Maybe you should email them and ask why they seem to be actively trying to shut this down?

When you’re a single worker, creating or doing whatever you do, you can strive for the highest level of excellence in that work. That is usually very personally rewarding, because you see the results of your work each day, and since you retain full control over your work, you have the potential to create things of the highest possible quality.

But when you manage, you’re guiding and crafting the work of others. That means that you’re scaling what you do– you are going beyond the personal impact that you can have, and instead are finding ways to harness the impact of others, whether that’s two folks, ten, or ten thousand.

At scale, you can’t control the individual work as much. It’s not a great way to create a single great work of art. But, because of the influence you have, you can potentially do things that impact far more people. To wit, think about the impact of the Medici family, or particularly, Lorenzo de’ Medici. Who really had a bigger impact on the world, Michelangelo or the leader of Medici family?

For that matter, as funny and poignant as your anecdote is, I wonder what Michelangelo’s legacy would have been if he did actually devote his life to supervising and leading other artists, say with a new guild or studio. What other works might we have then? What new trends or revolutions might he have started?

Now, more to your point: about motivating managers. The answer that I have found is that the motivating events are there– they just take much, much longer to happen. Managing is a slow thing. You usually don’t have any impact until you’ve been on the job for a year or more. And I don’t think I felt I started to get any positive feedback and motivating until I was two or so years in.

Now I’ve done the job long enough that I expect the feedback (and motivation) to take that long to show up. But, when it does happen– when I feel that I’ve been able to make someone’s work life happier, or when I’ve been able to help a team deliver something they might not have otherwise– it means the world me.

http://www.manager-tools.com/ via Google+

Some companies at good at avoiding this trap. At least the scenario is well enough known now.

i expect we’ll still have traditional managers around for a while though, if not always, so I’m still curious how to keep them motivated. via Facebook