Taking a holiday this summer may be a one way trip for some managers. I once worked for a Director who never took a holiday. He would have a few days off at Christmas but in the three years I work for him he didn’t take a summer holiday. One year at his wife’s insistence he joined her and their youngest son at a camp site in Wales. He was supposed to be on holiday for two weeks but he didn’t last the first week. He returned to the office saying holidays were “boring”. I don’t know what he told his wife.
Every day he was away he rang the office to check everything was alright. He said we should ring him if there were any problems. He would start the conversation with “have you been trying to get hold of me?” I hadn’t nor had anyone else. He seemed genuinely disappointed when everyone he spoke to said everything was fine. He would prolong the conversation with lots of specific questions about where the rest of the team was and what they were doing and had any of the board members or chief executive been around.
Some managers are afraid to go on holiday or be away from the office for any length of time, they think decisions will be made in their absence about their department and their future. My boss was one of these managers. He didn’t trust the board members and he didn’t trust the chief executive. He knew what they were capable of because he himself had started a whispering campaigned against a colleague in that colleague’s absence. This was how he went from deputy to director. He also knew that if he was out of the way his fellow directors in other departments would use the opportunity to influence budget discussions to the disadvantage of his department. It is after all easier to see the examples of over staffing, top heavy management structures and out dated working practices in other departments. He had himself not been slow in identifying where other departments could learn from his own. Whilst all agree that efficiencies must be made some departments are already more efficient than others. Whilst everyone recognises the need for budget cuts some departments have been protected in the past at the expense of others. And then there is …but if you cut the IT budget we won’t meet our back office efficiency targets.
This is an extreme example of some of the worst aspects of office politics at a senior level and my boss was an extreme example of this type of Machiavellian manager but in the current public sector financial climate many managers will be sweating on the beach over their future and the future of their departments. Whilst back in the office ideas are being floated about management restructurings, service reorganisations and radical solutions.
Blair McPherson was until recently a senior manager in a large local authority. He is author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by www.russellhouse.co.uk