Mystery Men

There are managers for people,
and some for projects, too.
There are managers for strategies
and roadmaps and BU's
There are managers for all accounts
the old and then the new,
And usually there are extra ones;
what do those guys do?

Work 9

The manager saw that empowerment posed
a particular threat to the folks predisposed
to direct and to order; to plan and refine,
to manage, in other words, underlings' time.

If those underlings (assumed by the org. to be dopes)
self-organized into small teams, they could cope
with the needs of the products that were yet to be.
Thought the manager: "that might work better than me".

Now the manager wasn't a cad or a jerk;
he honestly thought what he did was real work.
It was hard, after all, this "management" trade.
And besides, just look at how well he was paid!

And so as he sat in a meeting (as always)
He thought hard about how to derail, in small ways,
This dangerous trend that might cost him his clout:
The idea that those dopes might know what they're about.

Work 1

The office is where he will lurk,
An old hand or maybe young turk.
He's a manager man
and will do what he can
Which too seldom includes real work.