Do Business Well

Manger. An individual who directs and/or controls the activities of other individuals or of systems. Examples of systems would include bookkeeping, office, procurement, production, service, operations, and finance.

In the survival stage of your business you will undoubtedly hire some managers. If after a few years you have between five and ten people on the payroll services, it is likely that someone will be functioning as an assistant. The title of this assistant may be vice president, executive secretary, or office manager. Call him what you will, this person is the one who takes over when you’re gone, and who oversees that portion of the business that you don’t.

You probably have also opted for a full-time bookkeeper. Most companies in this stage of development prefer to have someone on staff who can handle all issues related to accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, payroll, and general ledger. Frequently, this individual also handles the computer operations.

If you’re not specifically in charge of sales, you likely have someone on staff who is. In a small company this individualmay also have all or most of the marketing responsibilities as well.

Depending on the type of business, you might also have an operations manager, purchasing manager, head cook, lead man, art director, or second shift supervisor.

Except in unusual situations, these employees were not hired for their managerial flair, but were added when the heat from a major flare-up caused you to scream for backup. For the first eighteen years I ran businesses, I would have suggested to anyone who listened that a company owner should add managers slowly and deliberately before the actual need. This is so they’d be trained and ready when the company’s growth made their positions critical.

I would now maintain that during the survival period you shouldn’t add the overhead until the need is so great that not to add the position might actually damage the company’s profitability. Of course, this means that the hiring process will be done on a rush basis, and you may not always get great managers. That’s acceptable. During this period, if they can handle the operations, you can take a little longer to train them for management. If they can’t be trained, you’ll eventually have to replace them.

What follows are the eight steps necessary for the proper management of managers. Their proper implementation takes a great deal of time. However, as with so many other aspects of leadership, the time devoted at the front end will pay big dividends later.

 

COMMUNICATING THE VISION

I recently read the most astonishing story about the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany. The story told of one facility where the workers were made to endure fourteen hours per day of the most horrible menial labor, seven days per week. This with poor rations, and substandard living quarters. To make matters worse, they were making products that would be used to help the Germans prosecute the war. In the face of all these negatives, the workers remained relatively strong of mind and character.

There was a fire that destroyed the building where these hapless victims turned out the tools of war. The day following the fire, the workers were led out to the site and lined up at one end of the burned-out facility. Here, they were provided with the equipment necessary to pick up and haul away the debris. The wheelbarrows full of destruction were then hauled and dumped at the other end of the burned-out hulk. This activity was performed by the workers with the same relative equanimity with which they performed their usual tasks.

After having completed the clean-up, however, they were lined up at the end of the site where the trash had been dumped, and instructed to haul it back to the other end. As this process was repeated several times it became clear to those working that those in charge were merely creating useless work. It was only at this time that many began to crack emotionally and physically, resulting in numerous mental breakdowns and deaths.

The point here is that these individuals maintained their desire to live while enslaved to make material that would be used to destroy their brothers. But, they cracked when given a meaningless task. The same intense frustration at seeming to perform a task that is of no consequence is often felt by managers.

If they feel that they are spending their eight or so hours per day just putting in time, if they’re unable to figure out how their activity contributes to the whole, and if they’re unable to determine exactly what the “whole” is, you’ll have managers who are ineffective at best, and destructive at worst. On the other hand, if your managers believe their entire effort is designed merely to help the owners make money, they’ll be more effective than if they have no purpose at all. Can you imagine how well things would go if all employees felt they had a stake in the company’s goals?

Do you have a vision for your company? If you’re not certain of your goal—one that you can communicate to your managers— it’s important that you again go through the process of evaluating where you currently stand in your life’s plan.

If you have a clear understanding of where you and the business are headed, then there remains the less difficult, but still substantialjob of communicating this to your staff. You’ll want to do this in a way that allows them to pass on this information to their subordinates, and to the company’s vendors and customers.

As with most communication, you can express yourself in three ways. The first two are optional—the spoken or written word. The third is involuntary—your actions (and we all know what they speak louder than).

The most practical first step in establishing your overall objective for the company is to have a meeting with your managers, through which you involve them in the process of writing a mission statement. Through their participation, they’ll become part owners of the statement, and as such will have a greater stake in seeing it fulfilled.

Possibly the most important step of all comes next. You can write it, and you can say it, but if you can’t live it, nobody will believe it. Therefore, don’t kid yourself, and don’t try to kid your managers. You’re unlikely to improve your company’s management by changing your mission statement. You’ll have to begin by changing yourself.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Managing Managers

• Serious Selling Your Business part 2
• Serious Selling Your Business part 3
• A Lateral Move Can Lead Upward
• Serious Selling Your Business part 4
• Financial Awareness, Small Business Budgeting
• Using Participative Management
• If Employed by a Corporation, Be Realistic
• What's New About Market Leaders?
• Internet Marketing, as the voice of all customer communication, Ecommerce the power of Networking
• Managing Stakeholder Relationship

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