My Top Ten Management Concepts
A few weeks ago we had an exciting “first” for not only the Duke program but all of the programs that are members of our Master of Engineering Management Programs Consortium (http://www.mempc.org/) It was our first joint alumni event which we held in Silicon Valley. You can read more about it in Northwestern’s Blog: (http://memnorthwestern.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/genuine-connections-lead-to-great-ideas-mempc-meet-up-reflection/)
Although the programs in the MEMPC have differences, for me this event highlighted the many similarities between our programs and our alumni. It was easy to move seamlessly from conversations with Duke alumni to MIT alumni to Northwestern alumni and so on. This was a great affirmation of the many common goals our programs share. The common interest among our programs illustrated by the MEMPC and this event led me to wonder if a top ten list of management concepts could capture the commonalities in managing people despite large variations in individual characteristics, situations and organizations. So I reached back into previous blogs, courses and experiences I have had for the following:
• Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to cluelessness (so many times we ascribe intention and malice to an action that was actually just an oversight or a different perspective).
• Don’t delay giving bad news, it is generally worse for everyone involved when you do (even for the recipient, it is usually better to know early and move on).
• Praise in public, reprimand in private (if your goal is to actually affect change in the behavior of the recipient, it is rarely best to publicly admonish someone).
• Trust can overcome many sins in an organization (and lack thereof can cause productivity in an organization to grind to halt).
• Management is about managing expectations of employees, customers and stakeholders (it is amazing how reactions to the same situation can vary wildly depending on the expectations generated by previous communications; you can actively manage this).
• Understand and respond to perceptions, not your own reality (everyone has heard that perception is reality but believing it and using it as a basis for communication is difficult).
• Achieving the right balance for a given situation, environment and desired outcome is critical in all management decisions; empowering vs. directing, cost cutting vs. investing, objectivity vs. passion, listening to your customers vs. blazing a new trail, etc. (understanding tradeoffs between these different dimensions in a world where there is no such thing as “one size fits all” is an important part of successful management).
• Fairness is usually more important than outcome (even when people get a decision that they want, if they perceive the process used to make the decision was not “fair” they are more unhappy and less productive than when the decision went the opposite way but a fair, inclusive process was used).
• Being a good leader or manager is about “Emotional Intelligence” and the foundation of emotional intelligence is self-awareness (the intellectual ability we value in academia is not the key to managing or leading our employees and students).
• Sarcasm is almost never a good choice for humor in the workplace (humor is great but keep sarcasm out of it or you will be surprised how it is interpreted by some of your staff).
