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number of subordinates a manager has.
six to eight subordinates;
a manager should allocate about a half day per week to each of his subordinates.
choosing to be his own engineering manager,
you can only move toward regularity if others do too.
impose a pattern on the way a manager copes with problems.
Thus I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible.
process-oriented meeting,
designed to allow a manager to “batch” transactions,
one-on-one,
staff meeting,
main purpose is mutual teaching and exchange of information.
how do you decide how often somebody needs such a meeting? The answer is the job- or task-relevant maturity of each of your subordinates.
It should be regarded as the subordinate’s meeting, with its agenda and tone set by him.
“The good time users among managers do not talk to their subordinates about their problems but they know how to make the subordinates talk about theirs.”
“Ask one more question!”
I also think that one-on-ones at home can help family life.
What is the role of the supervisor in the staff meeting—a leader, observer, expediter, questioner, decision-maker? The answer, of course, is all of them.
The supervisor’s effort at a staff meeting should go into keeping the discussion on track, with the subordinates bearing the brunt of working the issues.
Who are the players at an operation review? The organizing manager, the reviewing manager, the presenters, and the audience. Each of these players has a distinct role to play if the review is to be a useful one.
supervisor of the presenting managers
reviewing manager is the senior supervisor at whom the review is aimed
flipped. As a rule of thumb, I would recommend four minutes of presentation and discussion time per visual aid, which can include tables, numbers, or graphics.
designed to produce a specific output,
a meeting involving ten managers for two hours costs the company $2,000.
a meeting called to make a specific decision is hard to keep moving if more than six or seven people attend.
Once the meeting is over, the chairman must nail down exactly what happened by sending out minutes that summarize the discussion that occurred, the decision made, and the actions to be taken.
next stage is reaching a clear decision.
Finally, everyone involved must give the decision reached by the group full support.
any decision be worked out and reached at the lowest competent level.
If we don’t link our engineers with our managers in such a way as to get good decisions, we can’t succeed in our industry.
Peers tend to look for a more senior manager, even if he is not the most competent or knowledgeable person involved, to take over and shape a meeting. Why? Because most people are afraid to stick their necks out.
in the end self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled. And everyone in your operation should be made to understand this.
As a manager, you should remind yourself that each time an insight or fact is withheld and an appropriate question is suppressed, the decision-making process is less good than it might have been.
don’t push for a decision prematurely.
What do my customers want from me now? Am I satisfying them? What will they expect from me one year from now? You need to focus on the difference between what your environment demands from you now and what you expect it to demand from you a year from now.
What do you need to do
What you’ll do to implement the strategy is your tactics.
a strategy at one managerial level is the tactical concern of the next higher level.
you implement only that portion of a plan that lies within the time window between now and the next time you go through the exercise.
this leverage can only be realized through a marriage, and a good collaborative one at that, between planning and implementation.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
successful MBO system needs only to answer two questions:
Where do I want to go?
objective.)
key results.)
nesting hierarchy of objectives:
It is not a legal document upon which to base a performance review, but should be just one input used to determine how well an individual is doing.
Though most are mixed, organizations can come in two extreme forms: in totally mission-oriented form or in totally functional form.
