Management vs Leadership Part III – Clarity to be Achieved

 PART III

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In the previous installments, we discussed how leadership is one of the biggest problems in business. Not because leadership is bad but because there is a lack of management leading to the leadership. Next, we discussed that for your business to achieve its desired results, your team must have the clarity to perform. Does your team know how to perform their job well? Do they actually know what their job is?

As we mentioned previously, first we make sure they know what their job is, give them a good job description, a checklist or system, and micro-managing or mentor to make sure they do the job correctly.

Now that there is clarity of what they are responsible for, they need to create a daily list of what they need to achieve each day to stay on target to the end goal. This should be done at the end of every day. It's something that every person in every position in the company should do from the owner to the janitor. 

If you want higher productivity out of your people, literally make sure that before they leave the office, the warehouse or where ever they work, they leave a list of what needs to get done and achieved tomorrow. If they are not doing that, their productivity will be much lower. We have found that there is about a 30% increase in productivity with employees when we start doing that. 

Now as a manager, you can review this list to make sure they are focused on the most important and profitable tasks. The daily lists are one thing, you want them to learn how to prioritize, put each task in a time frame and prioritize it for the next day. This all starts with the list.  

Think about it, before you went away on vacation you made a list of what needed to get done. Checklists, todo lists work very well as part a management system. If you want to manage your people better, definitely have them know their job but also that you know what they are doing each day.

Now the daily list becomes a weekly list. Why do we need a weekly list? 

Simply put, we are going to have 2 meetings with all our employees to get away from being a reactive manager to being a proactive manager. (We will discuss these two meetings in the next segment) 

Reactive management started with the whole open-door policy. You can always come and ask me a question. What happens is they end up coming at any time of the day and ask you stupid questions and you give them an answer. These interruptions make you less productive and less profitable.

Answering questions are one of the biggest things that managers have to stop. If you are going to train someone, you are going to have to stop answering them and start asking them questions. Stop being the Super Hero and being the one to solve every problem. Train your team to be problem solvers.

In the next segment, we are going to discuss how to get out of the Super Hero syndrome and begin to become the leader.