[kelnos]

Absolutely agree.

I think there is a conflict of interest there, though. Managers have a vested interest in saying that their team is highly productive. Managers of highly productive teams get raises and more head count, and eventually promotions. Anything else reflects poorly on the manager.

So the managers-of-managers do need to keep their eyes on this too, but I also agree with you that it's harder for people in that higher-level position to evaluate this. I guess, as you hint at, the manager-of-managers can look at team output overall, and if that's below expectations, that's a starting point for discussion with the line manager.

[tonyedgecombe]

Measuring team output seems just as difficult as for an individual.

I was reading an interesting piece in the economist today about maintaining peoples performance on a long space flight. One part that stood out to me is people being productive makes them happy. I always assumed the causation would be the opposite way round. Perhaps the best a manager of managers can do is try and figure out if the members of each team are happy or not.