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Measuring Management

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Managers spend much of their time measuring – market share, year on year sales, voids, arrears, return on investment, customer satisfaction, orders fulfilled, calls handled per hour, orders placed, orders fulfilled (again), total invoiced, hours billed, attendance, productivity per employee etc

Why the obsession with measuring stuff?

Because it gives us the data to recognise what has changed, what needs to change, and when we make the change – whether it has had the impact we planned.

But none of these metrics are about US – the manager.  They are all about the performance of the system and the people that we manage.  And this often lets us of the hook for making real change in the way we manage.

What if we measured some more personal aspects of our management efforts?

  • how much time we spend listening in 121 conversation with team members
  • how many times we give REAL feedback – affirmative and adjusting – each day/week
  • how often we make sarcastic or cynical comments
  • how many times we interrupt others mid-sentence
  • how often we check our blackberry in meetings
  • how often we talk about values and vision
  • the amount of time we spend in meetings that are inefficient or worse
  • how many coaching contracts we put in place with our team members
  • what percentage of coaching contracts achieved their goals
  • how many significant tasks we genuinely delegated (rather than then allocated) because they provide great development opportunities
  • percentage of working time allocated to pursuing key objectives
  • how often we acknowledge our own development opportunities and make planned conscious change in our behaviours

I am convinced that if we started to measure our own personal performance in relation to some of these more personal aspects of management, most of us would we would pretty quickly get some powerful data on what we needed to change.  Measurement would also pretty quickly confront us with the fact that our perceptions of our performance are markedly different from reality.

As we make planned changes based on measurements of our own personal behaviours we will soon see a very positive impact in some of the more traditional areas where measurement prevails.  The act of measurement itself would also increase the likelihood of planned changes being implemented and seen through.  That after all is perhaps the main reason why we measure.

To make sure that important things get done.

Ten Steps to Better Management

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Step 1: Clarify, negotiate, and commit to your role as manager.

  • Many management jobs will have changed priorities in response to the current economy.
  • Check with your manager that you are doing what is best for the organisation.
  • Check with your conscience that you are doing what is best for you and your team.
  • Check that you are prepared to do the work that will help others to be outstanding.

Step 2: Understand the results you are expected to produce.

  • If you are to be recognised as an outstanding manager you need to know what excellence looks like.
  • At the moment you might be expected to drive costs down while producing more value.
  • Watch out for mediocrity. Expect excellence. Don’t let the current climate be an excuse to cut corners.

Step 3: Know your business.

  • Know what excellence looks like. Recognise the behaviours and habits that lead to it.
  • Recognise behaviours and habits that undermine it.
  • Understand the metrics that are relevant to your part of the business. Use them to get better.
  • Understand what your organisation needs from you – now.

Step 4: Build a great team.

  • Recruit, develop and retain people who will take responsibility and work independently – within parameters agreed with you!
  • To make sure you retain your best staff in difficult times talk to them – give them control – give them the chance to shape the organisation and their future in it.
  • Build a team that you can lead – not a flock that you have to herd.

Step 5: Ensure your team knows what excellence looks like.

  • Feedback, feedback, feedback.
  • Coach, coach, coach
  • Delegate, delegate, delegate
  • If you are not sure what constitutes excellence in your business – FIND OUT QUICKLY!

Step 6: Plan – with flexibility.

  • Review and revise plans on a weekly basis.
  • Expect progress on a weekly basis.
  • 121s are ideal for this.

Step 7: Get out of their way.

  • Help them to do great work.
  • Listen to them.
  • Understand what stops them from being great.
  • Get barriers out of their way.

Step 8: Be engaging.

  • Be positive and constructive.
  • Smile a lot.
  • Be energetic and hopeful.

Step 9: Proactively manage progress.

  • While change IS inevitable – progress is not.
  • Make sure that everyone knows what constitutes progress and has their own plan to make it.

Step 10: Leave a legacy: develop people and the organisation’s capacity to produce results.

  • better meetings
  • more focus
  • more knowledge and skills
  • more professionalism
  • better execution
  • higher standards

This post was inspired by Lisa Haneberg over at Management Craft.

Making Meetings Work

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Most managers spend more than 50% of their working hours spent in meetings of one sort or another.

Yet few have a systematic approach towards making these meetings as effective and efficient as they can be.

Many managers just tend to accept that meetings are inherently inefficient and not often effective.  That’s just how it is.  Few take responsibility for making them better.

Outstanding managers do just that.

They run tight, focused, professional meetings.

They are clear on purpose, tightly controlled and always drive towards decisions or enlightenment.

They produce actions and name people responsible for making them happen.

These meeting outcomes are effectively commmunicated and actions are always monitored to make sure that they deliver the anticipated results.

Any variations between what was anticipated and what occurred are used to drive reflection and development.  The organisation learns and future meetings are informed by the experience.

Sounds like an unreasonably high expectation of the humble meeting?  I don’t think so.  Get trained, change your expectations, behave differently and soon you will be making meetings work.

Making Meetings Work

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The mechanisms that provide the hard landscape for most organisations social systems are a hotchpotch of poorly designed and badly managed meetings in which behaviour and performance is pretty much left to chance. That is why so many people have a work life that is full of inconsequential meetings.

However it is these regularly scheduled meetings that largely determine what is going to be achieved by the organisation.

In effective social systems (read high performing organisations) every meeting contributes to one or more of the following

  • Creating new products or services that fulfill the organisation’s mission
  • Remove barriers to personal, professional and organisational growth
  • Improve judgment and decision making
  • Tap intellectual ability
  • Build commitment and support for execution of strategies and plans

After every meeting rate its success against each of these criteria – and then ask yourself what you can do to make the meeting more effective next time.

If you are the meeting owner ask each participant to score the meeting against these criteria and again ask for their suggestions on how the meeting can be improved next time.

Prepare a poster to go up in each meeting room reminding participants of their obligation to ensure that every meeting contributes towards some or all of these outcomes.