Wrote once about the (probably not so) hidden cost of having a bad manager. Here’s another thing I thought of in the car ride back from therapy this morning. The following doesn’t apply to my current manager, but does apply to a bunch of people I’ve had before in life.
Are y’all familiar with single point of failure?That basically means one thing goes wrong — a Word document doesn’t open, a button on a landing page doesn’t click through properly, someone receives a memo and probably shouldn’t have — and someone automatically assumes that every single thing about the process is now wrong.
Single point of failure: If a tiny aspect is broke, da whole damn thing be broke. (It has different meanings by industry/vertical, yes.)
If you ever want to know the simple answer to the question “Do I Have A Bad Manager?” you can Google it and read about 12,993 worthless “thought leader” pieces. Or you can do this:
- Look back at the past month
- See how many “single point of failure” situations you can count
- If it’s over 4 (once a week), you have a bad manager.
But why, Ted? WHY WOULD THAT BE?
- If someone is all about single point of failure, that means (generally) they don’t take the time to think through things.
- It means they assume one point is indicative of many broader points.
- Their rationale is probably “OMG, I MEAN, I AM SO SO BUSY.”
- Thing is, being busy is a personal choice.
- You can stop and think about things from time to time too.
- If you have a busy-busy-busy manager who always assumes one instance of failure is broadly indicative of complete and utter failure, they’re probably also the kind of person who “doesn’t have time” to respect you, can’t be bothered to ID your strengths, and wants nothing to do with your career development.
- Um. That’s a bad manager.
