Unfortunately in a lot of environments if you are the kind of person who likes to spend most of their time focusing on politics you can get very far. This is because most of the other people are too busy working to have time to compete with you on a political level. I think this is why we see a certain percentage of destructive people in leadership positions. The only way to sort this out is from the top. But often the people at the top are also too busy to figure out what's going on. It's a weakness in the system that incompetent people can exploit.
What do you suggest we do? Have leaders that aren't good at politics?
Have leaders that lead people to achieve strategic objectives not trying to cutthroat into a higher position.
Separate the reponcibiltiy of leading and managing?
Good management is rare because the payoff can be longer. The benefits of an hour of week of investments by a manager today mostly accrue to others in a longer time horizon. It rarely helps this quarters numbers.
Good management is also very hard to measure, as it’s not on a scale like technical skills. A good manager in peaceful times can be too soft in tough times.
This is all true and extremely relevant to the software industry. If anyone is interested in learning more about effective management based on these ideas, I recommend the book, "First, Break All the Rules," which is based on the same Gallup research that informs this article.
Not that I'm a manager but I enjoyed High Output Management by Andy Grove. It's short and sticks to KISS, I don't really subscribe to the belief that dealing with people is something you can learn from books -- The Art of War won't kindle a non existent fire, instead it amplifies something innate. A lot of methodology seems overly rigid and stiff to be useful for anything but sounding good in theory and failing in practice.
By definition "good" has to be rare, otherwise it wouldn't be good ...
"good: adjective, 2. having the required qualities; of a high standard."
I don't see "rare" being a part of the definition.
It's not in the definition, it's in the distribution curve that is implied. Good = better than average = rarer than the average.