Thread regarding Marathon Oil Corp. layoffs

Chevron needs more working managers and less personnel managers
If your sent email folder is all “FW:” because you only cascade information instead of developing or progressing an original thought, you’re not a manager, you’re an email forwarder. You’re redundant.
If you attend every meeting that your subordinate attends, you either don’t trust him or her to accurately represent your function or you’re redundant. Either way, you have a problem.
If you are not directly accountable for getting deeper cheaper, putting more barrels in the pipeline, or making one or both of those two things happen more efficiently, you are a waste of capital and are redundant.
If people have to come to you to sign off on decisions, but you mostly recycle them because you don’t have the understanding of the operation or the fortitude to make even the smallest decision without perfect data, then you aren’t a manager, you’re a bottleneck. The people making the recommendation know way more than you; you are redundant.
If you don’t know the operation that you are supposed to be supervising (superintendent-ing), then you are a personnel manager. Appropriate to your leadership level, you should know: what is the measure of success for this operation, what is the strategy to achieve the objective, what is the budget for the objective, who performs the job, how do people get the material needed to do the job, what reporting system tracks the activity, who scopes the job beforehand, what are the expectations of the department who will receive and operate my deliverable. You should be able to answer all of these questions without asking one of your direct reports, otherwise: you’re redundant.
There are many ways to become redundant at Chevron. The hierarchical structure, the pet projects, the isolation from other departments, corporate vs. BU posturing, empire building all make it easy to fall into the trap of soaking up a paycheck while being a middle manager. If you find yourself in this situation, you can change. You can contribute to the business by simply doing work. I know, what a concept! Just start working. Do you see a process that is in your operational control that needs improvement? Draw it up and implement it! Want a presentation done? Learn how to pull the data and build it yourself! Do you have an idea for a digital solution? Build a low-code solution yourself! Tired of forwarding “FYI” emails? Expand the distribution list yourself! You can be the change that needs to happen to make this company succeed.