The ambition of the good manager is to allow his/her team to succeed and not only to succeed on his/her own.
To make this happen, managers have to educate their teams, to communicate and explain to them the company strategy, objectives and results.
The Broad-Shouldered Manager
The ambition of the good manager is to allow his/her team to succeed and not only to succeed on his/her own.
To make this happen, managers have to educate their teams, to communicate and explain to them the company strategy, objectives and results.
Seagull Management
Just remember seagulls on the seaside: they suddenly appear, make a lot of noise, move a lot of air, and that’s it.
This illustrates a bad management behavior. It doesn’t solve anything and leaves the people frozen.
The Good Fairy
The Good Fairy appears and solves the problem by waving her magic wand.
This is a bad management behavior as it doesn’t help people to gain knowledge. Solving a problem helps the manager to gain time once, but it doesn’t help his team to gain efficiency in the long run.
Pulling Upward
When a position becomes open, the priority is to fill it with people from within, which in turns creates a new open position, filled with people from within, and so on.
The priority is usually given to internal applicants rather than external ones; as a result, hiring is mainly at entry level in the organization.
Internal mobility is a way to create a corporate culture, to disseminate ideas across the company, to open the minds to different points of views, to build personalities and to better attract and retain good people.
Internal mobility can, in some cases, lead to geographical mobility.
Sitting in the Desert with a Pot of Gold
Imagine you have earned a very large pot of gold but you are stuck alone in a hot desert with no water. Unable to escape how happy are you?
Wages and benefits are only part of a satisfying job package. Other rewards include career progress, development opportunities or social contact with colleagues.
A complete package is comprised of money + recognition + prospects.
The Saddle without the Girth
Putting someone in the saddle, giving him a leg up, means also to tighten the girth, or the person will come off the horse.
Giving a responsibility to someone implies to provide him with the means to success : appropriate resources, training, people.
Do not judge a person without evaluating the means that have been allocated to him.
The Valley of Despair
Changing means aiming at moving from a given level of efficiency towards a higher one. But on the way, a difficult phase always has to be passed through : the Valley of Despair, where the situation deteriorates.
The Valley of Despair is the transition period during which the emotional aspects of change, the feeling of the end of a familiar period, and the associated uncertainties have to be managed.
You cannot avoid it, you should not neglect it: you must live with it! Keep the objective, reassure the people, communicate.
Tacking into the Wind
When sailing and tacking into the wind, the course taken is always much longer than the shortest.
During the course of a project, you have to take into account the conditions changes. The target remains the same, but the path differs.
Differentiate the objective and the means; explain it to the people you work with.
