"First Fire All the Managers"

There is a very famous line in Shakespeare’s Henry VI. “The first thing we do,” said Jack Cade, one of Shakespeare’s more memorable and treacherous characters, “is to kill all the lawyers.” Oftentimes you will see this quote used to deride lawyers and the work that lawyers do. Gary Hamel’s ( Gary Hamel ) recent December, 2011 article in the Harvard Business Review, “First Fire All the Managers” seems to echo Jack Cade’s sentiment focusing on mangers instead of lawyers. Hamel’s article suggests that managers are unnecessary to an organization and that “management is the least efficient activity in (your) organization” citing information about a tomato processing company in Florida that only has one manager-the CEO. Hamel’s proposition in a nutshell is that we should move toward organizations where there are no managers – where people manage themselves. Hamel says "By making the mission the boss and truly empowering people, the company creates an environment where people can manage themselves."

     As you might imagine this article has generated lots of comment on the HBR ( Harvard Business Review ) website as well as on the Open Minds website ( http://www.openminds/     Open Minds is a Pennsylvania based company that provides information about behavioral health and offers a wide range of staff development and consulting services to organizations like ours. We regularly attend conferences and seminars offered by what is recognized as one of the best sources of training and development in our field.). Until yesterday I had followed the discussion on the Open Minds website with primarily academic interest. Many behavioral health professionals had offered opinions on the article and the discussion was quite varied and interesting.

     Yesterday, however, my interest left the academic realm and entered the personal realm. Yesterday I was confronted by one of our clinicians who challenged me to fire Sound’s managers. Her comments implied that the managers offered little to our organization and that the organization would be far better off, as would our clients, without a management team. Her comments have made me re-examine both the premise of Hamel’s article and my own beliefs about the roles of managers, including my own, in our organization. So exactly what is the role of the management team here at Sound- what is their value, if any, to the organization? What contributions have been made? Was that challenging clinician right, could the organization survive without managers? Here are my answers to those thought-provoking questions.

Sound Community Services is an organization governed by a set of complex rules and regulations from many sources including a wide variety of federal and state laws, regulations from the Department of Health, Center for Medicaid and Medicare, Board of Pharmacy, Blue Cross & Blue Shield and other third party payers, the City of New London Building and Zoning department and a myriad of others. Hundreds of pages of rules and regulations and several contracts define almost every aspect of what we do and how we do it. Failure to meet or even mere ignorance of these rules and regulation can have and has had very real and serious consequences for Sound. For example in the last year we had to return several thousand dollars to Medicare due to a failure to follow exactly CMS billing regulations.

So how should we assure that we “follow all these externally imposed rules and regulations?” Should we hold individual staff members fully responsible for knowing and abiding by all the hundreds of regulations that govern the work we do? Should staff be responsible to “police” themselves or their colleagues? I think any reasonable person would agree that the answer to that question should be “No.”   No one person could be expected to know everything they should know about every aspect of our business.  Those staff charged with providing direct services to clients should focus on providing quality service and should not be concerned with what many would consider mundane, i.e., assuring that the First Aid kit meets DPH regulations or that the fire extinguishers are inspected monthly. Does it really matter if those mundane and so-called non-essential tasks are done- well, perhaps not in a perfect world where everything goes as it should. But the one time you may need that fire extinguisher to work properly so you can put out a fire or you may need the tourniquet in the First Aid kit to stop someone from bleeding out and it does not work or it is missing may change your mind on the importance or need of the manager charged with making sure those things are done and done right. I could certainly give you hundreds of examples of what the managers here at Sound do to assure that the services we provide are the best possible, but clearly one of their essential roles, but not their only role, is to know what should be done, make sure that what needs to be done is done when it is supposed to be done so that we can continue to provide the best possible services to those who need our help. Each manager here at Sound has an area of responsibility that relates to meeting the rules, regulations and contracts that govern how and to whom we provide services.

None of us should ever underestimate the importance of the managers who supervise that work we do and how they contribute to the overall success of the organization in providing services to those who need services. While the line staff actually may perform the tasks, the manager is charged with making sure that those assigned to carry out the tasks have the skills, tools and training to actually perform the tasks successfully and do so within the rules and regulations that govern us. Think of the manger as a coach- he/she may not step onto the field and play but he/she is responsible for creating and maintaining a winning team! And here, as it is in life in general, it is the manager who loses his or her job when the team performs poorly! Think of Terry Francona, the most recent manager of the Red Sox, who despite his brilliance was fired. It was Francona the manager and not JD Drew the player who lost his job even though Drew had never performed as he should! The manager was held responsible!

So what exactly did Shakespeare mean when he had the character of Jack Cade, a plotter of treachery, utter the phrase, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Jack was seeking to eliminate those who would stand in the way of chaos and lawlessness- the lawyers. So when Hamel suggests that an organization can run without the people who are responsible for making sure what needs to get done does get done I must disagree, at least from the perspective of our highly regulated and complex field. And while Sound has plotted a more middle ground in expecting both leadership and management competency from its managers, the ability to assure that a program or an individual staff member meets all the necessary regulatory requirements is a necessary although not sufficient condition of their employment. Management is not leadership but good leadership requires good management as a prerequisite condition. So let’s not kill all the lawyers or fire all the managers.  Both lawyers and managers play an important role in assuring that there is order and  accountability.

Be well,


Gail