy.

Rule 8: If you run a service department, allow nobody to harass your client service staff. If someone gets physically or verbally abusive, ban them on the spot and stick to it. Everybody else will be very nice to you and your staff thereafter, which means your staff will work harder, and you’ll get nice chocolates at Christmas.

Once I had a scientist shout at my staff (a woman, although it wouldn’t have mattered). I got nose to nose with him and told him that sort of behaviour was unsuitable and uncalled-for, and that he would never have another job done through my department, so if he needed work done he had better be able to get someone else from his lab to bring it down and see it through. He shouted and threatened me with the Director’s wrath, but I told him he could go to the Queen for all I cared – we weren’t ever going to do any more work for him. I should add he had been a bit nasty to my staff beforehand.

I never heard another thing officially, so I presume the Director told him he was a jerk. But if she hadn’t, I was prepared to take it to a formal complaint, so it was in the Institute’s (i.e., the various managers – see Rule 10) interests not to pursue it. And all the scientists knew what had happened within a day, so my staff were treated very well after that.

Rule 9: Trust your staff. Tell them, “So long as you do your job, I don’t need to know what you are doing. If you have a problem, come see me immediately so I can help you fix it or resolve it. Otherwise, if I have a problem, I’ll come see you. The rest of the time, you are responsible for your own work. Have fun.” It worked very well indeed. If you need to be micromanaging staff, and you almost never do, then you have the wrong person in the job, and either have to change the job, or change the person. On the latter, I have no real advice to give. It’s a bugger. Can’t shoot ‘em, can’t fire them, in Australia, anyway.

Rule 10: Never assume that corporate entities – departments, programs, projects or companies – have interests. Many people have been tripped up by thinking “They won’t do that. It’s not in the <insert corporate thing here>’s interests”. Then they do that. Of course, it was in the interests of this or that person, who could give a rat’s arse about the interests of the organisation. Philosophers, in particular, tend to think that corporations are somehow rational agents. Every manager and player within them is, of course, in that they will seek to maximise their own payoffs as they see them, but this almost never coincides with the “interests” of the corporate entity. Hospitals are not there to treat patients, for example. They are there so that specialists can make a lot of money, and administrators can increase their status and salaries. If a hospital does effectively treat patients, it is because doing so meets the individual payoffs of the actors that run the hospital, by decree from government or in accidental virtue of funding arrangements. If you realise you are dealing with individual agents with agendas, you will not mistake their actions for those of an enlightened corporate body.

So, there is the Lazy Manager Theory, or, how I did a PhD while Working Full-Time and Raising a Family. It worked very well. I never did paperwork to speak of (my staff’s HR files were a quarter the width of other staff, and yet they got their increments every year), and my staff would work, of their own accord, weekends and nights to get a job done, because they cared about the work. I had to tell them to go home to their families. That is a sign that this works.

And I was able to teach, write a thesis, go to some conferences, and generally behave like a graduate student. And now I are a philosopher…