Easiest Way to Fix Any Problem As a Manager

The Investigating Manager

What do you do when you know you have a problem but don’t know how to fix it?

Investigate what’s wrong.

Let’s say you have a company that sells products which, after many years of decent profits has been loosing money and market share during the last year; what do you do?

A quick tour of the warehouse will provide you with clues, a visual idea of which are the products that move and which are the ones that don’t and most likely you will notice that the 80/20 hypothesis applies: only 20 % or less are products of high rotation while the remaining 80% are not.  A deeper investigation will most likely also prove that only 20% of your customers account for 80% or more of your total sales. Find out which products sell the most and what those 20% of customers are looking for in order to solve the problem.

What makes this type of Manager successful?  ASK QUESTIONS

Questions enable people to piece together connections which enables them to understand how they fit into the big picture.  The right answers depend on the number and quality of questions asked and the determination involved in the process. The process is called INVESTIGATIVE THINKING: do not automatically believe what everyone else believes or accept everything you are told – question, investigate and understand.

In general, the most pertinent business related questions are:

• Are a few products or customers super profitable?
• Who are you main customers, what makes them different, what do they expect?
• What are you most profitable product lines, which are not?
• What is your firm’s core, which activities are extraordinarily important and give the business its reason to exist?

However, a successful investigative manager needs to turn their microscope on more than just the firm and its products and ask a series of some more personal 80/20 questions:

• What single powerful idea will turbo-charge my business … and my career?

There are an infinite number of ideas in the world; however, investigate only those that have been successful elsewhere – in another country or another firm and then choose the one that has the best chance of making an enormous impact.

• Who might sponsor the idea?

Make sure you have the support of decision makers.

• Who is achieving great results and how?

Look for successful people, learn their methods and achieve similar results.

• How do I achieve significant improvement?

Don’t look only for improvement but rather aim for significant improvement.

• How can I achieve much more with less?

Results matter more than the effort to achieve them.

• What is holding me back?

There are many reasons for success, but there are usually only one or two principal reasons for personal failure – IDENTIFY THEM.  Is it lack of confidence or knowledge? or is it overwhelming workload, the boss or the organization?  -   what is holding you back?  Be honest.

How to Become a Successful Mentor

“Mentoring” and “being mentored” are just fancy terms for teaching and learning. In general, your most valuable lessons from work came from a boss or a colleague.

One of the main drivers in every human being is this: when people take an interest in us we thrive. The mentoring manager takes an interest in his or her people.

Mentoring taps on energy, ideas, motivation and productivity.

Nobody excels without a coach or a mentor – for example, you might become a good athlete but to become an Olympic athlete you have to be mentored by a coach.

An excellent Manager is not only a Manager that brings knowledge and experience but also a person who Manages his people, mentors them.  After all, business is still about people.

How to become a Mentoring Manager?

• Teach people the 80/20 principle.
• Be available for open communication. Mentoring is a 80/20 activity because it has a big positive impact & provides great results compared to the effort put into it.  Mentoring is not a time consuming activity it is rather a non-planned effort of open communication.
• Get everyone under your supervision to mentor their people –  it will bring exponential results in performance.  Rate their performance based on the performance of the people that work under them.
• Believe it or not praising an employee’s good performance is a form of mentoring – always recognize the positives of your employees.  On the other hand, always offer positive advice on how to eliminate negative performance by providing positive advice (mentoring) – positive being here the key word.
• Mentoring is not a chore or part of a checklist, it’s about caring. The way to great mentoring is to care about your people.
• Pick up on the signals people send out when they need your advice, care and guidance.  Mentoring is about communicating the right things at the right time.  Go for quality over quantity.
• Listen and listen carefully.  The best mentors are those who listen.

Mentoring and being mentored is one of the most satisfying and rewarding activities.

How to Use Leverage to Multiply Your Efforts

A lever, a device that has the power to multiply the effectiveness of your input allowing you to achieve extraordinary results through ordinary effort.

A Leverage Manager can use different levers for great results:

Caring:

Caring generates its own energy since it’s closely related to meaning. The question is, how much do you care about you work and your company?  The more you care the greater the results you can generate.

Confidence:

Confidence has the power to generate passion which provides the opportunity that would otherwise seem impossible. Confidence is a leverage for success.

Ideas:

Every business starts with an idea and every idea can be improved. Businesses come and go since only the best ideas survive in the market. The trick is to identify the 80/20 ideas

Decisions:

Only decisive people succeed, the indecisive ones never do.  As a Leverage Manager focus on taking crucial decisions and delegate the trivial ones.

Trust:

The only way to become a great manager is if you have the trust of your boss and you trust your own team members.  Trust is an absolute prerequisite of efficiency.

People:

If you want to attract the best customers surround yourself with the best people (staff)