Guest Writer

From good to great managers

Iyer Subramanian

It is generally accepted that all managers are successful in their positions on account of the following attributes:

• Awareness of what is happening within a group (section, department)
• Making the vision happen
• Consistent actions (actions that are ideally suited, are carried out regularly)
• Excellent people skills
• In-depth, updated technical job knowledge

Iyer Subramanian

Today, almost all managers are good managers. But being merely good is not enough; you need to be a great manager. For this, you need to stretch your existing limits. For instance, in a racecourse, all horses that participate are good and that is the reason they are in the race. The horse which comes first gets maximum adulation. Apart from the admiration, the winner receives all types of monetary and non-monetary awards. Just imagine the plight of the second and third horse in comparison to the first. The difference in time between the first and the second horse may only be in terms of seconds but the winner is termed to be great.

Thus, the difference between a good and a great manager is not much. At last, when you achieve the title of a great manager you wonder how long you remained a good manager earning less. Here are some guiding principles of becoming a great manager:

• Studies have shown that the quality of the company determines the quality of its people. First get the right people in your department, the wrong people out of it and the right people into the right place. The priority is to see that you have 90-100 per cent of your key positions filled with the right people.
• If you have the right people, you do everything right. It is a cumbersome and arduous task. If you make a mistake, you need to assess and make shifts as early as possible. There is no perfect interviewing technique, no ideal hiring method; even the best executives make hiring mistakes. You can only know for certain about a person by working with them.
• In a volatile world of uncertainty, you need to adapt to whatever the world might throw at you - like having the right climbing partners with you on the side of a big, dangerous and unpredictable mountain. Professional and personal development often means stepping outside the comfort zone to learn and perfect new ways of thinking, behaving and acting. Over time, it will become easier.
• Greatness is gets built by a series of good decisions, executed supremely well, added one upon another over a long period of time. Certainly, some decisions are bigger than others. If you want to become a good decision maker, you need to be willing to produce a bunch of mediocre and downright bad decisions. Only by practicing and developing your decisions on a daily basis you get better in making decisions.
• Many organisations run smoothly due to strong management fundamentals. Although it is a prerequisite, a well managed organisation won't be able to project and adapt to change in a timely manner or take advantage of market conditions without good leadership. If you slowly build leadership traits along with effective management techniques, you have already planted the seeds which are the indications of a great manager in the making.
• Great managers do not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow their messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact one does not yet understand enough to have answers and then ask questions that will lead to the best possible insights.
• Change your values by choosing to put your employees before yourself.
• Evaluate each of your employees and then have one-on-one coaching sessions to work together on setting growth goals.
• Learn to empower your followers by providing them the power, authority, accountability, responsibility and resources to achieve their goals within the organisation.
• To better lead change, stop managing time and start investing it in people. Certainly, the department of HR and training has a role to play in polishing the employees' skills and capabilities. But you take personal responsibility for helping people grow. Once you have identified the people you think could be future leaders for your organisation, personally get involved in their development.
• The mark of a truly great manager is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from difficult times much stronger than before. He is always guided by a set of core values and fundamental purpose that change while stimulating progress, improvement, innovation and renewal. Lose your core values and you lose your soul; refuse to change your practices. He knows the difference between what is truly sacred and what is not, between what should never change and what should be always open to change, between what to stand for and how things are done.
• We always believed that the critical questions in life were about 'what' - what decisions to make, what goals to pursue, what answers to give, what mountains to climb. Great managers have come to see that the most important decisions are not about what, but about whom. If you want to have a great life, the most important question is not what you spend your time doing, but who you spend your time with.
• Great managers have realised the importance of picking the right partner. They have also learned the importance of assessing risk and the importance of learning. Perhaps the most important lesson for business which they have learned is not to confuse luck with competence. They organise their calendar something like this - 50 per cent of their time in research, writing and idea development, 30 per cent of their time in various forms of teaching and 20 per cent of their time on administrative and organisational tasks that need to get done.

By becoming a great manager from just a good manager, you have made a quantum leap from good performance to exceptional performance. This calls for ruthless efficiency in getting things done and leading people through change. The business that seemed consistently good slowly indicates exceptional result which might surprise you. Thus, we can safely conclude by saying that good companies are made up of good people and great companies are made up of great people.

The author is professor at Anjuman Islam Institute of Hotel Management, Mumbai and can be contacted at iyerpdkgnm@yahoo.com