Yesterday on Johanna Rothman's Blog, she asks if amplify is the right word for the following phrase "...managers amplify the work of other people...". I started thinking about it this morning on my commute and remembered a subject that I have been wanting to blog about for a while. I tried to put in a comment on her blog, but some server error occurred, so here is a more detail and drawn out answer...

I like the phrase with amplify in it. I have worked in a large company (63,000 people - Zurich Financial), a small company (grew up to 40 while I was there - IE-Engine) and a somewhat medium comapany (400+ people - State Street Research). While working at these different companies, I have always paid attention to the action of managers and how they manage (this is because I would like to own my own business someday - so I need to learn as much about managing as I can). Personally, I like a manager that is (or was at one point in time) qualified to do my job - BUT does not not tell me how to do it. To me this makes their view point valuable in most situations, so I am more likely to speak with them when want to bounce ideas off of people. Only at Zurich were the managers required (part of their annual review) to help the people that report to them advance in their career the other two everyone was left to develope themselves. I was reminded of this interesting requirement while reading Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry this past week. It seems that Dell too has this sort of management requirement.

This requirement of managers to actually help the people that report to them to become possible replacements of that manager, seems very smart to me. In order for this practice to work, a manager would have to amplfy what his reports are doing. When a manager is doing this, it tells me 3 things:

1. The manager is not trying to do the employees' job for them (micro-managing) - meaning they have the right persons in the right positions
2. The manager knows what they are doing and is recognizing what they are doing
3. The manager is naturally not trying to "manage-up" by focusing on themselves and their own accomplishments (which would total ignore the accomplishments of the manager's employees)