Drawing the Right Conclusion?

Having switched jobs fairly often, I've had the "pleasure" of working with various technical managers. In that time, I feel like I've had the various levels of managers:

1. Very technical, you can speak with them and actually know they understand exactly what your saying with having to dumb it down
2. Technical, if you explain the problem and the fix (with a little dumbing down) they will be at least able to follow the logic
3. Not Technical, you could explain till your blue in the face and they still wouldn't get it

But the current conclusion I had drawn is that this is more of a conscious choice made by the manager and really isn't the "I've been out of the hands on field for x number of year" as I had originally thought. Recently I had the VP of IS ask how to place Xerox wax ink into the printer. He's a smart guy, don't get me wrong, but really?

Thoughts?

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Comments

onesaint

The thought that comes to mind is that Einstein phone book thing, where Einstein is said to have not kept information in his head he can simply reference. In the case of the VP, your the reference material. Also, I'm under the impression that management is often (or at least half the time?) placed based on management ability and not their ability to understand the technical details of the department.

the_Grinch

onesaint wrote: »

The thought that comes to mind is that Einstein phone book thing, where Einstein is said to have not kept information in his head he can simply reference. In the case of the VP, your the reference material. Also, I'm under the impression that management is often (or at least half the time?) placed based on management ability and not their ability to understand the technical details of the department.

Well said.

N2IT

onesaint wrote: »

The thought that comes to mind is that Einstein phone book thing, where Einstein is said to have not kept information in his head he can simply reference. In the case of the VP, your the reference material. Also, I'm under the impression that management is often (or at least half the time?) placed based on management ability and not their ability to understand the technical details of the department.

Saint perfectly put +1

When I was a team lead I did the same thing on a lesser scale. I didn't have time to break down systems or build out production servers. I was too busy creating status reports and managing and replanning. My boss always wanted schedule updates and called one on one meetings to view the status of the project, not to mention all the vendor management task I had to provide. I was busy all the freaking time and never had time to perform technical duties. If a printer was low on ink I would ping one of my guys or call the appropriate team/vendor.

Adapting to your role requires you analyze your environment and prioritize your levels of responsibility. When the situation called for me to get my hands dirty I would jump in.

DevilWAH

onesaint wrote: »

The thought that comes to mind is that Einstein phone book thing, where Einstein is said to have not kept information in his head he can simply reference. In the case of the VP, your the reference material. Also, I'm under the impression that management is often (or at least half the time?) placed based on management ability and not their ability to understand the technical details of the department.

Einstein might not be a good choice, Einstein was a man who worked things out from "First Principles", This is the sign of many so of the people we call a genius. And while he was able to form very complex ideas and theories visual in his head, he was not so go at remembering the finer details such as the precise equations needed to write up his papers, so he would reference his detailed notes (Scribbles) to fill in the blanks at a later point. In this case his notes where the specific information to expand on his thoughts.

This is a bit different to a manager asking you to change the ink cartridge.

onesaint

DevilWAH wrote: »

Einstein might not be a good choice, Einstein was a man who worked things out from "First Principles", This is the sign of many so of the people we call a genius. And while he was able to form very complex ideas and theories visual in his head, he was not so go at remembering the finer details such as the precise equations needed to write up his papers, so he would reference his detailed notes (Scribbles) to fill in the blanks at a later point. In this case his notes where the specific information to expand on his thoughts.

This is a bit different to a manager asking you to change the ink cartridge.

I actually think that this illustrates the VP's position well (not that he is Einstein mind you, lol). Speculating that his role is to manage the department, he is reliant on his subordinate's knowledge to underpin his work. Much like you have described Einstein being able to develop complex theories while relying on his detailed notes.

Also, the phone book story is often used to convey the idea of information asset management. The Grinch's knowledge is the asset, the VP knows where he can seek out the information.

An example of the stories usage: Performance support tools: where learning, work, and results converge: Einstein was an early performance support tool user. The U.S. Coast Guard uses PSTs. Time to get on board? | T+D | Find Articles

Thanks for the rep guys!