I suspect managers in many organizations never receive training and don't know what to do! When you don't know what to do, you do what you know, which may be your prior job. Also, utilities (in my experience and other organizations for all I know) tend to 'promote' analysts they really like, rather than look for 'managers' from inside or outside. The HR metrics commonly don't reward managerial activity. Nor do state public utility regulators (or, in your case, a publicly elected board) recognize it as a valuable activity. What isn't deemed valuable, won't get included in an approved revenue requirement, public or IOU. Electric utilities, again public or private, are part of a system in which all of the participants expectations of what 'should' be, hold all the rest in place where they are. I have thought long and hard bout how a utility could break out of this, but have no ideas. If it happenes, however, it will start small and be perceived as incremental, I suspect.
My experience in a large government bureaucracy is that it works despite the system and not because of it. Part of the reason might be that information can easily move past management layers that were designed to control and organize the flow of information. It’s not obvious what the solution is.
The most straightforward solution is the one that works for militaries: generational crisis in which failure becomes life-or-death. Not because leaders rise to the occasion per se, but because the failures really do end careers.
I'm very happy to have hit the point in my career to have a manager level position, with zero "reports to's"
I suspect managers in many organizations never receive training and don't know what to do! When you don't know what to do, you do what you know, which may be your prior job. Also, utilities (in my experience and other organizations for all I know) tend to 'promote' analysts they really like, rather than look for 'managers' from inside or outside. The HR metrics commonly don't reward managerial activity. Nor do state public utility regulators (or, in your case, a publicly elected board) recognize it as a valuable activity. What isn't deemed valuable, won't get included in an approved revenue requirement, public or IOU. Electric utilities, again public or private, are part of a system in which all of the participants expectations of what 'should' be, hold all the rest in place where they are. I have thought long and hard bout how a utility could break out of this, but have no ideas. If it happenes, however, it will start small and be perceived as incremental, I suspect.
My experience in a large government bureaucracy is that it works despite the system and not because of it. Part of the reason might be that information can easily move past management layers that were designed to control and organize the flow of information. It’s not obvious what the solution is.
The most straightforward solution is the one that works for militaries: generational crisis in which failure becomes life-or-death. Not because leaders rise to the occasion per se, but because the failures really do end careers.