Dear Miss Manager:

I need help! It’s not just a single management question, but management in general. Somehow, I’ve been thrust into the position of managing more and more staff when all I really want to do is catalog. It wasn’t so bad when there was just one staff member who had lots of experience and we each spent most of the day cataloging and consulting one another and seeing that our student worker processed things correctly. But then we hired a second professional who needed lots of training and lots of supervision, then the original staff member retired, then I was given the loose-leafers to supervise, and I have less and less time to do what I want! What should I do?

Sincerely,
Born to Catalog

Dear Born :

Miss Manager has known several catalogers who have found themselves in a situation which may be described as a cousin of the Peter principle.^* These catalogers are honestly uninterested in moving up any ladders, and are happy to do nothing but catalog (although Miss Manager does not believe that the element of incompetence implied in the true Peter principle works in this category. Knowing where your strengths lie and seeking fulfilling work over advancements are traits foreign to many in the business hierarchies addressed in that work.)

Any skill which is challenging to learn, difficult to execute well, and arcane to those who are not familiar with it tends to be extremely satisfying to the true proficient. Imagine a person who learns to weld and becomes better and better at it until he is so good that those who supervise his work decide he should pass on his skill to the less-experienced. That is a very good arrangement for the supervisors who guarantee themselves a steady supply of welders. It is not as good for the original welder who wants to weld.

This is your analogous position. Your supervisors, perhaps without your consultation, decided that it was more important for you to train staff to perform their work well than to spend as much time doing the specific tasks of cataloging. Obviously, this vision of the upper management in your library does not match your own. Your first step should be to address the reasons for such a decision – if indeed it was a decision. Depending upon the way things are done in your library, this new scenario may be the result of drift rather than an active decision that came out of an organized strategy. It is up to you to discuss this with your immediate supervisor (whether that is a department head, a director, a supervising attorney.) Find out what vision those who are in charge of the library’s big picture have for your area. You may discover that you have more leeway than you imagine.

One of the unfortunate truths about cataloging in a law library is that many of those who are not involved in it have little understanding of it. If you are convincing enough to make it clear that your skills are best put to use performing the highly professional and necessary task of cataloging, and that the supervision of personnel should fall to someone else, it may be a simple matter of moving around a few reporting lines. But you should be sure that is what you really want. It is likely that those who set salaries will give more credit to those who can manage people than those who don’t. This is just a reality of the workplace.

If after attempting to redirect work patterns in your library you find that things will not change, and if you are truly convinced that cataloging is the only work for you, you will have to look for work elsewhere. If that becomes the chosen alternative, you will have to look for either a very large law library that has positions available for people who only catalog, or a large research library outside of the legal field. But Miss Manager would like to remind you that even if you were born to catalog, you chose to come into a profession that is changing very much with the times. It may be that those trained to be professional librarians will spend less and less time doing the particular task (whatever it may be) that first attracted them into the profession. A librarian without flexibility will have a very tough time in the years ahead.

^* ”1968 L. J. Peter Peter Principle (1969) i. 25 My analysis of hundreds of cases of occupational incompetence led me on to formulate The Peter Principle: In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” OED2 on CD-ROM (Version 1.10).

Mis-Manager:

Pardon me for saying so, but you have got your head stuck in the clouds, lady. All of your wishy-washy answers are suitable (if at all) to those who work in some luxurious academic ivory tower. You know nothing about managing people in the real world. If you’d ever spent any time in a really busy library where things actually need to get done, you might have a clue. You would not be fretting over who’s happy and who’s not — that’s just bull. You give people a job. They do it or they don’t. If they don’t, they’re out on their ear. If they do, you pay them. You bust your butt to get the next thing done. It’s simple and requires no so-called experts to guide the way.

Sincere as hell,
Mr. Gruff

Sincerely, in the sense that my own views are merely one set of potentialing enablers,

Ms. Trendy

Dear Gruff and Trendy,

Miss Manager would first like to take the opportunity to express her profound gratitude for the undoubted blessing of never having worked for either of you. If possible, could you both put yourselves for a moment in the place of the staff person working in a law library who has some specific task to accomplish? I think it is clear enough that people in such a position require neither an iron fist nor a pile of mush. They want managers who will give them guidance, encouragement, and useful criticism.

No one minds being persuaded to perform a task differently or better if the persuasion is sensible, clear, and humane. It is deep in human nature to respond aggressively (or at least defensively) to aggression, whether or not the aggressive manager has a good point to make. It is also deep in most human beings to stop paying attention when processes become too convoluted or uninteresting. Management is primarily a species of human interaction; and the style and substance of management are deeply intertwined.

Judging from the apparent styles of your management, I suspect that the substance that you both lack is a proper respect for your employees. Respect for any person who works under your direction is a minimal requirement in a manager. Respecting someone does not mean that you pretend substandard work is acceptable or that immature behavior is just lightheartedness. Respecting someone means that you are taking that person, and that person’s work, seriously. You are willing to use the skills you have as a person overseeing the work of others to correct where necessary and to praise when appropriate. If you come down hard every time someone makes a mistake or fails to adhere to your rules you will lose the respect of your employees because you have failed to show respect to them. On the other hand, if you are removed from the nuts and bolts of the work you are supervising to such an extent that you cannot offer concrete solutions, you lessen your chances of having any staff person pay attention to your advice.

Mr. Gruff and Ms. Trendy, you are the twin peaks on every pointy-headed boss out there. I have never known a truly effective manager who was not, first, a decent person and, second, someone with good common sense. If you are lacking in either of those qualities, you should look to those fundamental elements first and then decide if anything else in your management style needs to be refined.

Dear Miss Manager:

My boss is a wretch! He himself has no affection for pets of any kind. My technical services staff are all passionate about their dogs and cats. My dictator/director refuses to let us use sick time to care for our pets or to take them to the vet. How do I deal with such an insensitive lout?

Furiously,
Fido fanatic

Dear Furry,