Why Don't We Elect Bosses At Work?
While some people instantly recoil from this idea, it would potentially set up new leaders in a better way.
Most people would probably inherently recoil from this question, but it’s actually not a bad one. You spend more time at work (at least in the middle portion of your life) than most places. Your boss does determine your work happiness to some extent; you know the ol’ saying about people leaving bosses and not companies. And, honestly, most of the time it feels like we don’t know why certain people were selected for boss roles.
If I had to make a bulleted list of why most people tend to become bosses, I’d go with these:
They deserved it.
They’ve been there a long time and there was no other place for them.
Proximity to the existing ownership or partner core.
Good at one job function so got halo effect’ed into another function (i.e. management).
Diversity and inclusion check-boxes.
Those are the big buckets of managerial advancement at most places. I neglected “dad owns the company” or whatever, because while family-run is a chunk of the economy, it’s not really my focus here.
Of those bullets, the first one (whereby the managerial advancement was deserved) is probably the least common at most organizations, or at least within organizations of 500+ people. As places get bigger, advancement tends to be tied deeply to politics and proximity, and not actually productivity and aptitude.
So, why couldn’t we vote?
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