Michael N. Dundas

Good article forwarded to me by a colleague. It was written by Harvey Schachter. It highlights some quick ways to differentiate between between good and bad managers. The article is here, but I’m copying it here in case it ‘disappears’ for some reason in the future.

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Some managers are competent while others are not. Here are 10 ways that serial entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan says she spots the incompetents. If a manager displays any one of these behaviours, she writes on FastCompany.com, it should ring a warning bell and more than two means you should sound the alarm:

Bias against actions

There are always many reasons not to take a decision. Real leaders display a constant bias for action while the incompetents wait for more information, more options and more opinions.

Secrecy

Beware of a manager who always fights against telling staff about what’s happening, worrying it will distract or confuse employees. Very few matters in business must remain confidential and good managers can identify those easily.

Oversensitivity

Managers must see a problem, address it head on, and move on. If the manager is afraid to raise issues with employees because it might hurt their feelings, problems won’t be resolved.

Love of procedure

Managers who cling to the rulebook have forgotten that rules and processes are meant to expedite business not ritualize it. “Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize – a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning,” she says.

Preference for weak candidates

When a choice has to be made between candidates, an incompetent manager will often avoid super-competent recruits in favour of junior or weaker alternatives. Good managers know you must hire people smarter than yourself but weak managers can feel threatened by such folk.

Focus on small tasks

Unable to handle their actual job, they get lost in preparing perfect spreadsheets and making sure data is completely up-to-date.

Allergy to deadlines

A deadline is a commitment, but some managers cannot set and stick to deadlines or honour commitments.

Inability to hire former employees

If you hire a new manager who doesn’t attract new recruits from the previous company, it’s a sign that manager hasn’t mentored others or won their respect.

Addiction to consultants

A good way to put off making decisions is to hire consultants, and so often this is a route a weak manager will take. When the consultant’s report comes in, it also can chew up time.

Long hours

Bad managers work long hours. “They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else,” she writes.

Credit card companies a few years ago were dealing with the problem of stolen credit cards and expiry dates. If you have a bunch of these and an Internet connection you can get a lot of things and do a lot of damage. Attempting to mitigate this problem, credit card companies came out with the idea of a CVC (Card Verification Check) number on the back of the card. The idea being that if you are not swiping the card, you would have to give this number as well in order for the transaction to proceed. This would prove that you physically have the card in your possession. But the key to this working is that no one ever stores the CVC. You enter the CVC during the transaction, it is transmitted for verification and it is NOT stored. Of course you are relying on businesses to not store this number. Nothing to stop them from actually doing it. This is what happened at Geeks.com. Geeks.com sent a letter to their affected customers basically stating they are sorry for the breech, but it is now the customers problem to deal with. Does anyone see a problem with this? A business fails in its security measures that they decided on to protect customer data and it is now the customers problem.

The answer here to me is obvious. Businesses can not be trusted to do the right thing. They can be trusted to do what makes the most financial sense and they always will take this path. We have seen this time and time again and there are way too many examples to list. People like Bruce Schneier have commented on this over and over again for years. Loren Weinstein has an excellent example of this.

The answer to this is easy. Put the burden on the companies, financial institutions and anyone that stores third party financial information. I’m not a lawyer and this would have to be legally worded but the something like this:
“If for any reason you in anyway use or store for any period of time third party financial or personal information for any purpose, you are completely and totally responsible for any breech of this information directly or indirectly for as long as you in anyway have possession of the data. You are legally and financially responsible for any misuse resulting from the breech of this information.”

We need to make it the businesses problem. I think this is fair. The businesses decide their security measures. The businesses decide how to protect the data. The businesses decide what level of competent experts to hire to design, monitor, and secure their systems. As a consumer, I have no say or control in these matters. I am forced to trust them. Trust that they are secure. Trust that they are competent. When that trust that has been imposed on me is breeched they should be responsible. If the businesses are financially and legally responsible they will fix the problem. Business will fix the problem because as we have historically seen over and over again they do this by nature. They do what makes the most financial sense for them. By making them legally and financially responsible it becomes in their best interest to do what makes the most financial sense for them, protect customer data.

The only right thing geeks.com did here was to contact law enforcement.