I watched as a group of managers regaled themselves with tales of the laziness and incompetence of their employes. Their own employes, their workforce.
It reminded me of
a supervisor of nine specialists who said the job would be perfect if only he
didn’t have to put up with the people. He was topflight at the work himself,
but he couldn’t turn out that quality at 10 times the quantity. He needed those
people and they needed him, but he didn’t see it that way.
Such attitudes
are not at all rare, and that’s too bad. They devalue one of the most important
underlying realities of management, especially project management: Nothing
happens without the people.
Software
engineering guru Watts Humphrey wrote that the work of technical managers is 90
percent people and 10 percent technology – but they spend most of their time on
the technical management. It’s a lot less hassle that way.
It’s also far
less effective. The truth is that the human resource is the catalytic factor –
the dynamic resource that makes possible the productive employment of all the
others. Your equipment, materials, facilities and your very processes don’t do
a thing until activated by your people.
