Should I stay or should I go?

This post originally appeared on my other blog.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about management. This is mostly triggered by my job. Three quarters of the employees in my current office have the title of "manager." To me, this means that they've spent some time thinking about people and how to motive them, how to plan for the future and distribute workload, and how to strategize for different outcomes. But for most of the managers in my office, none of this seems to be the case. In our office, management means to be something more like: you-do-everything-yourself and check-in-with-the-boss and often act-competitively-about-your-colleagues.

It's a mess.

I don't claim to be a manager, but I do feel that my life experience and (older) age gives me a different perspective than most of my younger manager/co-workers. I feel like I have a stronger interest in collaboration and learning/teaching. I KNOW that you can't and shouldn't do everything yourself. I KNOW that different people have different strengths and that we should be following those, rather than pretending that everyone can do everything. I KNOW that attitudes and behaviors replicate. In other words, if you're taught by a bad manager, you more likely to become a bad manager.

Personally, I'm not very into titles, especially if they don't have merit. But I'm motivated to think about how we can work efficiently and minimize duplication. I want everyone to feel like they can contribute their best talents, and not be bought down by their weaknesses. I look at the structures that are in place in my office (almost none) and feel really concerned about the possibility of the office growing in size. And it IS growing. Our size will increase by 50% in the next month. I'm not sure the current structure should – or can – be scaled up to include more people. In fact, I think it's around under a good amount of strain already.

I've debated blogging about this for several months. One of the reason for the debate is that I half-suspect that one – or some – of my coworkers stumbled across my blog.

I've attempted to influence my co-workers from my place at the bottom of the totem pole in the office. I've tried to be deferent and respectful and slide in some gentle suggestions for improvements or other ways of thinking. I've tried to earn their trust. I've made some missteps. I've been too strong sometimes. I'm not perfect. But none of my actions or missteps justify the way that some people in the office have treated me or responded: they frequently shut me down as too academic or too theoretical. They claim responsibility for my work. Or they redo my work without talking to me about how I could be doing things better. They seem to have chips on their shoulders that I simply can't influence away. This makes the atmosphere of the office feel incredibly hostile, in addition to the poor management skills. Of course I don't like it. I spend a good amount of time trying to shake this feeling or convince myself that I'm being silly.

But it's getting old and wearing and I'm not sure I have it in me to play these sort of mindgames with myself anymore. Sometimes, you just have to trust your gut and get out.