The Rules of Management / Edition 4|Paperback

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781292088006
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	10/15/2015
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Templar is an astute observer of human behavior and understands what makes the difference between those of us who effortlessly glide towards success and those of us who struggle against the tide. He has distilled these observations into his Rules titles. More than 1 million people around the world have enjoyed and now play by Richard Templar's Rules.

Read an Excerpt

IntroductionIntroduction

Strange thing, management. It's something few of us set out in life to do, yet most of us find ourselves doing at some point.

Career adviser: What would you like to do when you finish school?
16-year-old: I want to be a manager.

Did this happen to you? No, me neither. But here you are anyway.

As a manager you are expected to be a lot of things. A tower of strength, a leader and innovator, a magician (conjuring up pay raises, resources, and extra staff at the drop of a hat), a kindly uncle/aunt, a shoulder to cry on, a dynamic motivator, a stern but fair judge, a diplomat, a politician, a financial wizard (no, this is quite different from being a magician), a protector, a savior and a saint.

You are responsible for a whole group of people who you probably didn't pick, may not like, might have nothing in common with, and who perhaps won't like you much. You have to coax out of them a decent day's work. You are also responsible for their physical, emotional, and mental safety and care. You have to make sure they don't hurt themselves—or each other. You have to ensure they can carry out their jobs according to whatever guidelines your industry warrants. You have to know your rights, their rights, the company's rights, the union's rights.

And on top of all this, you're expected to do your job as well.

Oh yes, and you have to remain cool and calm—you can't shout, throw things, or have favorites. This management business is a tall order....

You are responsible for looking after and getting the best out of a team. This team may behave at times like young children—and you can't smack them¹ (or possibly even fire them). At other times they will behave like petulant teenagers—sleeping in late, not showing up, refusing to do any real work if they do show up, skipping out early—that sort of thing.

Like you, I've managed teams (in my case, up to a hundred people at a time). People whose names I was expected to know, and all their little foibles—ah, Heather can't work late on Tuesday because her daughter has to be picked up from play group. Trevor is colorblind, so we can't use him at the trade show. Mandy sulks if left to answer the phones at lunchtime and loses us customers. Chris is great in a team but can't motivate herself to do anything solo. Ray drinks and shouldn't be allowed to drive himself anywhere.

As a manager, you are also expected to be a buffer zone between higher management and your staff. Nonsense may come down from on high, but you have to a) sell it to your team, b) not groan loudly or laugh, and c) get your team to work with it even if it is nonsense.

You also have to justify the "no pay raises this year" mentality even if it has just completely demotivated your team. You will have to keep secret any knowledge you have of takeovers, mergers, acquisitions, secret deals, senior management buyouts, and the like, despite the fact that rumors are flying and you are being constantly asked questions by your team.

You are responsible not only for people but also for budgets, discipline, communications, efficiency, legal matters, union matters, health and safety matters, personnel matters, pensions, sick pay, maternity leave, paternity leave, holidays, time off, time out, time sheets, charity collections, schedules, industry standards, fire drills, first aid, fresh air, heating, plumbing, parking spaces, lighting, stationery, resources, and coffee. And that's not to mention the small matter of customers.

And you will have to fight with other departments, other teams, clients, senior bosses, senior management, the board, shareholders, and the accounting department (unless, of course, you are the manager of the accounting department).

You are also expected to set standards. This means you are going to have to be an on-time, up-front, smartly dressed, hard-working, industrious, late-staying, early-rising, detached, responsible, caring, knowledgeable, above-reproach juggler. Tall order.

You also need to accept that as a manager you may be ridiculed, derided as a manipulative obstructionist pen pusher and possibly even judged by your staff, shareholders, and/or the public to be ineffective and even superfluous to the carrying out of the actual job at hand.²

And all you wanted to do was your job...Luckily there are a few hints and tips that will have you sailing through it looking cool, earning points, and coming out smelling like roses. These are The Rules of Management—the unwritten, unspoken, unacknowledged Rules. Keep them to yourself if you want to stay one step ahead of the game.

Management is an art and a science. There are textbooks of thousands of pages devoted to how to do it. There are countless training courses. (You've probably been in a few.) However, what no textbook contains and no training course includes are the various "unwritten" rules that make you a good, effective, and decent manager. The Rules of Management. Whether you are responsible for only one or two people or thousands—it doesn't matter. The Rules are the same.

You won't find anything here you probably didn't already know. Or if you didn't know it, then you will read it and say, "But that's really obvious." Yes, it is all really obvious, if you think hard enough about it. But in the fast-paced, frantic, just-about-coping kind of life we lead, you may not have thought about it lately. And what isn't so obvious is whether or not you do it.

It's just fine to say "But I know that already." Yes, as a smart person you probably do, but ask yourself honestly for each rule: Do you put it into practice, carry it out, work with it as standard? Are you sure?

I've arranged these Rules for you into two sections:

Managing your team
Managing you

I think that should be fairly simple. The Rules aren't arranged in any particular order of importance—the first ones aren't more important than later ones or vice versa. Read them all and then start to put them into practice, adopting the ones that seem easiest to you first. A lot of them will flow together so that you can begin to carry them out simultaneously, unconsciously. Soon we'll have you looking cool and relaxed, confident and assertive, in charge, in control, on top of things, and managing marvelously. Not bad considering it wasn't too long ago you were shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, ear to the ground, and back to the wall. Well done, you.

Before we begin, it might be worth taking a moment or two to determine what exactly we all mean by "management." And that isn't as easy as it sounds. For my money we are all managers—parents,³ the self-employed, the entrepreneur, the employed, even the ones who inherited wealth. We all have to "manage." It might only be ourselves, but we still have to cope, to make the best use of resources available, motivate, plan, process, facilitate, monitor, measure success, set standards, budget, execute, and work. It's just that some of us have to do all that with bigger teams. But the fundamental stuff doesn't change.

The Harvard Business School defines a manager as someone who "gets results through other people." The great management consultant Peter Drucker says a manager is someone who has the responsibility to plan, execute, and monitor; while the Australian Institute of Management definition of a manager is a person who "plans, leads, organizes, delegates, controls, evaluates, and budgets in order to achieve an outcome." I can go along with that.

It can get very wordy and complex:

"A manager is an employee who forms part of the organization's management team and is accountable for exercising delegated authority over human, financial, and material management to accomplish the objectives of the organization. Managers are responsible for managing human resources, communicating, practicing and promoting the corporate values, ethics, and culture of the organization, and for leading and managing change within the organization." (The Leadership Network, California)

Fine, whatever. We are all managers in whatever form or shape we think and we all have to get to with the job of managing. Anything that makes our life simpler is a bonus. Here are the simple Rules of Management. They aren't devious or underhanded. Actually they are all pretty obvious. But if you think about each carefully and implement each without fail, you'll be amazed what a difference it will make to your work and your life.

You may know everything in this book, but do you do it? This book will help motivate you into doing what you already know.

Let's get started . . . .

¹ Yes, yes, I know you can't smack children either. I was just making a point. Please don't write in.
² If this all makes you feel a bit down about being a manager—don't be. Managers are the stuff that runs the world. We get to lead, to inspire, to motivate, to guide, to shape the future. We get to make a difference to the business and to people's lives. We get to make a real and positive contribution to the state of the world. We get, not only, to be part of the solution, but to provide the solution itself. We are the sheriff and the marshal and the ranger all rolled into one. We are the engine and the captain. It's a great role, and we should relish it—it's just not always an easy role.
³ If you don't believe parents have to be managers too, then read Ros Jay's Kids & Co: Winning Business Tactics for Every Family, White Ladder Press, 2003.

Managing your team
1. Get them emotionally involved
2. Know what a team is and how it works
3. Set realistic targets – no, really realistic
4. Hold effective meetings . . .
5. No, really effective
6. Make meetings fun
7. Make your team better than you
8. Know your own importance
9. Set your boundaries
10. Be ready to prune
11. Offload as much as you can – or dare
12. Let them make mistakes
13. Accept their limitations
14. Encourage people
15. Be very, very good at finding the right people
16. Hire raw talent
17. Take the rap
18. Give credit to the team when it deserves it
19. Get the best resources for your team
20. Celebrate
21. Keep track of everything you do and say
22. Be sensitive to friction
23. Create a good atmosphere
24. Inspire loyalty and team spirit
25. Have and show trust in your staff
26. Respect individual differences
27. Listen to ideas from others
28. Adapt your style to each team member
29. Let them think they know more than you (even if they don’t)
30. Don’t always have to have the last word
31. Understand the roles of others
32. Ensure people know exactly what is expected of them
33. Have clear expectations
34. Use positive reinforcement motivation
35. Don’t try justifying stupid systems
36. Be ready to say yes
37. Train them to bring you solutions, not problems
Managing yourself
38. Work hard
39. Set the standard
40. Enjoy yourself
41. Don’t let it get to you
42. Know what you are supposed to be doing
43. Know what you are actually doing
44. Value your time
45. Be proactive, not reactive
46. Be consistent
47. Set realistic targets for yourself – no, really realistic
48. Have a game plan, but keep it secret
49. Get rid of superfluous rules
50. Learn from your mistakes
51. Be ready to unlearn – what works, changes
52. Cut the crap – prioritize
53. Cultivate those in the know
54. Know when to kick the door shut
55. Fill your time productively and profitably
56. Have a Plan B and a Plan C
57. Capitalize on chance – be lucky, but never admit it
58. Recognize when you’re stressed
59. Manage your health
60. Be prepared for the pain and pleasure
61. Face the future
62. Head up, not head down
63. See the wood and the trees
64. Know when to let go
65. Be decisive, even if it means being wrong sometimes
66. Adopt minimalism as a management style
67. Visualize your blue plaque
68. Have principles and stick to them
69. Follow your intuition

Preface

Introduction