Become a great_manager_new

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What is Not Management?

When people think of management, some people thinkof a Dilbert Cartoon.

Other people think of an archetype of a manager in a suit that screams and yells, or is out of touch with the project the manager is managing or the business as a whole.

Management is not yelling. Management is not Co-ercion. Management does not equal endless meetings that get nothing accomplished.


Management - Defined

Let’s define management – Management is defined as the process of receiving an output by a group.

In other words, a manager is solely judged by the output of the team that he is managing. Good output = good management. Bad output = bad management.


Manager as Role ModelFirst and Foremost a Manager is a Role ModelA good manager leads through personal example.A good manager leads by the axiom – “Do as I do, versus do as I say”.

There are multiple hats or multiple roles that a manager must play. Let’s examine some roles.


Leading through Actions not WordsLet’s look at one example of a Manager being either a positive or negative role model.

The most common example of being a poor role model is when a manager implores his employees to work hard, while taking off everyday at 3 PM to play a round of golf or meet a group offriends on the golf course.

A good manager gets commitment and a hard work ethic from his employees by working hard and committed himself to the business.


Manager as Employee TrainerThe next role a manager must play is that of being the Head TrainerTraining is perhaps a manager’s most valuable tool in his toolkit.

Training is always done around a specific competency, and can be use to address either hard and soft skills.

Some examples of high leverage training is:

role playing interactions with clients, both for the sales or support team

training to bring the entire company up to dateon the latest features of a given product or service

training in specific software such as Microsoft Powerpointor Excel.


Manager as Chief Feedback Officer

Feedback is an undervalued tool in the manager’s toolkit. Feedback, when delivered effectively, can provide invaluable feedback to employees and team members, and can dramatically increase both the quantity and quality of output.

Examples of the best feedback is feedback that is

easily actionable

prescriptive versus descriptive

feedback that applies to a task often done by the employee.

It’s important to understand that it is a manager’s job to be patient and iterative with his employees. In other words, feedback is a dynamic process, and the focus should be on the improvement of results over time, versus an unrealistic expectation of perfection (which can be very demotivating to employees).

The next role a manager must play is that of being the Chief Feedback Officer


Manager as Key Decision MakerThe next role a manager must play is that of the Decision

Decision making authority is a tool akin to the stick in the motivation toolkit and should be used sparingly and only when consensus building is not capable of leading to a decision.

Buy-in is an important aspect of motivation, and “breaking the tie” should be done a last resort. Though it is a tool of last resort, it should be a tool confidently utilized by the manager when needed.

Keep in mind that employees need not agree with a decision in order to implement the decision.

Similarly to consensus, agreement on strategy is very nice to have in order to retain high employee morale, but is not required in order for the employee to execute a task.


Manager as Chief Strategy OfficerThe next role a manager must play is that of being the Chief Strategy OfficerIt is the role of the manager to not only execute on present day tasks and output, but also to steer the entire ship in the right direction.

Part of the role of Chief Strategy Officer includes the ability to think far into the future. This includes gathering resources (whether it be political capital, employees, budgets) as well as the compe-tencies and capabilities needed on the team in order to execute on the given strategy.

Another way to say this is that a gap today is a strategic mistake that was made yesterday.


Manager as Team’s Head of Human ResourcesThe next role a manager must play is that of being the Head of Human Relations for his teamThis includes attracting / qualifying / and retaining Key talent.Attracting talented employees starts first with the brand, and having a great work environment. Attract top talent is not about perks, but is about giving employees something worth working on and an environment where they can excel at their given talents. [Insert Statistic on people not being satisfied at work]. Referrals are the #1 source of quality recruitment, and it starts with treating your current employees correctly.

Once you are able to attract people that want to work at your company – qualifying the talent utilizing a predictive interview process is key in order to avoid mishires. Dr. Bradford Smart, the author of TopGrading and an individual that charges $10,000 per hire for top C level hires, believes that the cost mis-hires are 25X compensation for hires under $100k and 40X time based compensation for hires over $100k, when taking into account difficult to quantity factors such as opportunity cost, lower productivity and morale.

Finally, retaining employees is critical. Analogous to the business axiom thatretaining current customers is significantly easier and more profitable than recruiting new customers, the same holds true in employee hiring. The #1 reason employees leave a job is because of the boss, not the company, and the #1 reason employees leave a boss is because they feel undervalued. This is easily preventable through the use of one-on-ones meetings which we will get into later on in this course.


Management is an active process. The manager must alsoplay the role of being a the project manager for key deliverables and initiatives.

There are two extreme and flawed styles of management,Micromanagement and Absentee Management, which areboth inefficient forms of management.

I define micromanagement as the over-management and control utilized on an employee that distracts employees,lowers productivity, and increases employee turnover.

The exact opposite – absentee management is also poor management. Absentee management is the 100% lassiez fair form of management, and can only work in organizations with highly skilled and motivated employees.

Even in the case of Zappos, which is famous for their hiring and company culture (previously known as 100 Best Companies to Work For), the process of self management failed miserably and led to mass turnovers.

Good management lies somewhere in the middle of micro-management and absentee management and is more of an art than science. The right amount of management is deter-mined by the increase of output in a group and typically involves the check-in and offer to help by managers anywhere from 2-4 times a week, depending on the timeline for the project and the degree to which the task is mission critical. An important question to ask yourself is “Am I checking in in order to satisfy my own anxiety or to provide value to the project. In the case of the former you are micromanaging,in the case of the latter, you are being a good manager.

Management is an Active Process

http://fortune.com/best-companies/


Management via One to One MeetingsOne to One Meeting is absolutely critical for the delivery of much of management. One on one meetings are scheduled and structured, although somewhat casual, meetings you conduct with your direct reports once or twice a month. One to One Meetings should not be confused with casual encounters or project based meetings, and should be focused more on the employee than any one project.


The Two Unbreakable Laws of Management As a best practice, a manager should manage no less than 6 employees and no more than 8 employees as direct reports. There is a magic to this number and it has been researched exhaustively over many decades and studies with the same results. For whatever, reason 6 to 8 employees is the right number and allows for the right enoughof reports to insure a lack of micromanagement, and still manageable enough to allow for mentoring, skill development, and other tools such as the one-to-one meeting.

In the case that an employee is both a manager and has a separate function, the number of employees under management should change by 1-2 employees for every important role that the manager is in charge of outsideof his managerial capacity.

The 6-8 employees per manager is the golden rule of management, and is utilized by everyone from small business owners to the former CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, who popularized this concept. The dirty secret of multi-million dollar CEO’s is that they almost never manage more than 8 reports, effectively running an operation of 6-8 mini companies, regardless of the thousands of employees underneath every direct report. This is important to know because it makes management more, manageable, and gives hope that anyone can make a great manager at a company of any size.


Overcommunicate, Overcommunicate, Overcommunicate Over-communicate to point of

awkwardness.

Be awkward and successful, rather than cool and not.

Create a culture of direct communication.This doesn’t mean that your culture has to be rude/crude/or unthoughtful but rather that it is based on direct, task specific and assertive communication. By role modeling this practice at the top (even if it is just within your group) over-communication can become a cultural norm that will dramatically increase the morale and productivity of your team.


The Two Unbreakable Rules of Management

Rules #1 - Accountability = 1 goal 1 person. No exceptions

Rule #2 - Authority follows Accountability The fastest way to decrease morale is to give someone

accountabilitywithout authority.

Accountability and authority is task specific and requires the accountable manager to be able to access resources from anyone in the organization, including individuals that are senior to him on an organization structure. We’ll get into this a bit more later.


Taking ActionManagement is an active sport vs. a theoretical science. If we do not implement the ideas of this course,then it will be an hour of your life that you have wasted.

The best way to gain the most from this course is by starting with pieces of the course that are easy to implement,and start building small wins.

Perhaps this means being introspective about your behaviors and habits and what you are subconsciously role modeling to your team.

Perhaps it’s about making sure that every task has one person who is accountable.

Whatever it is – start with one or two small goals and focus on making a difference there. You won’t be ableto help but implement more practices as you start to see success with other practices outlined in this course.Start small and trivial. Perhaps start by managing your boyfriend or girlfriend, or your parents. Sign up to Fiverr, a website where you can get cool tasks performed for $5, and practice on managing the contractors. The bad news is that we humans are emotional creatures, and it will be 10x more difficult to implement these pratices in highly critical or emotionally charged situations. The good news is that you will start to learn the skills very quickly and it will make for implementing on critical tasks significantly easier.

Thank you for taking the timeto go through my course

I wish you the very best as you Embark on your journey of being

an excellent manager

Become a great_manager_new

Business

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