Use these 10 “Rules of the Road” to Help Your Managers Excel

February 16, 2015
Category: Build an Accountable, Self-Sufficient Team,Management

As you grow your business from a startup into a multimillion-dollar painting company, your success (and sanity) will depend increasingly on your ability to develop a team of independent managers who can run parts of the business for you.

If you don’t build your management team as you grow, your business growth will slow and eventually stop because you’ll no longer be able to manage all of the people, priorities and details of the business by yourself. By trying to manage everything by yourself, you’ll actually become the bottleneck in your business, causing your growth to stall and your stress and frustration to soar.

Bottom Line: You need to cultivate capable managers to help you run your business.

I work with business owners every day on building their management teams and I can tell you from my clients’ experiences that building a team of managers you trust to run their functions without your constant attention is not as simple as promoting your best folks from the field. Most new managers don’t have experience managing and it usually takes them significant time to understand what it means to be a manager and to transition successfully to their new responsibilities.

To help my clients develop their managers, I’ve created what I call the “10 Rules of the Road for Managers”. These 10 “Rules” address the most common and important areas needing improvement for my clients’ managers. Each is a source of frustration for my clients and a challenge that their managers need to overcome to become independent and effective.

You can use these “Rules of the Road” with new managers to lay out clearly what you expect from them. This will shortcut the transition process and help them become productive faster. You can also use these “Rules” as a tool to coach existing managers to help them become trusted members of your management team.

Here are the 10 “Rules of the Road for Managers”:

Change your focus

Before you were a manager, your number one job was to accomplish tasks. Now your number one job is to help other people accomplish those tasks in an outstanding way. Your performance is now tied to the performance of your team. This means that if your team fails, you fail. And if they succeed? You can take credit, but you have to share it with the rest of the group, or they won’t be willing to do a great job for you in the future.

The buck stops with you

You are the one person responsible for ensuring that your functions’ goals and objectives are achieved. You are the owner and steward of your function. You are where the buck stops. No excuses.

Know how to maximize the value that your job creates

The purpose of every job in our company is to help our company grow and make a profit. But every job contributes in a different way. You need to know clearly how your job impacts our company results and what you need to focus on to maximize your impact. To be successful, you need to know:

• How your job creates value for the company?
• What results your job responsible for delivering and what are your key measures of success?
• What are the three to five key job responsibilities or duties that you must do to achieve success?
• What are your areas most needing improvement and how will you improve them

Know your numbers

Because your job as a manager is to help our company grow and make a profit, for you to be most effective you need to:

• Understand how our company makes money.
• Know your key goals and success measures and how you can impact them.
• Track your progress toward achieving your goals and have a plan to adjust if you are off track.

Manage like a GPS

GPS is a great management model to hold yourself to. With GPS you set a destination for you trip, the GPS maps out a course to get there, it monitors and updates your progress, adjusts your path when miss a turn and get off course or hit an unexpected traffic jam and it is absolutely relentless about getting you to your destination. And the same qualities are needed for you as a manager:

• Know where you want to go (your goals).
• Know how you are going to get there. Map out your plan your function’s success .
• Stay focused on what you are trying to accomplish.
• Identify problems and obstacles in the way and creating lasting solutions.
• Be relentless in following through and finding a way to get to your destination regardless of the obstacles.

Find and fix problems

Identify problems in your function or team and take ownership for solving them.

• Investigate problems when you see them. If it happened once, it will probably happen again.
• Find the real causes.
• If you need help with solving a problem, come to me with ideas and recommendations not just problems that you want me to solve for you.
• Solve the problem completely. The problem isn’t solved until it’s resolved – try multiple solutions if needed.
• Turn your solution into a procedure.
• Share your solutions with other managers if they could benefit too.
• Own your problems – don’t blame other people.

Continuously find ways to improve

Continuously look for ways to improve how your function or team runs and explore better, more efficient ways to deliver our services, sell more business and make our customers and employees happy. Develop yourself too – your management skills and your technical skills – so that you can increase your value to our company and grow professionally.

Be good to your team

One of the most common reasons why employees leave a company is because of bad managers. Be good to your team. Find positive ways to motivate your team, recognize their good work and give them regular constructive feedback and coaching on the areas that they need to improve. You’ll attract and retain better employees and produce better results when you do.

Do your work and let your team do theirs

You have a job to do and so does your team. Know clearly what your job responsibilities are is and what responsibilities belong to others. When an employee isn’t doing their work well, your natural tendency may be to want to do their work yourself. But if you take on their work then you won’t get yours done and your results will suffer. Instead:

• Train your team and hold them accountable to get their work done.
• Systematize their work so that they know exactly what to do.
• Delegate to your team with next steps and follow up dates.
• Follow up and follow through to ensure that things get done.

Be a role model

Complaining about things in the company? Showing up 15 minutes late to meetings? Sorry, those days are long gone. As a manager, you’ll be looked up to as a role model by your team and by others in the company.

You can’t expect others to give their best at work if they don’t see your best, so be sure you’re always need to be on your “A game”. This means meeting deadlines, sticking to your word, no gossiping or griping about the company with others, and doing your best to represent our company both on and off the job.

Use these “Rules of the Road” with your managers and their effectiveness will improve significantly!

Being a manager is not an easy job. To ensure your managers succeed, you’ll need to give them consistent feedback, assistance and guidance. By focusing your managers on these 10 “Rules of the Road”, you can improve your chances of quickly turning your managers into trusted, independent and effective members of your management team.

Imagine how great it will be to have trusted managers, running parts of your business and taking ownership for driving results so that you don’t have to carry load all by yourself. Not only will your business grow more consistently, but your stress, frustration and hours at work will decline consistently as well!

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