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BEC : Management -George

Hi there, it’s George with a commentary on the subject of management. Let me start by just giving a slightly different definition than what we talked about in the conversation. I think AJ said the accomplishment of objectives through others. Let me give you a slightly different definition of this job --the accomplishment of predetermined objectives through others.

Now, you ask, why do I say that, predetermined objectives? Well, if you think about it, just about, no not just about, every manager within the chain of command top to bottom within an organization has predetermined objectives. Your lower-level managers have been given objectives by higher-level managers and this holds true all the way to the top of the organization.

Even the chief executive officer in a corporation, a publicly-traded corporation, has been given a set of objectives by the board of directors. You say where does the board of directors get their objectives? Basically from the stockholders; the shareholders in the corporation. It’s just a little different way to look at this and understand it.

So what does a manager do or what should a manager do? Well, I have a list of a few things. There’s probably a hundred more, but the basics, managers hire people. That process of interviewing, resumes and all that stuff that we went through in another lesson, well on the other side of you is a manager. They have to make the decision about hiring. On the other end of the scale, in other words on the bad side, if you will, managers fire people. Managers release unsatisfactory performers. They have to make those kinds of decisions.

Managers, good ones, train people. They train people to do the jobs. Maybe not the individual really down to the detail, but they train them on the basics, the fundamentals and the objectives of their jobs. Good managers will motivate their people. In other words, good managers will build a feeling within the employees that they want to succeed. They want to do better. They want to contribute to the company. They want to help meet these predetermined objectives.

Your good managers will delegate. They will not take in a lot of things and try to pretend like if this is going to be done right I have to do it. Good managers will delegate tasks and responsibility, authority and accountability to their employees.

Managers compensate people. It is your manager who is directly responsible for determining whether you get a pay raise or not.

Managers are controllers. They control the piece of the business which they manage.

They, of course, control the employees in terms of directing them and training them, etc., but they also, if they can, control the environment that the employees are working in.

Good managers will lead. This is a topic for another lesson probably, but good managers, really good managers are good leaders. In other words, their employees want to follow them somewhere.

Managers have to make decision. This sounds like a simple, easy thing, but sometimes making decisions is very, very difficult. Example: the decision to fire somebody. That’s a tough one. That’s a tough on.

Let me capsulize or put in a small sense the three things that I really think are critical management skills or management functions.

Managers have authority or at least, hopefully, they’ve been given authority. So the manager has the authority to meet the objectives to manage his or her people.

Managers are given the responsibility to do just that - to manage to meet objectives.

Managers have the accountability. They are accountable for the objectives, whether they are met or not and managers are accountable for the actions of their people.

Let me just give you a brief structure from a corporate standpoint of what the management chain of command would look like.

At the very top is your board of directors. That’s the group of professional people that are hired to basically hire the chief executive officer (CEO) and to set the policies and the direction for the corporation. The CEO then becomes the top manager in the company, in the corporation. Sometimes he is the president, sometimes not. Sometimes you’ll have a CEO and reporting to them is a president. Generally, there will be a chief operating officer, there’ll be a chief financial officer and there’ll be a chief information or technology officer, people of that nature.

These people are all generally considered to be vice presidents in your bigger corporation. Down below that each one of these people will have a lot of directors reporting to them. These are, again, nothing more than very high-level managers, directors of finance, the director of marketing, the director of human resources, the director of manufacturing and distribution and maybe even the director of administration.

From that point on down there’s no telling, depending on how big the corporation is or how big the company is, how many more levels of managers, if you will, there might be.

There could be what we call middle managers. These are the ones between the higher upper levels and the first line direct with the workers’ managers. These could be mangers of a division. They could be managers of a region. They could be managers of a district. They could managers of offices. There’s a wide variety there.

Then you get down to what I refer to as the first line manager, which to me is one of the most critical jobs in the company, that first line manager. That’s the manager that manages the operators, the one that manages the salespeople, the administrative people, the marketing people, the people on the manufacturing line and the distribution center, all of those kinds of people.

What are some of the basic skills that are needed for managers? Organization and planning. A good manager is a good organizer and a good planner. A good manager is usually a pretty analytical-type person. In fact, a good manager is a problem solver and they’re also, more importantly, a problem avoider. They know how to avoid problems.

That’s the best kind of manager.

A good manger is supportive. Let me use a phrase that I used to use - ‘fight up, support down’. What that means is support the people that work for you, the decisions, the actions and the work that they do. Support your people to upper-level management and fight for your people. Fight up to the next level of management. Fight for your organization. Fight for your people.

I’m not saying to fight company policy or things that you shouldn’t be, but it’s a different kind of support. You’re supporting your organization as a manager your people to the next level of management.

Skills - You have to be able to accept responsibility, responsibility and the accountability that goes with it and a big, big, big, BIG skill that’s required of managers - communications. Good managers are good communicators not only with their people, but with the managers that they work with and the organizations that they have to deal with.

Bottom line here, it’s a lonely job, it really is. Let me give you an example of how lonely it can be. Think about the fact of somebody, maybe you, working in an organization now where you’ve got six, eight, nine, 10 peers - other employees - and you all report to a manager. The day all of a sudden comes and your manager gets promoted on to another job and they come to you and say we want you to manage this organization.

All of a sudden now you’re put into a position to have a totally different view and different position and standing with the people that have been your peers, your friends, your buddies, the ones you went out after work with sometimes. Now you have to manage those people. That becomes very lonely because you have to cut a lot of ties.

A lot of the things that you did before, unfortunately, you’re not able to do. That’s tough.

It’s a demanding job. Those predetermined objectives, they never seem to stop. There’s more and more of them that come down every day, every week, every month. So it’s very demanding, but on the bottom line it is an extremely rewarding job, extremely rewarding. Certainly there are some financial rewards for most management jobs, but there are personal rewards, personal rewards from taking an organization - a group of people - and a set of objectives and turning that group into the best there is in the company.

I had the fortune or misfortune once in my career to manage the worst office in the United States. There were 160 of them and by all standard of measure, whether it was measurements in the company of sales or administration or reports, it didn’t matter what, moral, it mattered not what it was, this office was the worst in the nation. Well, the sense of accomplishment, the reward for me and it took a long time, it took about two and a half years, was to move that office to the best in the nation. Now, that’s pretty rewarding, very rewarding internally. It really makes you feel good.

With all that in mind, I want to leave you with one more thought about management. You cannot please everybody all the time. There’s kind of the gist of the most difficult part of being a manager. You’re not going to please everybody all the time. So there’s a skill and there’s a thought process that good managers struggle with sometimes.

On a final note, given that thought guess what? Politicians don’t make very good managers do they, because they try to please everybody all the time.

That’s my comment on the subject of management.

The End.