Do You Make These Ten Management Mistakes?
As a busy executive, you face some extremely difficult challenges like creating and dominating new markets or finding and keeping the best people. But then, like many executives, do you find yourself spending too much time solving everyday problems, which prevent you from growing your ideal business?
Most managers find themselves spending 80% or more of
their time “reacting” to business events and very little time in preventing
those same events from occurring again. If this sounds familiar then you may
be making some of these management mistakes:
Do you have a compelling vision for your company, that projects a remarkable
future, but few of your employees have heard of it or could explain it if
asked?
Do you have a company mission that addresses your customer needs yet your
operations fail to measure your progress towards your mission?
Do your objectives focus on increasing revenue and profitability while your
assets are performing poorly, generating negative cash flows, or encumbered
by debt to create the profit?
Do you talk a lot about your employees (positive or negative) without noting
what your employee turnover or performance metrics are for your industry?
Do you spend a lot of time working IN your business on tactics yet fail to
spend a greater amount of time working ON your business to define your
strategy, performance metrics, and real resource needs?
Do you have regular interactions with employees yet fail to communicate the
status of objectives, financials, or metrics?
Do you make money available for training yet fail to measure how that
training helps your company achieve its goals?
Do you constantly strive to improve your company’s performance yet fail to
compare your performance against external benchmarks for success?
Do you believe that your customers, employees, and vendors all love your
company yet you have no process for measuring their satisfaction on an
on-going basis?
Do you produce forecasts and budgets yet fail to achieve the agreed upon
goals or learn from the experience to improve in the future.
Daily operational issues eat up much of a manager’s time. Too much for most
managers. But by reversing this trend, you will have the opportunity to
correct those mistakes and build a superior organization that keeps your
best people, increases revenue and increases margins.
Start by examining how to remove yourself from your business. Look at
automating or outsourcing tasks you perform now. Any task that falls within
the tactical operation of your business should be transferred to another
person.
If automating or outsourcing is not an option then move the responsibility
down the organization and train your employees to take over those tasks.
Most employees are quite capable once they have been properly trained and
given enough time to become proficient.
Continuous improvement beats delayed perfection.
The business is not about the founder, executive or management that has more
experience, thinks they are the smartest or can do the best job. A business
is about all of the people. In fact a business is the people.
Management’s job is strategic. Managers must focus on the vision, mission
and objectives of the organization. Then deploy the resources to see the
work gets done. Then measure, monitor and communicate the results so that
everyone has the information they need to improve their performance.
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