The Rules Of Management (Pioneer Panel's Library) (9 page)

• How I was doing last year

• How I was doing five years ago

• How I’m doing against my personal targets

• How I’m doing against my long-term plan

There isn’t another person in sight because measuring yourself against anyone else is a mug’s game.

I once owned a motorcycle—a rather grand one and I loved it very much. I came alongside another motorcyclist at the traffic lights and looked his bike over. “That’s the one I want,” I cried to myself in the splendid isolation of my crash helmet. He was looking at my bike and obviously thinking the same thing. As the lights changed and we both roared away together, I realized he and I were riding identical bikes. Ah, the fickle mind, how it winds us up, beats us up, and plays tricks. Look at anyone and chances are there will be something to envy, but
you don’t know what goes on inside them. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, they say, and chances are you’ll be a mile away; but you’ve got their shoes; make a run for it.

So set yourself some targets but be realistic about them. I’m going to be Emperor of the World may sound impressive but it is totally unrealistic.

Make your targets challenging but attainable, realistic but a bit of a struggle—no good making them too easy, nor too hard.

No one knows what goes on inside your head. No one knows what lofty heights you aspire to. No one knows what you’re really up to—remember
Rule 43
: Know what you are actually doing—so you can work on your game plan and be doing your job well at the same time. Your game plan should incorporate both long- and short-term goals—where you want to be, where you intend being—and then you have something to match your success against—where you actually are.

Why keep it secret? Because the game plan of your corporation, your management team, and your boss may not exactly match your own game plan. This is a personal game plan and should be kept to yourself to protect your dreams and hopes and aspirations—there is nothing quite like having someone dampen your fireworks. An awful lot of management is about appearances—being able to look the part, to inspire confidence, to walk your walk. If people get wind of any game plan that deviates from that confident air of the perfect manager, they will lose confidence. You might be thinking of striking out on your own, but don’t tell anyone or they will assume you are leaving any minute now, even if your plans don’t allow for that for several years. If you have a game plan of rapid promotion, people will assume you are an overachiever and stop
giving you long-term projects on the grounds that you’ll be moving up too soon. And so on. Play your cards close to your chest and keep up the appearance of dedication, commitment, reliability, diligence, and stability—even if in your heart of hearts you are planning a revolution, climbing Everest, or taking over the empire.

Ha, I can hear you thinking, “He’s shot himself in the foot now. Get rid of superfluous rules, ha, in a book of rules?” Yep, get rid of superfluous rules. Not my rules of course, not your rules of course. Their rules, obviously. Let people on your team know that you are on their side and will streamline any procedures to enhance efficiency. That means old baggage has to go.

In any workplace there will be a mountain of red tape, bureaucracy, old rules left in place from previous management regimes—get rid of them all. Question everything you and your team do and make it work slicker and quicker by getting rid of anything that is redundant, unnecessary, left over. This is the work equivalent of clutter clearing; practice feng shui if you like.

It’s terribly easy to settle into a routine and to stop seeing things with a clear eye, a fresh vision. Every day you have to go into work and see it as an outside consultant would. Question “Why do we do this? Why do we do it like this?” I bet you’ll find a lot of clutter and can eliminate it.

I once worked for a company where every letter going out had to be “vetted” by a senior office secretary. She was a bit of a dragon to say the least, and if you ever got on the wrong side
of her, your letters went straight to the bottom of the pile—and stayed there. Why did letters have to be routed through her? Beats me, but I had to work unbelievably hard to get rid of that bit of Dickensian nonsense.

Streamline. Save time. Make your people happier and more trusted. Simple really.

We all make mistakes—we wouldn’t be the wonderfully creative, innovative managers we are if we didn’t. But some managers gloss over any mistakes they make. They cover them, bury them, forget about them.

You, as a brilliant manager, won’t do that. You won’t beat yourself up over them, nor sit in a pit of misery over them but you will analyze what went wrong, discuss with colleagues why it went wrong, and make a plan to prevent it from going wrong again.

Our mistakes could be anything from a badly handled appraisal, a lost sale, a badly thought out report, a poor use of time or resources, a failure to meet a deadline—when you start to write down how many failures there could be, the list is endless.

After you have made your mistake, the important thing to do as well as all the above is to find out the right way to do it next time.

Being a manager is an ongoing learning experience. You never stand still and you never think you know it all—you don’t and can’t. But you can have trusted people to ask and good reference books at hand to guide you—especially if they are short, sharp, snappy, and practical.
^*

^*
See, for example, Ros Jay,
Fast Thinking Manager’s Manual
, Pearson Education, 2nd edition, 2004.

Mistakes are brilliant because they not only teach us where we went wrong but also how to fix it. You are a better manager, more experienced, have a wider spectrum to call on when you’ve made a few errors. We all make mistakes—admit them, learn from them, and move on.

You know how it is, you’re sailing along doing what you’ve always done and suddenly you’re not making your figures, sales are dropping, staff turnover is going up, things are falling apart. But you’re not doing anything you haven’t done in the past. You had a winning formula and suddenly it doesn’t work any more. What can you do? Well, for a start realize that what works, changes. And it can change so rapidly you didn’t realize it until it’s too late. Be aware of this; be ready and prepared to adapt quickly. You have to stay abreast of

• Latest innovations in your industry

• New technology

• New terminology

• New methodology

• Changes in sales, market trends, staff turnover figures, targets, and budgets

Don’t get stuck in any ruts. Be ready to spin on a dime if you have to. Good management is about adapting to change rapidly and skillfully. If you don’t, you go the way of the dinosaurs.

The same goes for all sorts of things—style of management with staff, for instance. You might have a way with them that has worked for years and all of a sudden it doesn’t. You could persevere, but you might lose staff rapidly. Better to be ready to unlearn your old ways and adopt new ones. It could be you
have changed, unknowingly, unconsciously. If we get stuck in ways of doing things, sometimes we change them without recognizing that change. We have to be alert to those changes that creep in.

I used to work for a manager who was fond of asking who we worked for. If we said ourselves, he shook his head. If we said him, he shook his head. If we said the directors, he shook his head. And on and on. The only answer, he said, was the shareholders. And the only reason we worked, he said, was for the profit. Everything else was padding. Fair enough. We do work for the shareholders—whoever they might be. It might be yourself if you are a one-person band. They might be the directors if it’s a family-owned firm and not trading on the stock market. They might be millions of little people who have all invested.

So cut the crap. There is only one reason for being in business, no matter what anyone says—profit. To make money. If you’re making your figures, good. If you’re not, clear your desk out. Simple. Now you have a neat yardstick to judge everything you do. Ask, “Does this contribute toward the profits I am making, or not?” If it does, keep right on doing it. If it doesn’t, throw it out.

When all is said and done, that is what it’s all about. No money, no business. No business, no job. No job, no mortgage, car, bread on the table, holidays in Tuscany.

I bet if you sit down and look at everything you do, a lot of it will be padding. Time to prioritize. Cut the crap and dedicate yourself to one thing and one thing only—the bottom line. And that’s what separates a really sharp manager like you from all the others. That clear focus, that vision, that dedication.

Always remember it’s not what you know, but who you know. And in business there are movers and shakers, and there are worker ants. You need to know who the movers and shakers are—and cultivate them. Often senior management have assistants that act as guards—you don’t get to talk to God but you do get to be brushed off by God’s right-hand assistant. You have to get on the right side of the assistant and that means charm and politeness, tact and discretion, gamesmanship and ruthless cunning.

I once worked for a boss who used a business consultant as his sort of unofficial assistant—she shielded and protected him from having to talk to his staff. Her surname was Burton and everyone called her Mrs. Burton except those in the boss’s inner circle who called her JB.

I started to call her JB also and the first few times she looked at me quite horrified—I was only a junior manager and not entitled to do so. But I got away with it. After a few weeks the boss heard me call her JB and assumed I had been accepted into her inner circle of close chums and colleagues. He started to give me more responsibility, which meant she started to give me respect as I was obviously one of his favorites—and they bounced off each other, each believing me to be the other’s accepted one and I got preferential treatment from both.

Lots of people think that a) the “old school tie” system is dead; b) if it ain’t dead it ought to be; c) it is dead and therefore a new system has taken its place and having to know those in the know no longer counts; and/or d) raw talent will always shine through.

Some of the above may be true. The old school tie thing will never be dead because those in the know are the ones who still run that particular club. It might not be school any more, instead it might be the golf club, charity work, breakfast clubs, university, family, previous places of work, old friends, whatever. People in the know like to collect around them people they also know and therefore can trust. You have to get to know those around those who need to be known: cultivate them and then become one of those around those in the know—and then become one of those in the know. What you do then is entirely up to you.

Keeping an open-door policy as a manager is a basically good idea, but there comes a time when you have to know it is time to kick the door shut so that you can

• Get some work done.

• Have a meeting in private.

• Let your team know you don’t want to be disturbed.

• Let the team know you really are the boss and not really one of them at all.

Obviously a good manager such as yourself likes to have an open-door policy so that the staff have access to you when and as they need. But there are times when it is necessary physically and psychologically to create a barrier. You see, the real secret of good management is that no matter how chummy you are with the team there comes a time when it is essential that you are actually the boss.

Ruling by democracy is all very well; meetings and committees are fine; and joint discussions are rewarding. But when push comes to shove, you have to be prepared to take charge and that means you have to fly by the seat of your pants, make the tough calls, and be the boss. And occasionally shutting the door reinforces that. You don’t have to be a cruel or harsh or dictatorial boss, but a boss you must be.

If you are one of those managers who finds it hard to be assertive or “bossy,” I suggest you practice kicking the door shut. It is a deeply symbolic gesture about who controls your environment—you. Do it a few times and the team will get the
message. After you’re used to it, you can control who sits down in your office and how long they stay. It is essential for employees to take you seriously, for you to stamp your authority on the situation. Kicking the door shut symbolizes you are the manager—and this is a good thing, believe me. Oh, and it’ll also mean you get some work done without interruption. Just don’t do it too often—nothing is more frustrating than a boss who is never available.

After you learn to kick the door shut, you’ll find yourself alone in an empty office. But to be the really great and effective manager you are, and are going to be, you don’t coast or cruise. You get your head down and get the work done. And you get it done fast and effectively and efficiently. Then you do some work on your long-term goals, your game plan, and your business education. (Don’t stand still—read something.)