How to Find Meaning As a Manager

Nothing is more important than achieving meaning in your life.

Meaning derives from achievement, from creating something or performing a task or deed that comes from your own self and talent.

Money and entertainment are only substitutes; and as much as we might think it creates happiness, it doesn’t.  Happiness is a by-product of leading a life with meaning.

Anything you are good at contributes to happiness.

As a Manager, in order to give meaning to your life you have to make the most of your inner potential – your contribution to the organization is what will provide you with meaning within that organization.

In today’s business world, Businesses require Managers who make the most of what is unique within them. It requires Managers who seek meaning in their work. It’s only when you “do your own thing” in a disciplined and creative way that meaning becomes reality.

The 80/20 principle relates to Meaning in the sense that a small minority are the ones who possess a higher individual imagination, creativity, personality and unique skills. One particularly talented executive can have hundreds of times more impact than another.

Everything in business is a commodity:  money, hard work, loyalty, degrees, etc. Everything in general is a commodity except individual inspiration and innovation.

In order to find meaning as a Manager:

• The field in which you work must turn you on
• The job must give you new and rewarding knowledge
• The job must allow you to perform you true potential
• The firm must inspire you rather than rule you
• Mutual like of your colleagues and bosses
• The firm must be going places

Using Time to Your Advantage

In our present and modern world of independent and complex societies, the best results come from collaborating with many other people. We are not self-sufficient.

Use of time is therefore not the main resource as it used to be during the industrial era, in this world slaving away is less useful than having a bright idea and exploiting it. Time anxiety is unnecessary and self-defeating.

A recent survey of hours worked and productivity in the thirty-four member states of the OECD shows that the three countries in Europe where people work the longest hours (Greece, Hungary and Poland, in that order) rank almost bottom in terms of productivity (26th., 33rd. and 34th. respectively). By contrast, the three countries whose citizens work the fewest hours (Netherlands, Germany and Norway, in that order) do very well in terms of productivity (ranking 5th., 7th. and 2nd. respectively).

Ask yourself – what is more valuable, a lifetime of backbreaking work in the fields or inventing the harvester?

The value of time, like everything else, can also be explained by the 80/20 principle. Less than 20 percent of total time worked leads to far more than 80 percent of wealth creation.

A month of Albert Einstein’s life created a great deal more than most people are likely to achieve in a lifetime.

Therefore, value is not related to time, but to ideas, collaboration and intent.

Valuable Managers are those who are creative, promote collaboration and act on those ideas. 

However, most Managers are still trapped in the use of time paradox as the index of output where quantity of work trumps quality and speed trumps reflection. Most intriguing of all, they like it this way. Sounds familiar?

Managers need to look within themselves:

1. Their first priority is to identify the most valuable aspects of your work.
2. Then you need the freedom and self-confidence to focus on those areas and ignore everything else.
3. Most of all, you need the temperament and discipline to think before you act, to resist distractions and to work only on those vital matters that are truly worthwhile. 

There are two type of Managers:

• The majority type, which are desperately busy, suffering the never enough time syndrome, they are harassed with trivial matters and endless meetings and emails, they are stressed, multitask constantly without focus, they get in early to work and go home late.
• The Time-Rich Manager, the ones who breeze into the office with a smile on their face, promote collaboration and creativity, focus on issues that matter to their clients, the company and themselves, they think and plan carefully and with focus,are at ease and satisfied when they go home (usually at a reasonable hour).

How to Be Successful Using Simplicity

The best business strategies are always simple:  bringing business to its core customers, deepening relationships with them and providing them only the products they want. Companies win when they focus on simplicity.

Complexity is the other opposite of simplicity, and as surprising as it may sound most Managers tend to like complexity rather than use simplicity as a strategy: most tend to extend product lines, look for marginal customers, new projects, different marketing methods, etc.

Now, to be fair, in any large company, as in the world at large, most things are not naturally simple. You have to make them simple.

Therefore, not everything can be made simple, but you can concentrate on the few important things where simplicity is most likely to make you and your company successful. Target the problems that you suspect will have simple solutions (the feasible ones).

Simplicity is a combination of art with cost reduction -  providing the most exciting product or service at the most affordable cost. Apple, for example, was so successful due to the concept of simplicity. Henry Ford did the same for cars, Eastman did it for photography.

Simplicity requires a deep understanding of a product’s core essence. At the hearth of simplicity lies accessibility.

The essence of simplification is grasping what is and what is not important in a complex picture – make it recognizable and easy to understand or use.

The mark of a great leader is someone who simplifies in such a way that his or her listeners grasp one powerful conclusion and then act on it.

In order to simplify a Manager has to:

• Focus
• Define the core essence of your business (product, customer, cost)
• Establish a simple goal at a time.
• Avoid distractions outside of the established goal
• Standardize
• Automatize
• Have people you can trust rather than processes to follow