Invest In Loss

Growing up in Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980’s, one of the maxims I learned in school at the time was that the British disease is bad management. Things are definitely improving in that area, but there will always be room for improvement. There’s plenty of advice out there on how to be a good manager (including the Invest In Loss blog). But why is it important to be a good manager in the first place?

If You Do Not Change Direction, You Might End Up Where You’re Heading

One of the classic signs of bad management is the lack of a clear direction, with an organisation or group just drifting along on a day to day basis. Bad managers walk around all day underneath their own personal cloud - a personal cloud of “dunno”. They are judgemental instead of decisive, and about the only thing consistent about their decisions is their inability to chart a clear course forward. Bad managers have to spend more time micro-managing staff, because they have not established clarity of purpose and trust with their staff. Short term successes are quickly stopped in their tracks by the lack of longer-term planning and preparation. Both employees and customers drift into the organisation and then drift away again, unable to establish long-term partnerships with the company and its management - with the big cloud of “dunno”.

Direction provides the meaning to any relationship, whether it’s between managers and staff, suppliers and customers, or organisations and their competitors. Staff who understand and believe in your group’s goals will work towards those goals, because they understand how their efforts directly contribute to the overall success. Both trust and boundaries are established between manager and staff member. Suppliers who understand the real needs of a customer (especially the Unspoken Question) will do a better job of satisfying that customer, and of securing more business from them in the future. Organisations who mindfully position their services and goods in relation to their competitors are more likely to uncover blue oceans (new markets with little competition) instead of being forced into a war of attrition with their competitors.

It Takes Ten Hands To Score A Basket

As a manager, it’s your job to put the right people in the right place to get the best results possible. It is your people who ultimately get the job done - not you nor your fellow managers. Without their success, you have no success of your own. Their success comes from blending the right mix of personalities, approaches, attitudes and skills with the right number of people ready to take on the work at the right time. (A similar premise holds true for partner organisations, and assets such as machinery and other tools).

Organisation provides the route from start to finish, no matter how large or small the task. Men (and women!), materials and momentum are all managed through good organisation. Good organisation drives efficiency, through economy of resources and effort versus cost. Many crises can be completely prevented, because good organisation delivers robustness. Groups that have good organisation suffer less surprises and less disruption, and over time become more deterministic and predictable in their performance, making it easier for senior management to make their plans with accuracy and confidence.

Arms And Legs Are Like Wayward Children

There are always two aspects to any piece of work - that which is in plain sight, and that which hidden underneath. The plain sight stuff is what everyone concentrates on. It’s in the limelight, which is where the glory is. The plain sight stuff is the functional requirements (or the front-office) - the checkboxes that need to be ticked to say “Yes, it does what my business needs it to do.” But behind it, often hidden away from view, are the non-functional requirements (or the back-office). These are everything that’s needed to make the functional requirements possible. They are also the longer-term responsibilities, limitations, and costs that are incurred by any piece of work. When experienced managers talk about “the devil is in the detail”, this is what they are referring to. All too often, in today’s superficial world, the pressure is to deliver the functional requirements with little or no regard to the non-functional requirements and longer-term implications. Is it no wonder, then, that bad management often expresses surprise and anger at a later point in time when this approach comes back to haunt the organisation?

Supervision provides self-awareness for the group or organisation, by directing attention beyond the superficial and into the substantial. It can be a flash-light, casting a pool of weak light across a wide area, or it can be as focused as a laser beam, burning away the b.s. to reveal a specific truth buried underneath. Well-supervised groups eventually become self-supervising groups, because the understanding of what is required, why it is required, and what long-term implications are acceptable gets transferred from the manager to the workforce.

The First Principles Of Management

Direction, organisation, and supervision are the first principles of management. All management activity, without fail, involves one or more of these principles. Together they bring meaning, the route from start to finish and self-awareness to any group or organisation that adopts the Invest In Loss

philosophy of management.

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