P.G. Wodehouse, Management Specialist

Oddly enough, the book in which Wodehouse talks in great detail about the nitty-grity hassles of the working world is set in a school.  Instead of focusing on the faculty, the prefects are the main characters.  There are a lot of Wodehouse novels that focus around work, either in its procurement or loss.  There are also a lot of his novels that concentrate on money-making schemes, but these are never sustained endeavors or anything that can be described as a career.  Up until now, I had not encountered any that presented such a clear picture of the dangers of a micro-manager. 

The action in The Head of Kay’s revolves around an upstart house, or hall of residence, in an English public school.  Each house is named after its headmaster, in this case, Mr. Kay.  He is not someone I would ever want to have in charge of anything involving humans, least of all a house full of teenaged boys.  He is inflexible and unwavering in his approach to discipline, and blames his head prefect, Fenn, for discipline infractions that occurred while he was not present in the house.  There are many time when Kay ticks off the head of house in front of the other students, which is never the way forward.  He is the sort of maddening individual that thrusts his nose into things and makes pronouncements without knowing their full background.  Instead of thinking that he is the problem, Kay is convinced that it is Fenn’s issue and summarily has him replaced by a prefect from another house. Kennedy.  Complicating matters is the fact that the two boys are friends, and at first their relationship is strained under the new management structure.

I have been very lucky in my professional career to have had some excellent supervisors and have been mostly spared form the scourge of micro-management.  Sadly, many of my friends have not been so fortunate, and so hearing about the lack of trust that abounded in Kay’s house was uncomfortably familiar.  The dramatic change of head rang in my head as a prime example of the toxic workplaces that I have read about in the occasional management book that I peruse. 

Part of me was hoping that the two friends would concoct a scheme that would put Kay in his proper place.  The management crisis is only solved completely by Kay leaving the school to become the headmaster of another (good luck to them, I say).  This feels like a much more realistic conclusion that one finds in later Wodehouse books.  The Head of Kay’s was written in 1905, only a few years before Wodehouse left formal employment at the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (now known as HSBC, possibly, although don’t hold me to that because it’s difficult keeping abreast of these banks and their name changes).  I had the feeling while reading this book that Wodehouse had a few managerial demons from his professional life to exorcise.  Would that such an easy solution be had by all of my friends facing challenging managers.