Who’s the perfect manager?

More often than not, the title “Manager” is doled as a reward for the amount of years one has spent with the company (tenure) or for the solid performances that he/she has put in over a period of time. That is the result of businesses not knowing how to create highly valued non-managerial positions within the existing structure (another discussion for a later time).

Unless and until businesses understand that managerial positions are not rewards for solid performances and long tenures, they will continue losing money and talents. Gallup, in their blog ( https://bit.ly/2MmbTkU) says that a dismal 85% of the employees are not engaged at work and the consequences of this “global norm” is costing the approximately $7 trillion (yes, you read that right!) in lost productivity. Out of the 85%, a huge chunk of 67% consists of employees who are “not engaged”. They are not your worst employees, they are those who are indifferent to the business, who do not provide the best effort nor the best ideas.

The main reason why the 67% employees are indifferent, the employees who report to work without giving in their best effort and contribute their brightest ideas, is not because they are not getting enough remuneration or not getting enough vacation time or not because they do not have staff meetings & parties. The surprising answer to this is because they have a bad boss.

The day you become a Manager, your job changes completely. When you were an employee, your performance was defined by your own work. On the day you become a manager, your performance will be defined by the work of people around you & what your team is doing. There is no backing from this. It does not matter if you are managing a team of engineers or marketeers. You are not engineering or designing new products. Your job is totally different. Your job is to source the right talents, create a high performance culture, and make the team more productive.

Many new managers does not get this and endure a tough time being a good boss. Most new managers fail miserably because they are not educated to become managers. Most new managers fail to understand that the authority and title associated with that authority will not motivate the team around you to give their best.

My advice to all the aspiring managers is simple: learn as much as possible, as fast as possible about what ticks your team(s). Get the 67% of your employees who come to office everyday needing your help, needing care, needing a bit pushing in the right direction. If how successful a manager is measured in the impact he makes on the bottom line of the company and how productive his or her team is, the sooner you move individuals from 67% chunk upwards, the sooner you can consider yourself as a good manager.

That’s that. You can only become a good manager. Or, in very rare cases, great manager. As students in classrooms, we have learnt to look at problems from every possible angle, and then develop the best solution, often a very theoretical one. New managers will quickly learn that it is nearly impossible to wait to look at the problem from all the different angles and develop the best solution. What’s worse is, they will learn as things go along, that it is always impossible for the managers to get all the resources he or she needs to apply the best solution. As the managerial journey go on, new managers will learn that success of a business is mostly defined by rapid implementation of a solution (agile deployment) and NOT by the BEST SOLUTION. In fact, businesses rarely have time to look at the best solution. You as manager, MUST take RISKS and accommodate failures, as it is essential ingredient for success. So don’t try to be the perfect Manager. You don’t have the luxury to become the perfect manager. The people around you (your team nor the people at the top or your customers) do not expect you to be perfect.