As a manager in a large construction firm (I’m something like
4th in command, in a company with a hundred employees) I get a lot
of resentment from certain front-line craft employees for being the manager,
and that I “get” to “boss them around” when I “couldn’t even do their job.” Most of the guys get it, but there are the
select few that just don’t understand that it doesn’t matter one whit whether I
can plumb a toilet or frame a wall (I can do both, by the way, but they don’t
know that).
I’m not an electrician.
I understand a lot about the electrical trade. Much more than your average American, but if
you asked me to properly wire anything bigger than a basic house, I’d be
lost.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t manage the efforts of the
electricians under my purview. I’ve
explained it to one guy who, instead of being resentful and angry about it, was
genuinely curious how I was able to manage people whose job I couldn’t do,
myself, and he was quite surprised and pleased with my explanation, because I
think he understood exactly what I was talking about.
I asked him a series of questions, each of which was easily
answered, and each answer illuminated his understanding of what I was talking
about:
“As a carpenter,” I started, “you construct the formwork for
the concrete foundations on large commercial and institutional buildings,
correct?”
He nodded in assent.
“Where does that building come from?” I asked.
From the confused look on his face, I saw that he didn’t understand.
“How is it that you come to be working on that foundation?”
I clarified. His face went from bemused
to understanding.
“It’s because you bid the project and got it for us to work
on it,” he said.
I shook my head. “Yes,
but there’s more to it than that. How do
you think that we came to know about that building going out for bid? How do you think that we got on the list of acceptable
bidders to bid on the project? How do think
that you, specifically, were slated to work on this project, as opposed to one
of the other projects that we have going in town? How do you think that the 30 plus
subcontractors that will work on this project all know what scope of work they’re
supposed to be doing, when to have their materials ready, when to be on site,
where to start, how much time they’ve got to install their materials, and which
materials will be needed, and when? How
do you think that the man lift that you needed to form the high walls arrived
on site exactly when you needed it, and that the manlift was full of fuel and
greased and ready for you to use? Or the
safety rails on the second floor and roof?
Or the forklift, or the crane that you used to pick form panels?”
He shook his head, I think understanding for the first time
that all of these things don’t happen organically, but rather because someone
is somewhere directing traffic to make sure that these things happened. He’d never really thought about it; the
manlift that he needed just always seemed to be there.
I finished with one final, pointed question that I think
drove home the point:
“Given all of those things, how important do you think it is
for me to actually be physically capable of building some concrete formwork?”
He shook his head. I continued:
“Why would that be
something that I’d need to know how to do, other than to know how long it will
take to build a panel, how much material goes into one, and how many times we
can re-use it? Consider that concrete
formwork is one part of a massive whole, and if I was to be required to know
how to do the job of every tradesman that worked on the building, do you think
I’d ever be able to learn all of that?
To set wood floors, to polish concrete slabs, to plumb a rooftop unit,
to run HVAC ductwork, to install a fire alarm system, to wire streetlights, to
pave the parking lots, pour the sidewalks, install the masonry… How could one man ever know how to do all of
those things? How important would it be
for me to even know how to do these things, anyway?”
He shrugged. “I guess
not very important at all.”
“My job is to manage.
That is my trade, and it is what I’m good at. The idea that a manager must know how to do
the job of every single person that he manages is just silly, and is not a
realistic goal at all. There shouldn’t
be any animosity between you and me because you know how to do something that I
don’t know how to do, or because I’m directing you to do it. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have any
foundations to build, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have anyone to
build the for me. We’re a team, not
adversaries.”
He shook his head, smiling, and I think, finally
understanding.
But this attitude of adversity between management and the
trades has been created and perpetuated for so long in our country, mainly by
labor unions who exploit the adversarial relationship to their own benefit,
that there are a lot of trade guys who literally have an “us vs. them” attitude
when it comes to management. They act as
if management is just coasting along on their labor; a parasite that doesn’t
accomplish anything but to suck the profits of their labor and claim as their
own the sweat of their brow.
It really is shameful that it got this way, because if it
weren’t for management, none of these guys would have any work to do, at all. It doesn’t matter how good this guy is at
building a foundation, without me to procure the project, he’d be sitting at
home doing nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment