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rule
one:
Know
that you can be
a great manager
Being
a manager is a great way to spend your days.
There is nothing more challenging or rewarding than
helping people grow. You get to watch as bunches of
unique, interesting people learn and grow right before
your eyes. And you get paid for it.
But,
watching is the easy part. At times, managing
can be as harrowing as juggling a dozen airliners on a
radar screen, except that the birds you’ll be directing
will each have their own one-of-a-kind personality, and
at least three of them will be in a very bad mood before
they even get to work
The
first rule is to accept as a fact that you are
capable of being a great manager. It’s really something
you can learn. You already know the basics, and there
are lots of resources out there to help.
If
you’ve raised kids, or if you’ve been a kid, you
already know the basics of managing: Treat people
with respect. Be honest. Tell them what is expected of
them.
If
you’ve been offered a managerial or supervisory
position, the first thing you need to know is that you
can be a great manager.
A
mentor or a boss who provides an example of
what a good manager looks like can be a big help. (Of
course, bad managers can also teach you things.)
With
or without a mentor, there are lots of ways to
develop your managerial skills. On-the-job training
will provide you with lots of examples of what
problems managers need to deal with. The solutions to
those problems are out there waiting for you to grab
them.
There
are plenty of things to read. There are "pop"
management books like The One-Minute Manager, by
Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, which can be
read in just a few hours.
Then
there are books like Peter Drucker’s eight
hundred page Management: Tasks, Responsibilities,
Practices. Drucker, considered by many to be the
founding father of the discipline of management, has
chapters covering topics like "What Makes a
Manager;" "Controls, Control and Management;" and
"What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Work,
Working and Worker." You should have this book
around. Read a chapter when you get a chance or when
you need some support on a particular topic.
One
good way to squeeze some education into a
few stolen minutes is to read or scan lots of periodicals.
Look in business, trade, and technical publications for
columns or articles on managing, personnel issues, and
training. When you find something interesting, save it.
I find Inc. magazine consistently carries well-written
columns examining a wide range of current
management issues.
Daily
newspaper business sections,
newsmagazines, and general interest magazines are all
potential sources of education.
My
files include dozens and dozens of pages I’ve
ripped out or copied, often not knowing how I’d use
them. I’ve shared them in staff meetings as well as one-
on-one with my staff and fellow managers. They run
the gamut. A ten-page Harvard Business Review
article by Ralph Stayer of Johnsonville Foods starts off
with the statement, "I wanted employees who would
fly like geese. What I had was a company that
wallowed like a herd of buffalo." He eloquently
describes, "How I Learned To Let My Workers Lead."
One-sentence
quotes in Reader’s Digest have a
place in my sharing files as well. Our prolific friend
Peter Drucker says, "The best way to predict the future
is to create it." And some guy named Robert Hughes
says, "The greater the artist, the greater the doubt;
perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a
consolation prize." – a helpful perspective when a team
is made up of people with widely varying levels of
assertiveness.
Other
clippings include a column by C.W.
Gusewelle, an editor at the Kansas City Star, on the
difference between managers and leaders. An
Associated Press article tells how a Spokane,
Washington, bank lost a multimillion-dollar customer,
when a teller refused to validate his fifty-cent parking
ticket. A column I saved from Graphic Arts Monthly
encourages staff education and involvement in
monitoring production costs.
And
from Inc., two of my favorite columns, "Liar,
Liar, Pants on Fire," about guess what, and a column
by Jim Collins on making learning a continuous
priority. We’ll talk about those topics later.
But
we need to get back to books for a minute.
Tom Peters is someone you must find time to read. His
first book, In Search of Excellence, co-written with
Robert Waterman, is a classic. You don’t have to read
it all. You’ll know when to stop. When I first started
reading it, I was totally sucked in by story after story
about "America’s Best-Run Companies." Ideas were
flying left and right. Then all of a sudden the pages
turned into a quicksand-like research paper. If you get
bogged down, put it aside and try something else, even
another Tom Peters' book. There are a lot of very
accessible books out there.
One
of the most important things I get from Tom
Peters is excitement. He marvels at how easy it is to do
the right thing. He is astounded at how some people
can get right to the heart of their businesses and make
them zing. And he is flabbergasted by some of the truly
stupid moves he’s seen.
He
is a constant reminder that a diverse group of
people can work together, be productive, and have a
good time.
Peters
has a handful of books, audio tapes, and
videotapes out there. He does seminars too, for about
$56,000,000 per hour, plus expenses. One of his more
recent books is actually called The Tom Peters
Seminar. One of my assistant managers borrowed the
books-on-tape version from the library. She raved
about it. We talked about Peters’ energy and
excitement; we passed the tape back and forth till it
was overdue.
I
ended up buying a copy of the tape, and then, I
invited my fellow managers to meet once a week to
listen to it and discuss Peters’ ideas. After four weeks
we finished the book, but decided to keep meeting. The
group became a hothouse for ideas and a launching pad
for the creation of multi-departmental teams. It was
also the source of a revenue-enhancing product
redesign and it breathed new life into inter-
departmental communications.
The
other half of my "must read" list is a book
called Small Decencies, Reflections and Meditations
on Being Human at Work, by John Cowan.
Cowan,
a former priest, corporate manager,
hockey father, and weekend sailor has packed this book
with forty essays on the joys and tragedies of working
life. He gently exposes the struggle to be human inside
a structure that resists.
Even
though each essay in the book stands on its
own, together they form a powerful testimony of
people, including the author, struggling to maintain
their humanity.
In
an essay called "Who Will Sing Our Song?" he
writes about the lack of recognition of the huge role the
workplace plays in our lives. Events like the addition
of a new employee, a promotion, or a departure are
seldom treated with the gravity appropriate for the
beginning or the end of what Cowan calls a "living
bond."
An
employee’s departure too often lacks
appropriate recognition. As Cowan says, "The gift of
time from a human life [is] the one thing that once
given can never be taken back."
I
gave a copy of Small Decencies to a supervisor
who was struggling with what she saw as a lack of
support from both above and below as she pushed
forward on the implementation of new technologies.
She pushed the staff hard. It was obvious to her that the
payoff would be substantial. Lots of hard work would
be required to make the transition. Each of the
employees would need to bear down, learn new things,
take risks. To Brenda, this was exciting. This is what
life is about. To the staff, Brenda was a heartless slave
driver.
I
told Brenda there was a chapter about her in
Cowan’s book. She read the book cover to cover in two
days, and came back wanting to talk about "her
chapter." She agreed that Cowan’s essay on "Survival
Skills for Innovative People" described her situation
perfectly.
Cowan
says of an innovative person: "You add
two and two and discern that if you continue, you will
inevitably reach one hundred…. Risk is of little
concern. One hundred may not be the right answer, but
you will take a chance. Further, since you are self-
willed, even if the answer is not quite one hundred, you
will make that the right answer."
Brenda
was a good supervisor, but she needed to
be reminded by Cowan that to successfully manage and
nurture an organization, it is necessary to:
1.
Give people the opportunity to think
things through for themselves and,
2.
Provide employees security from
fear of losing their paychecks or their dignity.
The
lesson was not an easy one for Brenda. But,
she realized that she needed to balance innovation and
nurturing. When she was able to maintain that balance,
her crew knew something special was happening. And
the growth and productivity that followed was her
reward.
It’s
always exciting to see people on your staff
grow. It’s breathtaking when they start leading.
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