David Dyess .com

There are many different types of management styles; I have seen lots of them in the military and previous jobs over the years. The style I try to use and seems to be the most affective is what I call parallel management. There is an opposite of parallel management and I call it perpendicular management. In perpendicular management, subordinates feel as though their managers never come all the way down to their level; it is very much an elitest style of management. An example of it is a manager that gives out work assignments, but never interacts with workers in their own environment; they never try to experience the workers’ position, even though they have probably been there before.

Parallel management, like I mentioned before, is very much the opposite of perpendicular management. The managers attempt to be as involved with their workers as possible, without intruding in the workers’ need for independence. A manager using parallel management will get involved with varying tasks and he/she will attempt to get to know subordinates on a more personal level, while maintaining professionalism and discipline. The manager will experience first hand what the workers have to go through to complete tasks and will be able to communicate more efficiently with subordinates. Subordinates will feel more comfortable while the manager is present and will be more likely to share ideas to improve the work place.

Using parallel management has many advantages over any other style, although it does have a few draw backs. Luckily, the draw backs can be avoided by maintaining professionalism and discipline, avoiding favoritism, and encouraging team work. One of the best advantages is it allows you to get to know subordinates at a better level and find out what type of worker/person they actually are (instead of how they appear to be). Being a manager should be about managing people, not numbers or positions. Parallel management will help you put the right people in the right places; that will make your job more rewarding and more successful.

It seems these days everyone puts a lot of stock in self-esteem. They don’t want teachers marking tests with red ink because it hurts the students’ self-esteem. They don’t want students to have their own crayons, because someone may have a better/bigger box than someone else. They want everything level, everything fair. The list goes on and on. I say fubar. When I was in school and got a test back with red ink all over, I knew I messed up. I knew that I hadn’t tried hard enough and I needed to work harder. Did it hurt my self-esteem? Sure it did! But they call it a test for a reason and if you can’t pass, you shouldn’t feel great about it. The next test I studied harder and I can’t remember failing twice in a row.

Today kids are expected to be treated as adults, I say fubar. They aren’t adults, they are kids and they should be treated as kids. All our society is doing is creating a bunch of selfish, self-esteemed, irresponsible kids. They have no responsibilities, they aren’t even ‘tested’ anymore. They aren’t taught to be adults. I say get rid of this time out, no red ink, community crayons fubar and teach kids responsibility, teach kids we aren’t all equal. Allow the kids to willingly share with one other, make them learn how to work together instead of making life seem to easy. You know the best way to make someone better? Tell them they aren’t good enough! How can someone ever get better if they think they are already just as good as anyone else?

I think self-esteem isn’t that great. It’s good to know your strengths and weaknesses. It’s good to know that you aren’t as good at something as Joe, but better than him at something else. I think when we don’t all think we are the greatest, we come together better, we work together better. Someone has to be the best, but they aren’t the best at everything, chances are they may even be the worst at something. I think we need to work on instilling some selflessnes in our society. Teach community, instead of trying to force it.

Today kids act like they expect to always get what they want. I say fubar. I can think of a lot of times I didn’t get what I wanted when I wanted it. Did it kill me?  No. It made me take better care of it when I did finally get it. It made me work harder to show I deserved it. I bought my first swing set when I was 5 years old, saving the $1 bills my mom would give us to get candy with at the grocery store. Did I want candy? Sure I did! But I wanted a swing set more and I knew my parents couldn’t afford one. I know I didn’t pay for the swing set by myself, but having $100 saved up didn’t hurt my cause and my dad never mentioned how much more he had to pay for it. I bought it by saving and by showing that I was dedicated to it, not with the money. We need to be more humble, to realize we can’t expect everything to be given to us when we reach out our hands.

Above all, it seems we’ve lost faith. Of course we have! How can we have faith when we are selfish and proud? As soon as something goes wrong, we don’t have anywhere to lean and we lose faith. The economy is a perfect example. A bunch of selfish, proud rich people lose some money and they expect to be bailed out. I say fubar! Capitalism works, but only when we let it! Sometimes things have to fail. If nothing ever fails, then nothing ever gets renewed. If nothing gets renewed, then progress stops and everything stagnates. We ran up housing costs to make more money, even though we knew they weren’t worth as much and the people borrowing money for them couldn’t afford the loans. What’s going to happen?  Gee, maybe the people that can’t afford the loans don’t pay them back, so the lender loses money, people stop over spending on houses, the housing market goes back to what it should be anyway, and a lot of money disappears? Oh no! What to do? Well, don’t do it again for one thing! Don’t give a bunch of crooks even more money, just because they couldn’t manage the billions they had. Have a little faith.

Everything has a cycle. Everything seems to come back around eventually. We’ve had some rough times this cycle and I don’t think it’s working. Let’s bring back a little selflessness. Let’s bring back a little humbleness. The faith will find it’s own way.

I have a few domain names I rarely, if ever, use. I’ve decided to start putting them to good use this year. I plan on writing some articles on ProfoundGrace.com or .org (if I don’t make them the same site). Those will mostly be articles for Bible studies and things like that. I also plan to rebuild BeSquishy.com, using the Clay framework.

I want to write more on here, but most of the things I have to write about lately are about the Bible. Tangant.com will mostly be personal/development type blogging. I’m kind of stuck on a couple of things in Clay right now, trying to decide the best approach to take, so I haven’t worked on it a lot. I hope to dive back into it and finish out the 0.5.0 milestone, then I can release it and hopefully get some useful feedback.

My wife and I have been having some problems lately, so that has kind of prevented me from writing on here. I don’t really know what to say, since I don’t like writing about stuff that personal, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to get some of it out. Our problems are my fault, btw, which is hard to say, but still not so easy to fix. I’m trying, I just pray she doesn’t give up on me. I definantly see things in a different light now, I just hope it isn’t too late.

2008 has come and gone, it seems every year is in more of a hurry to go by than the last. Maybe 2009 will bring more of the good and less of the bad. It’s another year, another day. May God allow each of us blessings in 2009 and beyond.