The view from the balcony
Managerial power and control
From today's perspective it's strange to think of a time before management existed. I've enjoyed learning about the history of management as part of my PhD studies, because as so often, understanding the history of something gives you a new perspective on what you're seeing today. I won't claim to be a specialist here, but I want to share my understanding and what I've seen in my own behaviour.
One of the most fundamental ideas of management is called “Taylorism” (named after Frederick W. Taylor) who in the late 19th century suggested that:
left to their own devices, workers toil away inefficiently and need managers who apply “scientific methods” to get the ideal performance and efficiency out of work processes.
This idea carried with it the air of superiority, the assumption that those people who learn and apply those scientific methods (those “management tools” that today Mckinsey and the likes are slinging at a premium) are somewhat removed from scrutiny and the blinkered perspective of the average worker. Today “neo-Taylorism” is a word that academics use for management practices that try to measure, monitor, and optimise each and every aspect working life in companies and organisations.
A friend of mine went to a management course were they kept using the metaphor of a balcony on which the manager stood, elevated above the coalface, so they – and only they – can see the bigger picture and direct the lower classes for their own good. I've heard similar messages when I've been sent to “Six Sigma” and “Lean” courses - and back then I didn't think much of it to be honest.
I've only been a people manager for a very short time in my career, and I vividly recall the sensation of my perspective changing. One moment I was just another member of the team, and the next my team mates were my direct reports and I started to interpret what they did, how they clashed with one another, and how they spoke with me quite differently.
I must have described this to my mentor at the time as a “helicopter view”, flash as I was with my first experience of power and influence, seeing doors flung open for me that I never thought about before.
I thought I could see what barriers they set for themselves, what repeating cycles they ran through and what held them back from achieving what they said they wanted. Even as I'm writing this I feel appalled at myself - but that's how it felt! And other people with hierarchical power around me encouraged me to trust in what I newly perceived - after all, I was now on the balcony and could see far more than before.
Knowing what I know now, I do believe that managers have a unique perspective - you could even call it a helicopter view, as long as you take away the idea that this perspective is superior to the one at floor level. But that's what's so tricky to maintain - it is said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When I read restructure documents written in first-person by the managers in charge, I'm often reminded of that elevated feeling that I had myself. But I also see a lot of evidence for a form of ignorance that sets in when someone is hierarchically powerful for a long time: that you can't possibly imagine that someone on the ground floor holds any information that's so unique or valuable that it could change the bigger picture you're seeing, or your choices of what you do with it.
That's why I believe there is so little change between restructure consultations and final decisions:
12% change between plans and final decisions in my dataset of restructures in NZ between 2018 and 2021, a third or restructures with no changes at all.
And that's also why I believe that managers have good intentions and try to do their best when they make changes to a team - because I remember that “balcony” feeling.
O’Reilly and Reed (2010) write about “Leaderism” as a “set of beliefs” that we have about managerial practice, where its power comes from, and what it can do. They articulate how closely our understanding of leaders is intertwined with our capitalist world view, leading to a set of convictions implicitly share:
That leaders have superior intellectual, moral, and interpersonal skills and resources,
that they are therefore placed in an elevated position,
that this position gives them authority and the “right” to lead,
that “those who lead require effort and commitment from those being led”,
and that this system leads to the kind of progress that benefits all involved.
Sure it does.
Put in those words, it's so much clearer to me how organisations are meritocracies that pivot on the idea of superior knowledge and skill that we assign to management in a way we don’t seem to do with specialists or people with great institutional knowledge.
That’s my two cents there.
This is by no means a new over revolutionary thought, there are stacks of papers on this notion, but I don't remember ever thinking about the managers in my companies this way or about the power relationships we had. Much of my PhD research and the therapeutic effect it has on me it's just being able to put labels on an experience that I thought were singular and fleeting. But they’re not - what a relief.