GUIDELINES FOR A GOOD MANAGER

Most of manager’s decisions call for painful compromises between complex alternatives. Furthermore, the success of those decisions depends on the performance of others. A manager must delegate the authority and responsibility for making many decisions and for implementing all of them.

A good manager doesn’t tolerate problems –not even small ones. Small problems that are ignored tend to lead to serious consequences: injuries to people, ruined equipment, missed shipments, poor employee morale.

Time banking is to your job what a savings account is to your financial well-being. Time banking means investing time today to save time tomorrow. There are three objectives in time banking:1. Reducing the time consumed by routine tasks.2. Eliminating recurring problems.3. Freeing your time for more productive, creative responsibilities.

Time is an asset, like money or manufacturing facilities, but its value depreciates more rapidly to zero. Time wasted is time lost forever.

The two things a manager must do are to develop people and ensure that the correct strategy is set. If you don’t have time to do both, concentrate on developing people. If you do that well, they will handle the strategy with only a little help from you.

There is nothing more costly and demoralizing for a person, or group of people, to do an exemplary job on the wrong task for the wrong reason. This is why developing the correct strategy and making sure that everyone understands it is critical.Three criteria are involved in setting strategy:1. How to maximize the reward and minimize the risk! Most managers like to

stress rewards, but equally important are two other aspects of strategy – what are the risks, and what are the alternatives! Nothing specific happens without risk. Just be certain that you weigh the risk/ reward ratio, and those of the alternatives.

2. How to balance short- term goals against long- term ones! If a manager does not take care of the present, there won’t be any future. Conversely, a strategy dedicated to maximizing the present will eventually doom the company to mediocrity.

3. How to make events happen rather than simply taking advantage of or coping with, situations that occur. Few good opportunities just come along. You have to make something good happen.

Momentum generators are essential to the long- term success of companies. They push companies into new frontiers. Momentum generators are creative, optimistic, relent- less and risk- takers. Their organizations are characterized by

enthusiasm, confidence and records of accomplishments that ordinary managers only dream about.

Get all the help possible. Give as much credit as possible to others, so they will be eager to assist. Nothing creates momentum in others as much as feeling they are contributing to a successful project.

Developing people means improving their skills, teaching them new ones, helping them to eliminate weaknesses, increasing their responsibilities, and moving them to new assignments to broaden their experience. It also involves delegating appropriate decision making authority to them. This includes the right to make some mistakes, so as to learn from them.

People development requires enthusiastic, effective supervision at all levels. Consequently, no organization can afford to have mediocre managers; indeed, it can’t even afford to have many average ones.

Discipline involves setting standards for performance and insisting that these be met. Discipline represents that a good manager expects, demands, plans for, inspects for, follows- up for, and enforces high standards.To achieve high standards (i.e. good discipline), attention should be paid to the following fundamentals: 1. You generally won’t get much more than you demand.2. You can expect to get what you want only if you inform people what your

standards are, and teach them how to achieve them.3. You can expect to get what you want only if you inspect what you are

getting.4. You can inspect results if you establish measurement criteria.5. You must enforce standards.6. Be consistent, persistent, demanding and fair.7. Establish rules to define standards, but never let rules substitute for

judgments of motives and circumstances.8. Don’t tolerate continuing violations of standards.

How you present your project to a manager is critical to how it will be perceived and whether it will be accepted. The key to making a good presentation to a manager is to think like a manager. The presentation should provide an answer to following management queries:1. What do you want to accomplish!2. Does this fit our strategy!3. What are the rewards and the risks!4. What are the alternatives!5. How are you going to accomplish your goal!6. Who will make it happen!7. How critical is timing!8. What do you need from management!

Having authority is an awesome responsibility. It must be used judiciously and appropriately. You will have to prove many things early in your management career:That you care about people, that you will listen to them, that you can make tough decisions, that you can admit and learn from mistakes, that you can stand up to pressure, and that you will take responsibility for your actions and decisions.

The best way to secure honesty from your people is to be honest yourself. Make your group a “no boss” communication centre where bad news is treated no differently than good news. Foster discussion, debate, criticism, and participation in decision- making.

Also important is to retain your sense of humor. The key to a real sense of humor is maintaining the proper perspective in a situation. It’s the ability to laugh at yourself, or to shift from intense objectivity to human sensitivity. Real humor can defuse tension; even turn a bad situation into a positive event.

Becoming a boss means having to delegate decision making. Of course this also means delegating authority. The only thing you can’t delegate is accountability. Many managers fail because they either refuse to delegate and are overwhelmed by the job, or they delegate but fail to follow- up to see that the jobs are being performed properly.

You must develop your people so they can handle responsibility. Make sure your strategy is right and everyone understands it; then expect, demand, plan for, inspect, follow- up, and enforce high performance standards. And always use authority judiciously.

One of the fundamental responsibilities of management is to match reward against risk, and to deal with the consequences of sometimes losing. You must first determine what the odds of succeeding are, and then shift the odds in your favour without losing the rewards.

Making decisions on risk and rewards involve some key assessments:1. What are the rewards and the risks of this project!2. Do the potential rewards justify an unusual level of risk!3. What risk can the company afford to run!4. What alternatives are available to lessen the risk!5. What measurements will warn of increasing risk or diminishing rewards!6. Are the right people handling this project!

A good manager continuously assesses his business strategy. What’s the best thing that could happen! How can I make it happen! What’s the worst thing that

could happen! How can I prevent it, or minimize the damage! What am I not doing that needs to be done! How do I continuously measure the risk, the reward, and the probability of each!

A good manager also recognizes that selecting the right people for the project is often as important as assessing the risk and reward. So he assigns his best people to the projects that offer the highest payoff and present the biggest risk. He does this to shift the odds in his favour.

The good manager doesn’t concentrate on the mistake but on correcting the problem that caused the mistake, whether this be poor training, poor execution, poor choice of objectives, poor management, poor performance by individuals, or whatever. You must accept that past cannot be changed and you have to learn from mistakes.

Dealing with change is one of the most challenging tasks that the good manager faces. Change does not demand attention, because it is like termites gnawing away at foundations. It can often be ignored for a long time, but when its impact finally emerges, the damage can be so extensive that the cure can be painful, and sometimes not even possible.

Handling change is essential to the survival of every corporation. The company that does not adjust to change, that does not fundamentally alter its strategy and organization, will have already written its obituary.

To most people, change is frightening. For the good manager, however, it is a challenge, an opportunity, and a key to success. Change is similar to risk. You should respect it, understand it, and use it in your strategy. In the hands of a good manager, it’s a powerful weapon.

Although many things change, basic management principles don’t. It will continue to be true that a manager’s first priorities must be the development of people and setting correct strategy. Good managers will also continue to generate momentum, be intolerant of problems, and expect, demand, plan for, inspect, follow- up and enforce high standards. However, a good manager must be sensitive to the fact that the techniques for carrying out these principles will continually change.

The good manager challenges the strategy and decisions of top management when his perspective says these decisions are not going to accomplish the desired goals.

Keep in mind the following while dealing with change:1. History isn’t necessarily the best teacher. It is a valuable reference, but

extrapolating the past into the future could be disastrous.

2. Reinforcing the unchanging principles of your business and ethics make change easier to live with.

3. With good planning, change does not require constant alteration of strategy and organization.

4. There is a tendency to underestimate the short- term impact, and to overestimate the long- term impact, of sudden, unexpected changes(such as the oil price explosion), and to underestimate the long- term impact of gradual changes (such as energy conservation).

5. Obsession with handling short- term changes can distort dedication to long term objectives.

6. Change for the sake of change often does more harm than good.7. Change may be painful for your people, and you must deal compassionately

with these situations.8. Some change can’t be predicted. These must be dealt with decisively and

with right strategy.

The place to start ensuring the integrity in your people is with yourself. No matter what your position may be, personal integrity is essential. Deal honestly with those above, below and around you. When you make a mistake, own up to it. Give credit to others when they deserve it. Act honestly in handling you company’s money, assets and technology.

Integrity also means taking responsibility for tough decisions. A good manager does not pass on the buck on a difficult or unpopular decision when it is right. If it is wrong, upper management should be told so. Also a part of creating moral credibility is representing your people’s needs honestly to upper management, even when what you have to say won’t be received well. Integrity demands relentless truth.

A manager who decides upon a result and adjusts the data to fit it, who knowingly covers up serious problems in a project, who says the answer is known when it isn’t, who deliberately blocks management in assessing the performance of his group, who distorts the truth to enhance his reputation, and who intimidates his people so that they will not speak up, is a “dishonest” manager. Because a manager who is dishonest breeds dishonesty, such a manager can’t be tolerated.

Everyone has a list of corporations they admire for what they have contributed to society. Mine includes IBM, whose management chose not to lay off people during the depression, turning them into salespersons instead. IBM’s management had tremendous faith in, and put great responsibility in the hands of, its people, and emerged as one of the greatest corporations in the world, employing thousands of people in challenging high- paying jobs.

Corporations are made up of people, so they reflect the ethics of their people. We, the managers, determine the ethics, the profits, and the contribution to

society of these corporations. Individual managers do have an impact on corporate ethics.

A corporation can lose more than it can gain by unethical practices. Management that resort to payoffs to gain business will discover that its employees are raking in company money under the table for themselves. If it encourages to be dishonest in dealings with subordinates, customers and competitors, it can count on its managers also being dishonest with the company. If it allows employees to steal information from competitors, it can expect to have employees sell its secrets to others.

Don’t become so preoccupied with organization, accomplishments and goals that you forget that your company needs a set of guiding principles to serve as a foundation for standards and policies, and to impart a human quality. Just as a doctor should periodically re-read the “Hippocratic Oath”, so should a manager regularly measure current operations and objectives against principles of ethics. It’s a relentless application of these principles that creates a corporation that benefits its employees, stockholders, and society.

Extracts: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi