Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Management and Leadership - Part I

I have posted "Why Good People Leave?" article on the blog on 26th June 2007.

Why Good People Leaving? And Why Bad People Leaving too?

People are living because of the direct manager/supervisor do not well train and manage the team. Managing the team is as easy as we thought. Human are dynamic and everyone are unique to compliment to fit the organisation. There could be good and bad staff.. that produce more difficult peoples to deal with. Manager roles are not as simple as "look after" your team mate, but knowing well company directions and strategy may influence how you shape your organisation.

Many observations, and as time past we are floating above the sea and follow wind blow and wave flow.

Why company direction important?

If manager not clear about the company direction, you will see how this team heading to perfect storm on the ocean. Bringing risks and disaster...which indirectly caused damage on resources who supporting under the manager. In order to recognise this, we usually will find the manager very indecisive because "not sure" or uncertainty about something. In my opinion, the manager not sure and very indecisive are earlier sign we should immediately identified which I found not too worst compare to the manager who "not sure" and pretended to be very well understanding the company direction. This is wearing mask manager which even worst and usually your effort put in returned out to become nothing. Recognise them as gave super last minutes decision and plan and ask immediate execution.. and when you rush till midnight to submit your deliverables... your manager would said... now not important already, please proceed focus on your own tasks. Exceptional is given to manager who seldom did this once in blue moon because maybe the others upper management given new wind of change. This only apply to repeated cases.


Your work credited goes to manager
This often happened. What we call this manager? Smarts decisions but facts is dump. It proven that manager not capable enough and not confident by letting their own team to presents. Why you want to present on behalf? To take credit or lack of confident of your own staff? If all your staff can present at management level, you will get double credit and how do you got it? Think yourself.

Over-reaction or self-pride
This is another dummy manager. Often did things damn fast and want more than to compare with other cross functionals do. Example, do faster, do more, do better... end up do worst and redo. This really happened in large organisation where one manager super kiasu and want to show-off to others without taking care of their own limitation and staff resources. It would caused unhealthy competition amongst departmental and making used of you staff to achieve your ego. Almost when you found this manager, they always very dominant to intructs staff to perform until they went exhausted. Do it yourself if that you want to put your pride on the table and not causing others problems in what you want to achieve. Mostly is not company wanted to achieve, is your own pride damage most of what staff could achieve more without under your dump ruling.


NATO membership

We do have NATO membership account of manager. This manager only speak more than action. That is another blind salary base manager and get out of nothing. They swing like the wind blow to unknown destination and unpredictable decision you will never expected and think off. The manager can demand you to do something and change and change.... to overcome this manager, write the minutes of what manager's said and send a copy of team if involved everyone else send to the manager directly. If manager change again, that a proof to track more of this "great decision maker" and refer back for justification. Talk always simple and easy.....those operation who work....is like cows.. Anyhow, we usually heard "Action speak louder than words"


one-to-one meeting
1:1 is one of the method you got the feedback directly both side communication and able to get the instant update from the person without second medium. Most cases, both party fail to understand each needs and requirements where this is major gap and barriers. Managers always said, if you have anything, just send me 1:1. 1:1 is not main intiation by staff but manager and it is your responsibility and accountability to make this happen. Staff initiate as ad-hoc basis and when the need require to have 1:1, then only staff intiate. This is partly of management failure relying staff to initiate, but leaving no path to enable bottom-up communication flow.

Organisation Hierarchy
Manager with too many direct report under him/her, often create another gap, by introducing team leaders or supervisor. We knew the major problems of what human have is likely to add salt and sugar, what information staff pass from one hand to another, we could see different tone of music they could play out and end-recipient (top manager) accept wrong information about operation. Apart of that, some division which have problem and to avoid from reporting out, covered up everything. Non of top know what happening down and all this ants continue work like hell.

to be continued.,.

tags: Organisation and behaviour, opinion talk, management

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting read, Chris. I would recommend this to all the people managers out there. If more people managers can understand and learn from their mistakes and weaknesses, a lot of organizations will be a better place to work in.