Managing people

Today's topic was a bit dry I guess. I asked the kids to guess what the most important and most difficult aspect of running an organization was. To my surprise, they immediately responded that keeping the people that worked there happy. Wow! Maybe we already discussed this and I forgot... But, yes, I agreed, finding great people and keeping them happy, motivated and productive was probably the most important, and most difficult, task of a leader. I explained that just like my wife and I have to frequently resolve issued among them and give them help and support, organizations' leaders often have to resolve issues among their teams and devote lots of time to helping them and supporting them.

I the asked them how they thought leaders of large organizations, i.e., 1000+ people, managed to do this. They immediately responded that they got others to help them. Yes, indeed. And for large organization the "helpers" had "helpers" and so on, so that most organizations were like pyramids... P thought that it was unfair that those at the bottom of the pyramid had nobody to "manage". I explained that younger and less experienced people start there, but that they "move up" as they gained more experience and demonstrated their abilities. I should have also told them that not everybody wants to manage others. That plenty of people are happy as individual contributors.