Micro Managing ~ The Mother Of All Failure.

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Days changes and more challenges surfaced as time passes by. I least expected what I have put myself into. Never engage yourself into something that you do not know what lies ahead! Then again, communication is the critical path. I believe greatly that major issues in organizations, problems and misunderstanding arise out of communication.

Okay, we're not going to talk about communication today, let's steer clear of it for the time being.

Then again, during my presentation to the Board of the company, I stresses out that 80% of problems arising in companies is the direct result of the management team. I always stick to Pareto's 80:20 principles. The theory proves itself again and again for me.

There is only 3 senior management within the company ( of which now is upgraded to Head of various department within the company) and yet working together as a team seems to be almost brick walled. Effectiveness is not being seen and Why seems to come out from my head.

Then I realised that almost, every week the Board of Directors (comprising the Managing Director and the Executive Director) wants to manage the administration and the operations of the company.

Micromanagement - I say Interfering Management. The answer surfaced. That is one of the reason why the Snr. Managers cannot perform effectively and efficiently. Though they seem good and very diligent during most of the meeting, they are practising Pretentive management techniques. This is disastrous to the people and to the company. Bowing to the BIG BOSS in front and major cursing behind them.

The motivation to perform simply vaporise ending up in a 'YESS BOSS' syndrome. Further exploration tends to point out the Board trying to exert control into everything the Snr. Managers are told to
do.

I go for the philosophy of tell or sell the managers what they are suppose to do, when they are required to do and complete the task, who would be involved in the task or project. But not the how to ! As long as the projects work its way according to schedule, then don't jump in to wreck everything there is to know.

Hence, the Interfering Directors have created the WHY Culture. Why..why..why..why this, why that and looking at it even Toyota's 5 Why's in their Sig Sigma's methdology will lose out in this environment.

So there it is...imagine you are writting on a piece of paper, then come along an authority, take your paper and crumpled it. Aks you to redo and write on a new piece of paper, later to realize that the previous paper was better. Give you back the crumpled paper and ask you to continue from that point onwards. You get the picture now...?

So avoid Micro Managing. Why? this is the answer...
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Micro Management as from SMBresource(http://www.smbresource.com/micromanagement.html)

1.0- Micromanagement is generally defined as exercising excessive control of a project or group of people. The fuzziness comes in to play when we try to determine what is considered excessive. Clearly this is in the eyes of the beholder. The employee will generally have a much lower threshhold than the manager.

2.0- The truth of the matter is that it is mostly considered negative by the person or group of people being micro managed. Most people want to be left alone to do their job. The micro manager makes this more difficult. It can also be a negative just by the shear wieght of the title. If a director is heavily involved in a project, work that might proceed at a quicker pace is slowed down while everyone waits for his or her input. When this is spread across several projects productivity levels can,and usually will, plummet.

3.0- There is no set rule of thumb. The surest indicator is if you are bouncing from project to project and person to person with most of your time. A good guide is to try and minimize your hands on attention to detail to know more than twenty or twenty-five percent of your time depending on the situation. The rest of your time should be spent on evaluating employees, budgeting, increasing the skill level of your staff, and other more traditional management functions.

4.0- M.I.B - It simply stand s for Make It Better. Sometimes simplicity is the best approach. Do not make things complex ending up in a intertwined balls of thread, just to be frustrated at the end of the day.
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Next Write-up: Communication et al...

Planning And Goal Setting

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In management 101 classes, we all learn about planning and goal setting. It is the very core of any achievements, in managing projects, assignments and so forth. Hence, the Gantt chart, the milestone chart and various management tools that is available today to ensure of effective and efficient work to be done.

The fact of it all, the very basic of digital planner such as Palm Treo or PDA's for that matter is not being made to use fully. Look at how we make us of yearly diaries !
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I was doing consultation with a local company recently. What I have found out was very shocking in that planning was only words of mouth. Execution was not even close to call it a word. The senior management just work when something explode in their small brain or for that matter something exploded in their face. Many task at hands were simply way backdate. None was achieve on time and the sad part was finger pointing was a game to play during meeting, or when explanation was done to the grassroots of the company.
Yearly uniforms, shoes and so forth was not disbursed on time. When the people starts to make noise, they would say that these people are trouble makers, hardcore and the list goes on and on...I tend to wonder whether the adage 'People are an organization's greatest asset' is really true in practice?
I keep asking myself as to why most of the assignment are never on time. Then I ask the most simple question to the Snr. HR Executive of the company,'Do we have a yearly admin calendar?' Guess, the answer was what everyone is thinking right now. Simply, 'No, we do not have such a thing here.'
Then begin our task in the company...
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The mere fact here is that no goals, no plan. Nobody plan to fail in their life, but many fail to plan. The moment we fail to plan, we are planning to fail.

1. Make sure you have some kind of goals to work on.
2. Break down goals into simple task to be achieved daily or weekly
3. Categorize your goals or things to achieve that is based on a. routine task, b. irregular task.
4. Prioritize your task according to the four quadrant of Covey's effective management. a. Urgent and Important, b. Urgent but not important, c. Important not Urgent, Not Important Not Urgent.
5. Set a date to achieve each task and stick to it.
6. Avoid Interruptions and focus the task at hand.
7. Understand and enjoy what you're doing.
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On the Next Issue: Micro Managing ~ The Mother of All Failures

Preface

Image by eliot. via Flickr

I have always been telling myself to write something about my 20 years of experience so that I can eventually share it with someone so that mistakes, simple logical mistakes should be repeated over time in reaching out for excellence. 20 years, you have seen many avoidable and unavoidable mistakes, which I normally term as unnecessary mistakes that spoils the efficiency of great companies,be it big or small.

Today I have taken great leaps in having this Blog ~ Management Perspectives realized and it's time to do the writings.
I do hope that those reading the lessons paved throughout the years will have some perspectives on their effort to make things better within their organization. For those concern, that are reading this articles too, then it is high time that the mindset be widened up and the necessary changes be done for the betterment of all.

Thank You.