“I hire experienced executives and I trust them. They shouldn’t need me to manage them.” Of course, this is inane. Managing someone is not a punitive activity, nor a sign of distrust. And it doesn’t change based on a person’s seniority or tenure. Management is the act of aligning people’s actions, behaviors, and attitudes with the needs of the organization and making sure that little problems don’t become big ones. Avoiding this is nothing but negligence.”
The Motive Patrick M. Lencioni
“Management is the act of aligning people’s actions, behaviors, and attitudes with the needs of the organization and making sure that little problems don’t become big ones. Avoiding this is nothing but negligence.”
It is one of the biggest challenges facing most businesses today. Managing. It is one of the requirements as companies grow but most organizations do little to no training on how to be a good manager. Patrick hits the nail on the head with his insight on why we need to manage and what it should look like. Usually we take team members that are doing a great job and promote them to managers and give them more responsibility. The problem is, we usually don’t have a process to train them on what this new positions looks like and what it requires. What can we do?
First, lets’ agree that as an organization grows, people will need to be managed. Just because the person has tons of experience or have been on the team a while, does not mean they do not need to be managed. Everyone needs to be managed at some level. Management is the act of aligning people’s actions, behaviors, and attitudes with the needs of the organization and making sure that little problems don’t become big ones. Everyone needs to be reminded of what we are doing, how we are doing it and the results we expect.
Second, the right people want to be managed. They want to know what they are doing is working. They want to know if they need to change to make things better or make a bigger impact. They want to know! The consistent conversations between managers and their team members helps to create consistency, which creates predictability and better results.
So what can we do? Let’s start understanding what management is and that we need it as part of our organization. Then, let’s begin training and equipping our managers on how to be amazing at their job. You got this!