Management Pitfall - Unrealistic Expectations

I have discovered the perfect example of unreasonable expectations - a management pitfall identified in my last blog posting.

I've been doing my management thing - planning for next year, and trying to discern the future. I'm a simple person, so I tend to approach things in the simplest way I know how. Thus, when given the assignment to determine how many employees I'll need to have in the Department for next year, I took a very simple approach.

First, I counted how many people I now have. I plan work in hours (ie, 200 hours for Program A, 150 hours for Program B), so I then subtracted both holiday and vacation hours, and then applied a correction factor for sick time (~ 2%). This gave me net hours available for straight time work.

My second step was to then look ahead to next year, and use my crystal ball to forecast what programs will be coming our way. I did this by looking at my current backlog of programs waiting to finish, known routine work that we do every year, and then applied what I knew about the future programs coming our way. I tried to also estimate timing of programs, but that's a crapshoot of the highest order - I only do it because upper management requires it for planning purposes.

Step three is to compare available hours with forecast hours. My results from step two were rough approximations, and were also very incomplete. I was missing significant information from two of my largest customers. Even so, my rough planning revealed that my department is understaffed for the work coming our way. In order to meet the known demand for work, I need to increase my staff by about one full time employee. Estimating the demand of my largest customers (based on historical trends), I'm nearly two full time employees down.

Historically, I end up every year with a large backlog of work - and I've been asking to increase my staff every year for the past five or six years. I review these plans with my manager, and he follows along as we go through the spreadsheets that demonstrate how we once again will be short on labor, and thus, will not be able to meet our customer demand for prompt service on their programs. I assume he's following my logic because I can usually see his lips moving, and he does ask the right questions as we move through the exercise.

We complete the review, he tells me that I did a good job, and he promises to do the best he can when he presents the budget to his management.  Time passes, and he comes back and asks additional questions about the projections.  The answers I provide are apparently acceptable, as there are no follow up questions.

More time passes, and eventually the budget comes down from on high.  I review it, and lo and behold, there's no increase in my full time labor headcount.  I can't say I'm really surprised (this happens every year).  When my boss calls to review the budget, I ask about the headcount.  The answer is 'no headcount approvals for your department.'  When I question how I'm supposed to get all this work done with what I have, the answer is very simple:  Just Find A Way.  I point out that the staff I have hasn't completed the current workload.  Next answer:  Work Smarter - Use The Six Sigma Tools to Improve Operational Efficiency.  He sounds relieved - he's given my some Sage Management Advice.  He then gives me the old pat on the back, tells me that he's confident that I'll find a way to get all the work done, and ushers me out the door.

My Management Background - An Overview

My first job out of college was an engineering position with a large multinational food company. It was a Union shop, and so there was a clear demarcation between labor and management. All salaried staff were considered "Managment" and we all attended regular management meetings, where the Plant Managers shared details of both our strategic efforts as well as tactical (operational) results. I recall those meetings as somewhat exciting for a junior employee - here I was in the middle of these discussions about what was happening in the business and what we were expected to do about it. There appeared to be a unity of purpose and a strong consensus about what needed to be done for the company to be successful.

After I left that job and completed my master's degree, I went to work for another food company, and again found myself in management, although this time I had the formal title and picked up traditional management responsibilities in budgets, purchasing approvals, and direct reports.

My third company hired me on in a staff position - I was part of Corporate Engineering assigned to a local facility. I worked with the local managment, but wasn't really part of it. This was a new perspective for me, and allowed me a chance to view things from a distance - not always a big distance, but enough that I began to develop a different perspective.

The company I now work for has provided me with yet another opportunity to see a different side of things. This company employs too many salaried workers to make them all 'management', so we have 'individual contributors' - and that includes the majority of the professional staff (engineers/technicians). Over the past five years, I've been working on fewer purely technical things and have assumed more and more managerial tasks.

This changing role has culminated in my appointment as a fully titled "Engineering Manager", and I have the keys to the place, so to speak. I have the formal authority vested in a manager, along with some of the clearly identifiable accoutrements of 'manager', such as a company provided cell phone.

I've written all the above to provide the reader with some insight into my background - I want you to understand a bit of where I'm coming from and try to see things from my perspective.

In a future post, I want to explore what I regard as the pitfalls of management: irrational optimism, unreasonable expectations, and bureaucratic inertia.

I'll try to get back to this one pretty soon - it's fresh on my mind right now.

Steven

The Beginning

Like my first programming assignment ...

Hello, World!!!