My thoughts are that, being an effective manager, or leader, is someone who achieves incredible results with minimal effort, by working with people.
The ways to do this is to:
1) Have a clear, simple vision
2) Attract the most talented people
3) Create a high performance culture – by aligning incentives
4) Have great, incredible, and clear systems and processes
5) Have a clear and simple reporting and communication structure
To manage people effectively, it’s necessary to do all of the above.
Creating a vision
A clear and simple vision is important because it attracts people who are aligned with that vision, and they can grow inside that. It also provides a framework for their future efforts that excites them.
Attracting Talent
It’s a definite advantage to hire excellent people but this depends on each role. In some roles, such as developers, or content creators, the best people can perform hundreds of times better than the average. In this kind of roles, it’s really worth attracting the best talent. There are multiple possible configurations for each goal of having more excellent junior people who can grow, or excellent experienced people, and using technology or content to achieve goals. There might be a number of optimum configurations which both have advantages and disadvantages on the current and future growth potential and are to be decided on a case by case basis. For example, fewer excellent people has lower communication cost, but more junior people with potential, may be more cost effective, and achieve more results, with stronger growth potential. The communication cost could be managed with a good structure.
High Performance Culture
It’s essential to create a high performance culture, by treating people well, encouraging them, and having incentives that are motivating for them. Different people prefer different kinds of cultures, and prefer to interact in different ways, and find different things motivating. Some prefer more coaching and guidance and feedback, others are more motivated by impact, or growth, or the love of the work and doing excellent work. Some by teammates and camaraderie. Most are a combination which changes over time as they grow. It’s best to adapt the style to each person.
Clear Systems & Processes
It’s a definite advantage to have clear systems and processes. This is more important as a team grows in size, and complexity increases, at which point it becomes impossible for any one person to know everything. This just reduces communication costs, and ensures consistency of quality, enables training improvements.
Communication & Reporting Structure
This is one part of the systems and processes, but it’s an essential part, because this is how communication and feedback is managed. It’s essential to track the metrics, and manage this via the person responsible. You can achieve results through the person rather than micromanaging, which brings us on to the delegation Vs control question.
Delegation
The above factors impact to what level you delegate.
Ideally, we want to have everyone operating completely autonomously, at the highest level of delegation, but this depends on the above factors and their skill level. This is how to grow a company effortlessly.
Over-delegating too soon risks chaos; under-delegating stifles growth
It’s essential to ensure that the following factors are achieved before reaching a certain level of delegation. It can sometimes be necessary to release the reins somewhat, before pulling them in, depending on the situation. It’s usually the case to start at a lower level of delegation, and then proceed further down, as they become more experienced and capable.
- Person is clear on the goals
- Person has track record of achieving these, or similar goals before.
- They are able to report back to it.
- Person is capable of coming up with a plan for achieving this goal.
It’s a good idea to be clear with that person, what level of delegation you are currently at, so that it’s clear, and consider this consciously.
