opinion

Know Your Employees…

REAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS

It just doesn’t matter how educated or qualified we are, there are certain things we just can’t hear too many times, and when it comes to specific management skills, I want to hear everyone’s ideas. Here are some thoughts for consideration as you map out your project management strategy and next six month plan.

Enable your team to make more expedient qualified decisions through collaboration, the reuse of knowledge in your company repositories, and innovative delivery of information.
Encourage critical thinking and problem solving in yourself and your team, and make certain company bureaucracy does not impede discovery of internal information and resources. Allow as much personal creative freedom as possible and don’t stifle your team members’ ambition or destroy morale through debilitating micromanagement.
Recycle and repurpose existing successful or discarded company ideas, systems, documents and expertise. Never forget that company resources were already expended to create these assets, so monetize them whenever you have the opportunity.
Organize to eliminate the Department of Redundancy Department.
Mistakes are opportunities to learn and advance, but only the first time they are made.
Know ‘who’s who’ through HR, and always endeavor to recruit existing experience and special skills expertise from within your team and through employee referrals. Don’t allow yourself to be surprised to learn that someone has special insight and skills not obvious in their current job duties – talk to your people, take interest, and get to know them. Time expended will pay huge dividends.
Don’t hide important information; share it and use it. If you can’t trust your team and staff with important information you are either up to no good, or need to clean house and begin again.
If you develop a sequenced system to handle operations that works, teach it and make it your standard.
Time and motion studies are not dead, encourage self and team analysis and reward innovative ideas that streamline company functions and reduce expenses. You grow through innovation.
Small businesses drive the global economy from the foundation. If you can’t leverage the size of your company, leverage the power of your team and employees.
Demonstrate to customers how you utilize their feedback and participation to improve your products, delivery and customer care.
Strive to make scarce resources within your company more widely available and always attempt to extrapolate and apply successful problem-solving initiatives to cover other challenges within your organization.

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