Managers Should Not Need to Be Managed

It is amazing to me how much some managers need to be managed.  I am not sure why this is. After all, the ability is built into the job title.

I have worked with numerous managers in the past who for the life of them cannot even remember the simplest things that they need to do.  If you do not constantly remind them to do things it might never get done.  I often joke with people that Program Managers should have almost nothing to do.  If everyone just did their job and made sure the people who work for them do their job, then high level Program Management would almost be unnecessary.

But the ironic thing is that almost everywhere I have worked has a strong need to have someone coordinating the work of others.  Not just other individual contributors, other managers.  But why is that?  My thought is that managers have not actually learned how to be managers.  Most managers are just thrown into the job because they were very strong individual contributors.  This of course is the exact wrong way to pick who should become a manager.  We have a work society where your next promotion is almost exclusively determined if you did your current job well.  But that is a little silly if you think about it.  Just because I write solid code does not mean I have the people skills to be a good manager.  In fact, it might almost exclude me from it :)

But in all seriousness, I think it is astonishing how much time and effort is wasted in managing managers.  Perhaps if they were just given a little more training on how to be effective in this area it would not be such a problem.  At the very least, their bosses need to be very clear what a manager is expected to do and what they are expected not to do.  This is what I do.  I give my managers tremendous freedom on how they need to accomplish their job but at the same time I make it very clear that their main concern is the proper functioning of their team and responsibilities.  They should not rely on others, either myself or my Program Manager, to constantly remind them to do the things that are core to their job.

What have your experiences been like?  Have you worked with a lot of mangers that need managing?  Have you done anything to try and address this issue?

Time to Dip Your Toe?

I am not so sure if the market is done going down.  In fact, I do not think we are done here.  I think S&P 600 is very possible which is just scary if you think about it.  That being said, you just never know when the bottom hits.  I am not suggesting it is time to run into the market, but there are certain stocks that are probably pretty good buys here if you can just put them away and not look at them for five years.

What do you ask are these stocks?  I have written before, I want to own the maker of stuff.  That is, I want to own companies that are actually tangible.  These are not the consumer names like Apple but rather the mkers of things like steel like US Steel (X) or copper miners like Freeport-McMoRan (FCX).  I think energy has found a nice little bottom now and want to look at energy names like Conoco Phillips (COP) which will do well when everything rebounds and we suddenly realize we all still drive cars.

I am not advocating running in tomorrow and buying everything in sight.  You have time to make your move, there is no doubt about that.  Even if the market makes a 10% move tomorrow, it will come back, so do not just run in.

Setting Goals

Only a quick post tonight because I'm busy doing what I'm about to blog about, setting goals for my team and for myself.

It is an odd to set goals for your team and to watch other set goals for their teams.  I believe in setting SMART goals.  For those that don't know SMART goals are

• S pecific


• M easurable


• A ttainable


• R elevant


• T imely

This simple thing is actually quite important because I am a strong believer in you have to do what you say you are going to do. Setting goals is just that, you should be sure that they are clear and that you can achieve them.  Other people just do not seem to get that and it amazes me.

Now to be fair to others, this is the first time my current company is really having everyone do goals.  This is a huge change than in years prior where nobody really had goals and everyone just went around to do their job without having any clue about how their performance would be measured.  Now, I do not believe you should go overboard with goal setting.  I have seen it go too much the other way, especially when I was at Microsoft.   But in general, I think it is important for employees to know what is expected to them and how they can demonstrate it.

But as I look over the goals of others, so many of them are extremely vague or completely unobtainable by that employee.  I have seen goals like, "Make people better".  What does that mean and how do you achieve that?  I see several people with revenue goals for the company but these people have no real way to affect that number.  I know it is important that the company meets their financial targets but why should an employee have a goal which they have no way to influence?

My goals are by no means perfect, but they generally follow the SMART guidelines.  How about you, have you ever had to set goals or had goals set for you that were completely unrealistic?

Democrats Oppose Increasing Taxes on the Wealthy?

Has the world gone mad?  Today, several Democratic leaders seem ready to oppose the President on his proposed tax hikes on the wealthy.  What the heck is the world coming to.

Most people who read this blog can probably guess I'm not in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy to support more government programs.  I would prefer we get back to a place where we have smaller government and less taxes for EVERYONE.  But yet in one of these ironic twists, this part of Obama's plans probably bothers me the least.  Now how on earth can someone with my views write this?

Well if you know me, you know I HATE the tax system.  I seriously think it may be the evilest tax system in the world.   I prefer any plan which makes the tax code simpler and more fair.  While I do not think this makes the tax code simpler, it makes it more complex, it does make it more fair. But it is not more fair in the way most people think of it.  I honestly do not care to tax the rich more than the poor.  What I do not like is when there are deductions in the tax code.  The more deductions you have in the tax code, the more loopholes you have.  The more deductions you have, the more you distort economic behavior.

By essentially giving rich people less deductions, you are distorting their behavior less.  If housing prices and charitable giving drop because rich people can no longer deduct these things I have absolutely no problem with that.  If people need a deduction to be charitable then we have some other problems.    If housing is only high because government subsidizes it at the expense of non-landowners and it falls, oh well.   What I would actually prefer is to get rid of these deductions for EVERYONE.  While there are other tax systems I prefer over the flat tax, I would at least concede that a flat tax would be better than the current system we have today which just does not make any sense.

Obama States Market is A Good Buy

Today, Obama came out and declared that for long term investors, the market is probably a good thing to buy right now.  The market reacted by selling off from its highs.

Not sure what the purpose of Obama coming out and saying this is.  In fact, I think it is pretty counterproductive.  The problem right now for the markets is the lack of confidence in the system.  There is so much uncertainty right now, that nobody wants to play the game.  The more that the government does, the more the market goes down.  Do not discount the market's reaction to Obama's plans.  They do not like it.   As much as I hate to say it, this is not all Bush's fault.  A lot of what the market is doing right now is in direct reaction to what they see as the government increasing regulations and controls on the economy.  This is something that market players obviously does not like.

To further my point, I think the market does not like being told by people like the President what is "good" or "bad".  It just feels like I'm being "sold" to.  It feels a little bit like he is trying to build confidence up by saying we should all be confident.  I have learned in my career that when people try to tell you everything is OK, chances are everything is not OK.

Is the market a good buy right now if you are a "long term" investor?  Is Obama right?  That is REALLY hard to say.  Do not buy the company line.  The company line just two or three years ago was that housing was ALWAYS a good buy.  Housing NEVER goes down.  Now people are trying to tell you if you have a buy and hold strategy you should do just that.  Tell that to the people who did that a dozen years ago.  We are right back where we started.  Not working out so great for those people.

More Bailouts & Dow 6000

It was announced today that AIG is getting yet another bailout. This is the fourth time the government has stepped in to try and save the company.  Does it worry anybody else that this the fourth time they are going back?  One thing I learned early on in my career is that when you have to deliver bad news, you do it exactly once.  You course correct and you give yourself enough room that even in a worse case scenario, you do not have to go back to the well.   Going back again just makes you lose credibility.  This clearly is not being done with any of the bailout plans.  People keep coming back for more.  AIG is back, GM and Chrysler are coming back, and more banks will come back.

You take this news along side the Dow breaking below 7000 and you have to wonder if there is any causation.  The market is behaving so badly because nobody has any confidence that we can get out of this.  Markets bounce back because people do not want to miss out on the potential upside.  But with the rules changing so rapidly and it being impossible to tell who will will and who will fail, there is nobody to buy stocks.  Just looking at volumes in trading, it does not seem to me to be an overabundance of sellers.  There just are no buyers.   In any market you need both.  So while I do not think sellers are rushing for the doors, you are most definitely not getting people who have any desire to get in.

At this point, I do not think Dow 6000 is that far fetched.  You would not have gotten me to say that a week ago but this is how quickly things have changed.  Lucky for me, I'm still mostly in cash and have not made any moves to get more long other than to get less short.  I am not sure I would get short from here but I also am pretty damn sure I will not be getting long either.

Is There Any Good News?

Don't look now, but the market closed below the November bottom.  As I said in my last post, if it closed below this, all bets are off.  Next week is a make or break week.  Either stocks need to bounce here or we could easily have another 100 points to the downside.  Just a few weeks ago, I honestly could not  imagine a scenario where we could lose that 100 points. But in this type of market, it is impossible to really predict what the heck is going on next.

The news out there right now is just bad and looking to get worse.  A few things that caught my eye

• Markets reach down to twelve year lows.


• California unemployment reaches double digits.


• Buffet has his worse year ever.


• States budgets will continue to take a beating for years.


• Government needs to take even more action to help ailing AIG.

They say, when there is no good news, that is the time to buy stocks.  I am not so sure I believe that right now.  I still think we are only in the 6th inning with plenty of more pain to go.  At the very least, I think we are probably flat for the next several months here so there is no rush to buy anything.  I may take a small long position and see if a bounce happens, but it will be a very small position.  It will be a position I will get in and out of quickly either direction the market moves.