Rules Of Management

PART 1 : MANAGING YOUR TEAM

We all have to work with people. These may be loosely known as a team or a department or a squad or a crew – even a posse. It doesn’t matter. The mistake a lot of managers make is to think they are managing people. They think people are their tools, their stock-in-trade. Make the people successful and you have the successful manager – so the theory goes.

But unfortunately this is a myth and we need to see that the real role of the manager is to manage processes rather than people. People can manage themselves if you let them. What you need to be concentrating on is the real job of management – the strategy. The team is merely a means to fulfilling that end. If all your people could be replaced by machines – and how many of us haven’t prayed that this might happen? – we would still have to have a strategy, still have to be managing the process.

The people will have disappeared to be replaced by automatons but the real job would still be there. The good manager is managing change, the process, strategy, processes and balance. In all of this we might well need our ‘people’, but we also may not. We can’t ignore the people of course, but we should be handing over as much self-management to them as we possibly can.

“People canmanage themselves if you let them.”

Of course we, as managers, have to work with real flesh-and-blood people and we have to know what motivates them, how they think and feel, why they come to work, why they give of their best (or their worst), what they afraid of, what they hope and dream for. We shall have to encourage them, coach them, give them the resources to do their job and manage themselves, oversee their processes and set their strategy for them. We will worry about them, look out for them, be on their side and support them. But we won’t mange them. We will let them manage themselves and we shall concentrate on our real role as a manager.

“What you need to be concentrating on is the real job of managmenet – the strategy.”

posted by Right Ranger @ 5:40 PM