Do You Make These Ten Management Mistakes?Written by Chris Anderson
As a busy executive, you face some extremely difficult challenges like creating and dominating new markets or finding and keeping best people. But then, like many executives, do you find yourself spending too much time solving everyday problems (that only you can solve, right?), which prevent you from growing your ideal business?Most managers find themselves spending 80% or more of their time “reacting” to business events and very little time in preventing those same events from occurring again. If this sounds familiar then you may be making some of these management mistakes: 1.Do you have a compelling vision for your company, that projects a remarkable future, but few of your employees have heard of it or could explain it if asked? 2.Do you have a company mission that addresses your customer needs yet your operations fail to measure your progress towards your mission? 3.Do your objectives focus on increasing revenue and profitability while your assets are performing poorly, generating negative cash flows, or encumbered by debt to create profit? 4.Do you talk a lot about your employees (positive or negative) without noting what your employee turnover or performance metrics are for your industry? 5.Do you spend a lot of time working IN your business on tactics yet fail to spend a greater amount of time working ON your business to define your strategy, performance metrics, and real resource needs? 6.Do you have regular interactions with employees yet fail to communicate status of objectives, financials, or metrics? 7.Do you make money available for training yet fail to measure how that training helps your company achieve its goals? 8.Do you constantly strive to improve your company’s performance yet fail to compare your performance against external benchmarks for success? 9.Do you believe that your customers, employees, and vendors all love your company yet you have no process for measuring their satisfaction on an on-going basis? 10.Do you produce forecasts and budgets yet fail to achieve agreed upon goals or learn from experience to improve in future.
| | Are You Invisible?Written by Arthur Cooper
(c) Copyright 2004 In today’s competitive workplace it is not enough just to be good – you have to be seen to be good. It is not an environment in which to indulge in false modesty. If you allow your talents to be taken for granted they will be. There is always someone else ready to take any credit that would otherwise come your way. If you don’t want others to take credit due to you then you had better watch out. It’s a jungle out there. If you don’t want to be left behind in promotion stakes then you must learn to blow your own trumpet. Perhaps you are not personally burning with ambition and you may not be personally seeking advancement or glory. Well that’s your decision. But if you are in charge of a team or of a department you owe it to your staff to take credit for their efforts and for yours too. You cannot in all conscience say that it doesn’t matter. It may matter a lot to them. It is part of your job as manager to look after, encourage, and advance careers of your staff. If you want them to work well for you, you must do something for them – reward them with praise (where due), with financial recompense (when earned), but above all with chance to use their talents to full and to progress in their careers. You have a duty as a manager to help. So if one of your team does something good it is up to you to make sure that this is known. If team as a whole achieves something noteworthy you must publicise it. And if you personally have done something exceptional that will light up your team in your reflected glory then you should take credit, for their sake if not for yours. Do it within bounds of decent modesty of course, but do it. It cannot do them any harm to be associated with a leader who is going places, and it may do them a power of good.
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