This is so depressing and cynical. And fairly accurate in a lot of cases.
The trick, if you don't want to debase yourself, is to find a manager who is good at all of these things, but is also good at passing credit down and blocking blame going up.
When things go well they will take credit for their great management and then highlight the IC who was responsible. When things go sideways, they will take the blame without naming names and then propose a 2 quarter solution to fix it.
yes! the #1 and #2 thing you should optimize after getting paid as much as you care to be paid are "does my manager have my back" (protect you internally) and "will my manager go to bat for me" (advance you externally). It doesn't matter if your manager is your friend, an asshole or not, or a good person, or even to some degree, an honest person, or anything else.
Couldn't agree more. The most important thing for me as a manager is always exposing the work of my subordinates upwards so that they are known to my managers when opportunity comes.
The best bosses I've ever had were fairly staunch servant leaders. It's a shame that the opportunist ruin the servant leadership model fairly easily though since a servant leader is very easy to mislead and manipulate by nature. There is a level of trust required to be a good servant leader that also lends itself to exploitation by the opportunistic middle manager described in the OP article.
One place where the original article goes off the rails was when it mentions a walk with a misguided botanist who only sees a forest in terms of competition -- and then the author builds out that idea into the theme of their approach to business. I was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution myself (studying with Larry Slobodkin and others), and here is something I wrote long ago drawing from that knowledge reflecting a world of both competition and cooperation (as well as both meshwork and hierarchy in Manuel De Landa's terms):
> "... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see both the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality and often expansionism, and yet also the result is a good spacing of biomass to near optimally convert sunlight to living matter and resist and recover from wind and ice damage. I try to recall that there is the most brutal of competition between species of plants and animals and fungi and so on over water, nutrients (including from eating other creatures), sunlight, and space, while at the same time each bacterial colony or multicellular organism (like a large Pine tree) is a marvel of cooperation towards some implicitly shared purpose. I see the awesome result of both simplicity and complexity in the organizational structure of all these organisms and their DNA, RNA, and so on, adapted so well in most cases to the current state of such a complex web of being. Yet I can only guess the tiniest fraction of what suffering that selective shaping through variation and selection must have entailed for untold numbers of creatures over billions of years. To be truthful, I can actually really see none of that right now as it is dark outside this early near Winter Solstice time (and an icy rain is falling) beyond perhaps a silhouette outline, so I must remember and imagine it, perhaps as Einstein suggests as an "optical delusion of [my] consciousness". :-)"
Yeah it's interesting how good mil officers handle this, as its true. Usually it's a blend of being a servant leader, yet asserting a form of dominance upwards/downwards that indicates you're a good person, but not to be stepped on. Tricky balance as the servant part is easy enough, dominance part is not.
Ah, the Loyalty Model. You protect me and do good work, and when sh*t goes sideways, we blame someone else together, and then I'll put you in charge of their team.
>when sh*t goes sideways, we blame someone else together
The parent comment literally said "they will take the blame without naming names". Taking the blame pretty much always implies "taking the blame upon themselves" when used in this context. So I don't see how you get "blaming someone else" from the person saying "the blame is on me".
The trick, if you don't want to debase yourself, is to find a manager who is good at all of these things, but is also good at passing credit down and blocking blame going up.
When things go well they will take credit for their great management and then highlight the IC who was responsible. When things go sideways, they will take the blame without naming names and then propose a 2 quarter solution to fix it.