Incompetent Bosses, Inutile Employees, Messed up Systems
August 29th, 2007 by 
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Everyday when I go over blogs and news, I come across a good number of postings ranting about incompetent bosses. Although you don’t read it as much ( its not popular when the manager complains about bad employees in public, is it? After all, the reason you are the boss is invariably you get to enjoy the fruits of your employees’ labor, as well as answer for their shortcomings), in private circles when you talk among fellow businessmen and entrepreneurs, you hear a lot of stories about how inutile employees could not get things done, or messed up, sometimes comically, sometimes disastrously.
It makes me muse — what destroys capital value faster? A company with a bad boss but competent employees and a good system, or a company with a great boss, but with no system, and so-so employees?
I know popular management books will make it sound that a good manager is everything, and can make bad things work, but please do think about it for a while ….
Think about McDonalds and their over 30,000 stores. I am sure some of their store managers are wanting, but the system makes it work.
Think about an entrepreneur who we know is a great manager, and have great success in venture one, but failed miserably in venture two. The timing, and the people he worked with, did not work out.
The omni-capable entrepreneur is overrated, and there is only so much even an excellent manager can do. What do you think?
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Posted in Entrepreneurship, FrontPage | 
August 29th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I think a person can only genuinely call himself an entrepreneur if he can establish a system so idiot-proof that it will run regardless of incompetent managers and employees. That’s the hallmark of great franchisees.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I think it the…
1.) Manager 2.) System 3.) Employees
For after all, it is the Manager that runs the System and selects the Employess.
August 29th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Managers/entrepreneurs and employees should be mutually beneficial. They must learn how to co-exist and together move in one direction. They must learn to complement each other.
A boss can anytime change the system to his/her liking, whether for good or bad. But overall, the company is the one suffering and whatever actions the boss, employees or whoever is in the company will do, in the end the company is at stake!
August 30th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Thanks for the comments.
It is only fairly recently that people started to emphasize the importance of systems and processes.
In fact one of the best management advice I ever read was the simple quote:
Don’t manage the people. Manage the systems that manage the people.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:50 am
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