The Rules Of Management (Pioneer Panel's Library) (11 page)

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No, not just legislation that affects your industry but all big proposed legislation. You’d be surprised how often the “domino” effect affects you.

But you’ve also got to keep a close watch on what is going on under your nose—your team, your department, your immediate surroundings, the fine details as well as the big picture.

And how are you going to find the time to think about these things? To reflect, to analyze, to anticipate? You’re going to schedule it on your calender, that’s how. That’s what proper grown-up managers do. And if you want to be a talented senior manager, you need to recognize the importance of giving yourself space to think. Sometimes you get the opportunity when you’re traveling. (But make sure you deliberately
allocate the time, and use it wisely.) Sometimes you have to block out an hour or two in your calendar and make sure you’re not disturbed. Call it “planning time” if anyone asks—unless they’re a successful manager themselves, in which case they’ll understand.

The bright manager has to keep their eyes and ears open, their wits about them, their mind open to new ideas and innovations and trends. You’ve got to see the trees
and
the forest.

Sometimes it’s really hard to let go, to know when to stop. But some projects just aren’t going to work. Some team members are never going to fit in. Some bosses are never going to be possible to work with. Some situations must simply cease.

The good manager knows instinctively when to back off, to bail out, to retreat, to walk away whistling, pride intact and dignity in place. This rule is for you but also for all the people who get caught, fool around, play up, try to defend the indefensible. Come on, know when to quit, know when the dog is dead.

A good manager knows when to hold his hands up, “Yep, I messed up. It was my fault. I surrender.” Invariably you’ll be forgiven because such an honest, direct approach throws ’em off the trail and they don’t know how to handle you.

If you don’t know when to let go, you’ll build up anger, resentment, stress, jealousy, and pain. Learn to shrug and walk. You don’t have to forgive or forget or anything, except drop it and walk away.

There is a myth in business that to get even is better than getting mad. But getting even is getting mad; it just takes a bit longer. Let it go. Concentrate on the next big exciting thing you can do.

I bet you hate the type of manager who refuses to make a decent decision in case they make the wrong one. The indecisive, frightened manager who won’t decide until it’s too late or they get the decision made for them. I’ve worked for a few and there is nothing more irritating than someone who fence-sits because they don’t know which way to jump—and all in the name of fear. They are frightened to decide in case they make a mistake—one that might cost them their job. Big deal. Better to jump and make a mistake than to sit there too frightened to make a move. Bring it on.

And suppose it does turn out to be the wrong decision. Well, sometimes out of big mistakes something bright and shiny and magical appears, and we land on our feet with a tra-la and manage to look good despite sometimes not knowing what we were doing. This is the magic manager that I want you to be. The instinctive manager around whom anything can happen—and will. If you want to sit on a fence, go find another book to read.

Now I’m not saying here that you should make rash, ill-thought-through decisions. I’m assuming as a good manager that if it’s that kind of decision, you have looked at the evidence before you and evaluated it, maybe asked for views from others. It’s that point in the process I’m talking about—the point where you are tempted to shy away from the decision, in case it turns out to be the wrong one.

This is about courage. The courage to be wrong sometimes. The courage to take a risk. The courage to be scared in a good way. (Sitting on a fence because you are scared is a lot different from taking a big decision and being scared but exhilarated.)

All you have to do is look at the facts, evaluate them, ask advice, listen to your intuition and then do it—make the decision. Be dynamic, be bold.

Minimalism means not issuing lengthy reports. It means not issuing memos every 20 minutes. It means keeping rules to the minimum
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and letting people get on with their jobs. It means mission statements that make sense, are clear and easy to understand and are simple. It means management where managers use professionals and let them get on with their tasks in peace and quiet. It means managers who are secure in themselves and don’t need to score points, bully, or interfere.

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No, not these Rules, I mean the petty ones—you have to wear a tie, you have to have one doughnut, not two at coffee time, you have to address senior management as Mr./Mrs. X and not use their first names, you have to park within the lines, you have to wear sensible shoes, you have to...you know what I mean.

Minimalist management is all about getting more by doing less. Yes, sure you have to be the boss, but it’s more like steering a big ship—the tiniest touch of the wheel is enough. You swing that wheel violently from side to side and you’re off course in an instant.

There is an old Chinese saying: “Govern a country the same way you cook small fish,” that is, don’t keep fiddling with them or they fall apart. Manage a department, team, or company in pretty much the same way—gently, discreetly, unobtrusively. Better to be understated than too obvious.

When you write your bestseller and then die you will get a plaque on the building where you were born, or lived, or wrote the damn thing—just so long as it was in London.
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When I say “you” I don’t mean you, I mean whoever it is that lives there after you’ve croaked. This plaque is there to commemorate the fact that you did a good thing while you were alive. If you didn’t do your good thing—that is, write your bestseller, add to the sum of human literacy, manage to afford to live in London—you don’t get a plaque.

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I’m fairly certain you have to be dead, but you don’t have to have written anything. Being a musician is good enough—even Jimi Hendrix got one.

Now imagine that there is a plaque for management style and it’s not limited to London. What would you get yours for? Would you in fact get one? Basically, how would you like to be remembered? I worked for a boss once whose style of management was quaint to say the least. As he came in each day he would blast the first person he saw, give them a complete thrashing for whatever they happened to be doing. Then he would go to his office and have coffee for half an hour. Then he would walk through the plant and compliment the first person he saw, tell them what a great job they were doing no matter what it was they were doing. I asked him about this and he said, “Keeps them on their toes. They never know where they are with me. I get more out of them if they are frightened.” No plaque for you, Billy boy.

I’ve told this before because it still, after more than 20 years, fascinates me as the worst incompetent, bullying stupidity I have ever come across. And he is still in a job, still employed by the same firm. Yes, he has hardly risen up the ranks because he is still doing pretty much what he was then, back when I knew him, but he is still employed. I don’t buy shares in that particular company—never have, never will.

I want a plaque. I want it for being the best damn manager there ever was. I want it for being good for my team, getting results, setting standards; for being a huge success and somebody they liked working for.

When you think about it, you’ve got to have principles. If you don’t, you end up despising yourself or in debt or in prison. You might end up like this anyway, but at least you could say, “But I have my principles.”

There has to be a line beyond which you will not go. You have to know where that line is drawn. No one else has to know until they ask you to cross it, and then you can tell them. That line has to be a 10-mile-high solid steel wall. You can’t go beyond it, no matter what.

I have a friend whose boss once asked her to falsify a formal warning letter to present at a meeting for a member of staff who had been fired and was claiming unfair dismissal. Would you do this? Does it matter whether you think the person was rightly or wrongly dismissed? Suppose they had been warned but it hadn’t been recorded in writing? Suppose you and your boss were sure it must have been put in writing at the time, but you can’t find it now? I’m not telling you what’s right or wrong in this instance. I’m saying that you have to know what you consider to be right or wrong. And then stand by it.

So where would you draw your line? I’ve been asked to do things I didn’t like. I’ve been asked to do things I found unpleasant. I’ve been asked to do things I found extremely irksome, but whenever I’ve been asked to cross my own personal line—which thankfully in a long business career has been only once or twice—I was able to say, “No,” and stick to it. And each time I got a pat on the back rather than a trip to the HR office.

Deep down inside you know when you’re right, and you know when you’re wrong. Sure we can cut off that inner voice, but if we do we lose touch, and then we really are in trouble. That inner intuition may not speak loud and clear all the time but when it does, you’d be mad not to follow it.

Trouble is your mind also speaks loud and clear—all the time—and we mix the two up and follow what we think is intuition when in fact it is fear or jealousy or another emotion.

So how do you tell? If when you’re talking to somebody about a new system you are about to implement and, though they look positive, you feel an odd or cold feeling inside, listen to it. Take time to think why. Tell somebody else about it and see if it happens again. Go back to the plan and look at it from all viewpoints, considering all the stakeholders. Are you still convinced?

Never be too proud or too lazy to get more feedback, to find a sounding board or to rethink a proposal or a decision if you’ve got a bad feeling about it.

Look at previous good or bad decisions you’ve made. How did you feel about them at the time? Did you, deep down, know a bad course of action was flawed before you followed it? Would you know that feeling again?

Developing your intuition is a hard thing to teach, but if you make a habit of “listening” to how you feel about something, your radar will improve, and you’ll begin to know when a gut feeling is telling you that something isn’t right.

The good manager keeps a virtual closet full of creative techniques so that when she gets stuck, when the team gets stuck—and you and the team will from time to time—you have something to fall back on.

Being creative is about finding new and different ways to solve problems. You get stuck and start worrying and then you go off and tend your garden, do some washing up, fly a kite or whatever, and you get immersed in what you are doing and answers bubble up to the surface.

Most creative techniques get you to switch off your conscious, thinking brain and start to use a deeper, more intuitive part of your mind. And that part has a whole load of answers that we can’t normally access. This is the part we can access during sleep or meditation or by using creative thinking techniques.

Watch what other managers do—the ones you admire and respect. They probably have a virtual closet of creative tricks. Borrow a few. Read up on creative thinking techniques. Find out what the bright managers are doing, thinking, trying out. Ask somebody not in your field what they would do. Don’t be afraid to be wacky or off the wall—after all some of the best ideas have come from dreams.

So are you a leader or a manager? Not really a fair question when we’ve spent the whole book so far making sure you are an effective, efficient, and startlingly good manager. But the really good managers are also leaders—they inspire and motivate, encourage and enthuse. They draw people to them like moths to a flame. They are charismatic and dynamic and stylish. They are leaders indeed.

But they are also good managers. Too much management and you stagnate. You have to revel in change, seek new challenges, stay on your toes, find new ways of doing things, motivate your team in new and exciting ways, introduce new technology and ideas, start trends, jump fences, light fires. You can’t be seen to stand still or moss will grow over you and you become a fixture and people stop noticing you.

I know it’s difficult sometimes to see beyond today’s workload, tomorrow’s meetings, next week’s directors” report. But you have to be moving or you will stagnate. Set aside a little time each day or week—only half an hour perhaps—to think up new ways of being revolutionary. Why? Because if you don’t do this you become bogged down in the day-to-day, the humdrum, the routine. Yes, you are a manager, but you are also an innovator, motivator, inspirer, leader, and trendsetter.

If the moss has already grown over you and people have come to regard you as part of the furniture, you will have to work very hard to shake off that image. Don’t scare them with radical change—do it bit by bit.