The Rules Of Management (Pioneer Panel's Library) (7 page)

It may sound unreasonable to have a basic standard and then suddenly, for no consistent reason, to expect more of people. And so it is. But it’s just as unfair to let them get away with less just because you’re in a particular mood. You’re not being nice to them—you’re confusing them. And you’re failing to ensure your team always produces work of the highest standard. And how fair is it to let one person get away with a scrappy presentation when their colleague was expected to produce a polished document last week? No, the only way to ensure good morale among your team, and to make sure it turns in a consistently strong performance, is for you to be consistent in enforcing the standards that you set.

And if you ask me next week, I’ll tell you exactly the same.

If your staff does something good, tell them. And then tell them again. And again. Keep it up. Put it in writing. Send them a memo—something they can keep. Put it in the company newsletter. Add a note to their file. Whatever, but make it widely known they did good. This is a quick—and cheap (important, with your limited budget)—method of praising and motivating your team (and individual members of course) and it lets everyone know you are monitoring, praising, and motivating.

When you praise people, make it simple. If they worked late to get a special order out, say, “Thank you for working late, we couldn’t have done it without you. Your positive response to a difficult situation made everyone’s job (especially mine) a lot easier. Thank you.”
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That’s a whole lot easier than, “On the evening of the 7th you were asked to implement an extra shift duty, which you carried out in accordance with our wishes and for which we wish to convey our gratitude, blah, blah....”

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Reinforce by saying
thank you
again.

Let them know why you are thanking them—
you made my job easier
—rather than just thanking them for what they did—
you came in for an extra shift
.

Be personal. Use “I” and “we,” not “management.” And say “thank you” in the same way as you would speak. “I want to thank you” is so much better than “The management wants to express its gratitude”—who speaks like that?

Praise as soon as the job is done, not a week later—do it the next day at the latest. And do it every time people do something beyond their normal brief. If they are asked to work an extra shift every week, that is just a part of their normal working pattern; instead, we are talking here of the extraordinary, the beyond the normal, going that extra mile sort of stuff.

If you reinforce positive behavior in this way, you will almost certainly guarantee it happening again. Fail to notice, to comment, to praise, and chances are your team will stop giving you their best—and who can blame them?

I was traveling on the subway the other day when we encountered a problem. It was fairly simple. Someone had messed with a security door and triggered an alarm—or something. This brought the train to a standstill, probably quite rightly. But it did this in a very long tunnel. The train couldn’t move until the fault had been rectified, which involved finding the train manager and getting him to reset the triggered alarm. All fairly simple.

I was running very late for a meeting, so asked if there wasn’t a better system. The train manager spent about 20 minutes justifying why this system was the best for everyone concerned, him, staff, train authorities, everyone that is except me, the poor passenger. Much better if he’d just said, “Yes, it’s a useless system and I shall recommend we change it; thank you for your concern.”

And I bet you have a dozen useless systems within your organization—we all do. Best not try to justify them. If you can’t change them, put up with it, get on with it, but don’t try tricking the staff into thinking it’s all fabulous. It isn’t, and you lose respect and trust if you try convincing people that it’s fine when they know it’s not.

I’m not saying you should go round lamenting loudly everything that is bad about your company—far from it, that road leads only to ruin. Remember, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Just don’t try justifying something you know is stupid, especially to your team.

The good manager—that’s you—tries to stay completely fresh. Not to get stuck in the same old ways of doing things. That means not having a default mechanism of “No, we don’t do it like that.” Instead replace it with “That’s an interesting idea. How do you think that would work?”

What’s more, you need to encourage people to come up with new ideas, as well as coming up with them yourself. Try ideas out. Take one new idea each week and try it. It might be fairly simple, “We’d like more choice of muffins with our morning coffee, please,” or something radical, “Listen up, guys, we’re going to try a completely new approach to sales and distribution.”

Obviously it makes sense to try out smaller ideas first to make sure your team can cope well with change, and then move on to the more radical ones later. Break ’em in slowly.

And as fast as you are introducing new ideas, get your team to do the same with their own individual jobs so that they don’t grow stale either. If everyone has a new idea each week, that’s a huge number of new ideas by the end of the year for themselves and for the whole team. “I just thought I could speed the process up if I....” “Wow, I could take that idea and adapt it to my work station and then I could....” “Yeah, and I bet they’d be really interested in this in accounts because it could speed up the whole....” And so on.

Biggest challenge? Getting your team on board—everyone is resistant to change initially. If you waiver, the whole team will also waiver. If you maintain the passion, the whole team will be infected and become addicted to this. Believe me. Trust me. I know you already have enough to do, but we’ll move on to delegating in a bit and that’ll free up some time. Then you’ll have more time to do this, which, in a way, is part of your real job—managing.

Encourage innovation. Reward good ideas. Create a culture where ideas are recognized (even if not adopted) and valued.

It’s too easy for staff to moan. I think it becomes a habit. You have to train your staff not just to moan. You can allow moaning but insist that if they bring you a problem they must also suggest a solution to the problem. Any idea that there is something wrong should always be met with, “And what would you like me to do about it?” If they complain, meet them with, “What do you think we should do?”

The best manager I ever worked for carried this even further and made us tell him the solution first—and then let him guess what he thought our “problem” was. It made it a game, which was sort of fun, but it also made us think on our feet a bit—made us be a bit lateral in our moaning. I was having a problem with security staff. I thought they were erasing the CCTV footage without watching it, which was not on. This was my problem because if anything had happened, I would have been blamed. I needed them to watch carefully but couldn’t devise a solution to this problem—but I couldn’t just go to the boss and moan that they weren’t doing their job properly. I had to come up with a solution first.

Then it dawned on me that I didn’t need to go to the boss. I could solve this one myself. I had to make sure the security staff thought there was something worth watching. I mentioned that some members of staff had been reported as having sex somewhere on the premises, and it could have been covered by the CCTV cameras, but no one was sure by which camera. There were cameras covering car parks, offices, hallways, and storage areas in the basement. Result. The security folks started watching as if their lives depended on it. My boss was pleased because this was part of my job description, and
he had noticed it wasn’t being done properly and was going to call me out on it. And I had come up with a solution to a problem without going to my boss and just moaning, “Oh, the security people aren’t doing their job properly....”

Admittedly I had to come up with a fresh solution once the security staff realized they weren’t going to see any smutty pictures—but it took them a long time, and they kept going back just in case....

So that’s the basic rules for managing a team. And obviously most managers have a team to manage. But all managers have themselves to manage as well—that’s you. So the next set of rules is for you. These are rules to help you become more effective as well as more efficient. It’s hard enough just getting through the day without trying to improve as well, believe me I know.

Being a manager is a tough job because it is always two jobs at once. You have to get your own work done and also be looking out for a team. The higher up the scale we go, the further away from our original job we get. And often no one bothers to train us as to what the new job—management—actually entails. Sure we take the odd course—and some are very odd: I speak as one who has made LEGO
^®
bridges, done jigsaw puzzles that are face down, been on canoeing weekends and all in the name of management training—but we don’t specifically train to be managers. Management is something we sort of pick up as we go along. Sure there are a few good instinctive man-agers, but invariably we stumble along picking up the odd hint and clue here and there—it’s a very hit and miss operation.

And a lot of what we are taught is fairly obvious. What I’m doing here is giving you the unwritten stuff—the stuff you don’t get on those canoeing weekends.

The fundamental Rule of Management, I’m afraid, is get the basic job done, get it done well, and work extremely hard at it. No good being a fantastic people manager if you let the basic job slip. You may have to get into the office earlier than anyone else, earlier than you’ve ever arrived there before, but get in early you must.

After you have cleared your work out of the way, you can concentrate on managing your team. Paperwork has to be done efficiently and on time. This isn’t the place to go into lengthy training sessions on time management and the like, but basically you will have to be

• Organized

• Dedicated

• Ruthlessly efficient

• Focused

No choice I’m afraid. You have to buckle down and just do it. Management isn’t running around issuing orders and looking cool. It’s actually about what goes on in the background—the work being done where no one sees it.

And if you want to know if you are being a good manager now—take a look at your desk. Go on. Right now. What do you see? Clear space and order? Paper everywhere and piles of unsorted stuff? Do the same with your briefcase, files, computer even. Order or disorder?

You have to use whatever tools you have at hand to make sure the work is done, done well, and done on time. Make lists, use pop-up calendars on your computer, delegate, seek help, stay up late, get up early, get up earlier—obviously you still need to refer to
Rule 75
: Go home; you have to have a life. But get that work done and learn to be ruthlessly efficient.

If you drag in late, argue with your customers, are disrespectful and produce shoddy work, chances are your team is going to go to hell in a hand basket. If, on the other hand, and I assume this is more likely the case, you arrive not only on time but also early, do your work well and on time (see
Rule 38
), behave like a decent, honest, civilized human being, and use your talent, chances are your staff will arise to the occasion.

Everyone needs someone to look up to, someone they can respect and want to emulate. Sorry, but that someone is you. Tough call I know. If you think heroes are so out of date, oldfashioned and redundant, then think again. Every one on your team has a special relationship with you. You are their leader, their inspiration, their boss (there’s a word to make you shudder, but that’s what you are), their mentor, guide, teacher, hero, role model, champion, defender, and guardian. To be all these things means you have to set an example. You have to play the part. You have to set standards. You have to be that role model.

The bottom line is: If you don’t care, why should they? You’ve got to set an example in everything you do. Think before you speak. Consider how you react. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work. Be what you want to see in them.

You’ve also got to go beyond that and raise their stakes. You’ve got to give your staff something to aspire to, something to want to raise themselves up to. That’s you.

Ideally, you’ll have some style, some flair, some spark of originality that will set you apart from the herd—we’re thinking Lauren Bacall and Cary Grant here, not Meat Loaf and early Madonna.
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No offense, both make really good albums and are superb rock stars but as role models for managers they don’t cut the mustard.

You’ve got to look the part, act the part, do the part—method acting here: Feel the manager, think the manager, be the manager.

I’m going to be blunt now. If you’re not enjoying what you do, then get the hell out and make room for someone who is going to enjoy it.
Rule 41
may put things into context, but for the moment we need to get you feeling good about what you’re doing.