Believing a good manager doesn't have to understand what they manage

I went through a supervision class and they taught management didn't need to understand the technology.  They had the class list traits of a good manager.   Since only 4-5 related to knowing the technology out of about 40 things listed, they tried to convince us it wasn't important. I raised my hand in the class and said, "we should weight the qualities."  The whole class agreed.  I put it another way,  "You are saying that any business school graduate without further training could be a General of the army?" The two teachers became uncomfortable and dismissively moved on.

For manufacturing it is critical for the management to understand what they are leading.  I have read many books on successful manufacturing companies and they all had one thing in common, management knew manufacturing   Able to talk the talk and walk the walk as we say.    I have also seen many manufacturing companies fail when new leadership was put in place that did not understand manufacturing.  Manufacturing is not just physical items, it is software, books and even teaching. 

Our most revered business leaders know the details and rely on the good people under them.  It doesn't mean they micro-manage, but they know the consequences of decisions on the business.

Being risk adverse

I firmly believe a recent quote I heard.  Sorry, I didn't record who said it.  It was about the defense business, but applies to all.  "Our greatest risk is our risk avoidance culture."

I have seen project leaders that want no risk at all. Teams are demoralized.  Innovations that could revolutionize products and reduce cost and development time are avoided. Risk has costs, but it also has rewards.  Avoiding all risk means avoiding all rewards.  Everything was a risk to begin with.

If you never take a risk, you will never learn to succeed.  Risk is risky.  If you expect risky decisions to work 100% of the time, you don’t understand risk.  Just know when there is failure and act and learn.

Business by formula

Business takes work.  Constant thinking and adapting.  Short term thinking for only a quarterly report can be devastating.  Business by formula thinkers often believe all they need is the numbers. When upper management's knowledge of the business is lacking or they just want someone else to handle the problem, subcontracting is often the result.

Death by information

I believe Lee Iacoca when he said, "If you wait for all the information to make a decision, it will be too late."  I have seen companies that employed large IT groups that generated custom reports.  With all the data, nothing changed.  Why? A hundred hours studying the reports saves management an hour or two interacting in the business.  Sounds ridiculous, but it happens.

Ignoring the information

The other hand of the data problem is not believing the data.  I have seen people reject, ignore and dispute clear data.  It was easily verifiable but took 6 months to a year for many to accept.  They didn't want to believe, and chose to maintain the fantasy they had been working with for years.

Too often management wants to track costs better thinking they can save money.  I have never seen it work.  The only way to change cost is to change the process.  Watching better would only work if outright theft was involved.  If you want to reduce cost, use your people and resources to figure out how to improve the process.  Micro managing costs is part of this also.  One example, it was easy to buy a $400,000 machine.  Buying a $95 book that would help everyone better use the machine was not allowed, the book exceeded the book budget.

Change adverse

What can be catastrophic is being successful without change for many years.  Success never lasts forever when improvements are not implemented.  I have seen a rift between old and new engineers develop when change was not adopted. Older engineers forced paper drawings and paper process on new engineers who had learned engineering with digital data. Keeping new engineers and maintaining the viability of the older engineers was a problem.

When I started in manufacturing in 1981, the core technical knowledge needed had been steady for 15 years.  That soon changed.  Today the core technical knowledge can be outdated in 18 months. The hardest change is the first one.  Once people experience changes that improve what they can do, change gets easier or even normal. Taking changes slowly can often extend the pain of change and even lead to failure.

Skunk Works abandoned  

Multiple times teams have been brought together for a project, performed well and then the concept is abandoned.  Why is success abandoned?

Holding on to the old

When new software and processes are introduced, commit to them. Trying to save cost by maintaining obsolete processes can destroy your future. Holding on to the old locks many of your most knowledgeable workers into maintaining the past. Your top people are locked into supporting the obsolete. While the new or inexperienced workers have to forge on alone. Holding on to the old also makes part of your work force change resistant. 

Jargon without a clear definition

My best example of this is "Model Based Manufacturing".  We talked about it, asked for it and pioneered it. Over the years we found few in business that understood what the goal was for Model Based Manufacturing. I even asked one Model Based Manufacturing team to take a few minutes to define our goal. Everyone thought they knew it already. As I talked to over 20 team members I found none of them had a common understanding of the goal. I doubt most companies today have a clear definition of their Model Based Manufacturing goals.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

As we moved from drawings and paper into digital data, lead times and support groups shrunk. The ability for 1 engineer with 3-5 support people to handle 20-30 parts a year changed to 1 engineer with almost no support required to handle 20-30 parts a year.  The cultural change was enormous, but almost no one understood it. Skills in all levels of design and implementation had to increase.  To often people were left to drift during these changes without sufficient training.

Not understanding software

When leaders do not understand software they are easy prey to sales tactics. See my Software Rules for some of the traps. 

Manufacturing is a black art.

I have seen this taught by some manufacturing managers. "We worked through this mystical process and now make good parts, we can't change anything now."  Understanding that manufacturing is an engineering science is important.  It does take work, but when done well results are predictable. Processes can and should be changed and improved.

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  last update Dec 28 2025