3/6/2013–I left the fish cart out the other night.
Well, we all did, but I’m responsible for walking through the kitchen and making sure it’s closed correctly. It was a big failure in execution. I’m starting to see management in a new light now that I’m in a store with a highly capable team under me. That is–I as a manager truly earn my $ by executing, not by generating ideas or by developing systems. Applying Drucker’s idea of getting the right things done, this means that completing tasks like closing properly, writing the schedule, and hiring/training are infinitely more valuable than the “great” ideas I came up with the other night while I was neglecting the fish cart.
It reminds me of a rhetorical question posed by Manager Tools:
Which would you rather have–a team who comes up with the best ideas for everything, and who is super motivated, but who doesn’t do any behaviors? Or, a team who never generates new ideas but does the behaviors the job requires to deliver results?
Not only would I rather have the 2nd team, I also believe a company is most effective when its managers are included in the “doers” and don’t consider themselves “motivators” or “idea generators”. This is the difference between a “leader” and a “manager”–a manager executes the leader’s vision and ensures his/her team executes; the manager is “led” by the leader. The leader/executive ideally has proven to be able to manage himself or herself and therefore must develop an executable strategy for the manager to communicate to his or her team. The leader wastes time getting involved in front-line execution (the details, I mean). Execution should also be the #1 highlight of any delegation attempts. This allows the manager to learn the vision/strategy development skill while still ensuring his or her priority gets done.
On a side note: last week I finally got approval for reimbursement for relocation. The internal lady at home office went above and beyond to expedite the process so I’m sending her a thank you card and some flowers. I predict having a contact (friend) in home office might come in handy down the road, so why not apply what I’ve learned about humans–we help who we have a connection with. We’ll see if it proves effective in the future.
QOTW: “I came in early because you asked me, instead of him asking me.” –Pepe
?FNW: Will we 86 any fish Sunday? No!
10/25/2017 review: The difference from then to now is that I now feel all work can be described in terms of “what gets executed” or who does what by when. Larry Bossidy’s and Ram Charan’s book Execution does a great job of explaining the importance of executing. There’s a difference between what it is that managers vs leaders should be executing, for sure, but they both must complete task after task as they enable results (transactions external to the org) to be delivered by the sales team (or, for mission-based enterprise the liaison with whomever the org serves). I’m not sure what I meant by the #1 highlight of delegation. I need to outline more about delegation principles in a new journal entry. I think I was trying to say that it’s important to delegate with an emphasis on what’s supposed to get done and by when. However, I’d want to make sure I don’t suggest that delegation requires outlining the work to be done, as that puts at risk the development of employees, which is the second purpose of delegating anyway (the first being economic benefit of pushing work “down” to less-expensive workers without sacrificing quality).