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[Mothra]

So I've got this new client who's basically one of them CEO coach types, someone an executive hires to come in and tell them what they're doing wrong. The other day she asked me if I had any ideas for EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT strategies.

Not to imply that I don't know everything about everything, but I've never had an actual, sit-down cubicle BUSINESS JOB before. I have no idea what does and does not constitute a good boss, or a good corporate structure.

I assume things like accountability and consistency and clarity of direction are pretty dang important, but figured it'd be worth putting to you folks.

If you had the power to indirectly tell your company's CEO how to run his company, what would be The Thing You Really Need To Get Sorted?

[Miss Cat Ears]

If you had the power to indirectly tell your company's CEO how to run his company,

Technically, that's what my job is!

what would be The Thing You Really Need To Get Sorted?

But... I don't know that yet.

[Büge]

I would have all the food we throw out donated to homeless shelters or something.

[Bongo Bill]

I'm going to repeat the advice that I have heard: hire people who are smarter than you are. This doesn't seem applicable to your situation.

Speaking more from experience... the managers that I have appreciated are the ones whose job it has been to make sure that I can do my job effectively, as well as to make sure that I am doing my job. Basically, a good manager knows the most effective way to help productive and unproductive employees alike, understanding that these classifications can vary even on a daily basis.

Management is delegation - not delegation to those under him, but delegation between them. The most famous buzzword in the corporate world refers to the efficiency of teamwork; depending on the structure of the team, a manager doesn't strictly need to be an expert in whatever the team is doing, but he needs to be close enough to the task to be able to recognize when there's something to gain from rebalancing the workload a little bit. Additionally, he must balance being that close against being far enough from the work to appreciate the whole thing.

This goes for everyone, but managers in particular and especially upper-level managers need to be comfortable with the idea that sometimes the best thing they can do is to just stay out of the way. A lot of times, people will feel like if they're not actively working then they're doing something wrong. That line of thinking can quickly turn "managing" into "meddling."

That reminds me: empathy. Being aware of what people are feeling. It's a basic people skill, which you'd think would be a no-brainer for someone whose job revolves around people, but it probably still bears mentioning. An empathetic person can recognize something that could turn into a problem requiring managerial intervention well before it does become a problem. An empathetic person can also figure out the best way to address it.

Analogies to other professions might be in order. If an office is an orchestra, then a manager is the conductor. That is, in fact, pretty much the textbook definition of a conductor, at least during rehearsal.

Relevant skills are perspective, coordination, mediation, decisiveness, and very keen social awareness. He possesses these things so that the specialists and experts he manages don't have to. He can make the team know he's on their side. To his own bosses, he's their advocate; to each other, he helps them do what they're there to do. Most importantly he needs to earn their respect; if he has it, he can do his own job far better, and so in turn can they.

[Doom]

Retail Management: Do your job efficiently and don't pass the buck like a shit-heel.

I don't think anyone gives a flying fuck if you want to hide in your office all day and do nothing but don't pretend you're too career-advanced to hop on a register and help.

I guess you could carry this all the way to any decent management theory: you're not a guy who is above work, you're a guy who coordinates other people's work while doing his own.

[Brentai]

The corporation I work for is so damned huge that even if the CEO did exactly what I said the sum noticable effect would be equivalent to a slow fart.

In general, though, I'd like to tell this company to stop being so fucking beaureucratic.  More documentation is always good, but when the documentation itself is a fucking process, you've hit that magical threshhold where more bullshit is being done than work.

Not that I particularly mind.  The awesome thing about my job is that I'm really good at it and it's interesting, but at the same time I'm not invested in it and the whole department's plagued with problems.  Which all adds up to: I can slack off whenever I want.

Job satisfaction depends on the people you're working with being fuckups, to a certain degree.

[Joxam]

I think the biggest thing for any one in management to do is make sure all of your employees know, clearly and definitively, what YOUR job is. The biggest thing that sows discord in the workplace is everyone thinking they do more work than their management team does, without actually knowing what their management team does for work. The best example I have is when I was in retail management at first, my employees didn't know what I did for work, so they thought that because I wasn't doing what they were (stocking the department, taking orders, things like that) then I must not be doing anything. However, after training a few of them to do my job, they all had a better understanding of what I did and why they didn't want the job. :D


Of course, this is a retail example, however, I think it is pretty universal. I think if you actually knew what your boss was doing, as long as he did his job, you'd respect it.

[Mongrel]

Let's just go back to the bit about hiring the smartest motherfuckers you can.

Beyond that, every company will have it's own rythm and processes. Some things may work at one establishment that will not work at all in another, but with smart folks the organization should be able adapt to the situation (and to that business's particular challenges).

[Bongo Bill]

I believe the complete saying is something like "First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people."

[Mongrel]

I believe the complete saying is something like "First-rate men hire first-rate men; second-rate men hire third-rate men."

Actually the the complete saying adds the correct attribution - to Napoleon.

[Ocksi]

The trick to being a good boss is actually understanding what your employees do and need to do on a daily basis, but also understand that there may be multiple ways to do the same job.