I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.
Examples of why management, its competence, its integrity, and its performance, is so decisive to the free world.
I’ve worked under good management and bad. I’ve found that even the good management could be better. The goal of a manager is to put his people in a position to succeed. That means providing opportunities and challenges for people. There’s also a coaching and development component. A person can either by motivated or demotivated. Even under good management I’ve felt that I had to drive to be better more than management. When management is involved I can really excel and take off.
That’s because there is an understanding of expectations. Regular feedback on what is being done right and what’s being wrong. It is tough. I know that now having been in management for two years. It’s hard to maintain a continually focus on the people. I’ve had missteps where I wasn’t providing enough attention and focus. This pandemic has really highlighted the importance of regular communication. On top of the daily stand ups I try to communicate with each of my guys at least once. I have a couple that only really ask me questions when they hear my voice. They have other ways of reaching out. For whatever reason they don’t. They need to hear my voice.
I’ve found feedback a tougher challenge to tackle. Looking for the positive is hard. Providing the negative can be nerve wracking. Yet, sports teams do this all the time through coaches and managers. They provide specific and immediate feedback. It takes a lot to manage a team and it’s similar for people that are together 40 hours out of the week.
There’s a coordination piece as well. Defining and providing guidance on the priorities and work that needs to get done. This is replicated hundreds of times across a business. Each manager is thus managed from someone above them. They get their work and try to define it for their team. Without it there is just chaos and lost effort.