August 22, 2007
Kim's guide to being a good manager
Kim Du Toit offers his thoughts on the proper role of management in a successful business.
[In 1985] I was offered a job as Group Marketing Manager for one of my retail clients ... a chain which contained several department stores, “super” grocery stores (large, wide range), neighborhood stores, small urban stores, and half a dozen massive hypermarkets: all told, about 180 stores doing about 2 billion rand in sales (about $1 billion in 1985 dollars).
The job required me to supervise the running of the advertising department (four ad managers, several clerks, all working with three ad agencies—yes, our account was that big), the research “department” (a research manager, the work being mostly outsourced to the various research companies), and the signage studio (twenty-odd artists).
I had worked at two ad agencies prior to this, and at the Great Big Research Company when I was hired away, so I had a general idea of where I wanted to go with this job. What I did not know was exactly how the departments worked, how the work was actually performed.
So I called in the advertising managers and the studio head, and gave them a little speech. From memory, it went like this:
“I don’t know how your jobs work, and I’m not going to learn how. I’m not going to ask you for progress reports each day, and I’m never going to ask you ‘How’s it going?’—I expect you to keep me abreast of things, at times where it seems appropriate for you to do so, or only when you have a problem. Otherwise, I will assume you are all doing your job, and everything’s running smoothly.
“Now, about problems: I’m not going to solve them for you, because once again, I don’t know how your jobs work. So if you come to me with a problem, I’m going to chase you out of my office and tell you to find the solution. I expect you to come to me with a problem with two or three possible solutions, and you can’t decide which one would be the best. (Obviously, if there’s only one solution, you don’t have to tell me anything.) If we discuss the solutions, and the ‘best’ solution still doesn’t present itself, then I’ll make the decision, because that’s my job, my responsibility.
“If anyone from another department is giving you any trouble, and you can’t resolve it, tell me and I’ll take it up with their manager. If it’s their manager who’s giving you the problem, tell me and I’ll try to straighten it out with him; or if I can’t, then I’m going to go to my boss, and let him straighten it out after hearing my suggestions—because he too, is going to want options and not complaints.
“Don’t send me memos, because I won’t read them. Talk to me, and if you feel compelled to put the results of our discussion onto paper, go ahead, and put me on copy. Give the memo to my secretary and tell her to file it wherever.
“The mark of a successful manager is how long he could be dead at his desk before any of his staff notices it. I’m shooting for two weeks.”
There were no questions.
[...]
None of this is designed to make me look like some kind of superhero manager. But it is intended to make people think about the proper way to manage people:
1. Give them responsibility to go with their accountability.
2. Force them to live up to your expectations of them. Trust them to do a good job.
3. If they make an honest mistake in an otherwise exemplary job, forget about it, and cover for them if the Corner Office starts causing trouble.
4. Don’t sweat the little things. If someone needs a little extra time off to look after a sick child or have their hair done, let them go.
5. Eschew paperwork and bureaucracy (other than when mandated like for hourly workers and time cards). Show me a manager who demands constant progress reports from his staff, and I’ll show you an insecure manager who doesn’t trust them.
I've had one manager who fit this description; best manager I ever had.
There's a military variation, one mentioned in the comments to Kim's post, that's spot on.
My major points were:
Weekly staff meetings are discontinued. If I don’t know what you’re doing without a meeting, one of us isn’t doing it right.
Weekly inspections are discontinued. If you don’t look good every day, one of us isn’t doing it right.
My door is always open. If you show up in my office, and your boss doesn’t know you’re there, you’re both fired.
Morale and productivity improved dramatically. The only complaints were from those who depended upon obfuscation for their “success.”
The funny thing is, none of this is exactly a secret, yet so few organizations encourage it, even thought it seems to work -- at least with Americans (and Afrikaaners) -- darn near every time.
Will some one explain to me why Kim hasn't been snapped up by an executive recruiter yet?
Posted by Mike Lief at August 22, 2007 11:43 PM
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