Top Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid Them

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Top Mistakes Managers Make and How to Avoid
Them !!!

• Floyd College Training
• John Reiners
• November 22, 1999

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A Quick Quiz

• Managers make mistakes because
• theyre dumb
• they dont care
• theyre in a hurry
• theyre mean
• theyre poorly trained
• they focus on the visible rather than the
  important
• they havent a clue

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Quick History of Business Mistakes

• No sense of customer
• RRs, Ford, IBM, People Express
• No value of subordinates
• Harold Geneen, Deming gospel
• No listening
• Edsel, Osbourne computers, Kiwi
• No seeing beyond self
• autos steel of 60s, Bill Gates??
• and some recoveries!
• new Coke

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JRs Top Ten (This Week)

• Failing to listen
• keep ears open mouth shut
• 80 effort for 20 results
• inability to prioritize work issues
• Failure to learn
• doing same thing expecting different results
• Living in world as I want it to be
• reality beats fantasy every time
• Making false assumptions
• verify your information

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Top Ten (Continued)

• Failure to communicate
• words/actions mean different things
• Inflexibility
• what worked last time
• Polishing images instead of results
• no limit to what one can achieve if you dont
  care who gets credit
• Forgetting your customers
• internal external customers
• Check the details!

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Sharing Some Personal Nominees

• Positive discipline
• book vs. real-world
• situation must support solution
• Delegation is easy
• not too little not too much
• Team from hell
• downsizing by team decision
• other stories

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Basics of Good Management

• Common sense
• set real goals, make good decisions
• Common courtesy
• involve people, share the praise
• Hard work
• set the example
• Magic
• excitement enthusiasm leadership
• imaginization creativity

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Five Steps to Good Decision Making

• State problem/decision re organizational goal
• often hardest step
• Gather information to understand issue
• facts and opinions
• Develop alternative solutions
• brainstorming do not limit to obvious solution
• Choose best alternative
• devils advocate approach
• Implement with benchmarks evaluate
• no management decision is 100 right

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Some Recommended Books

• Classics Drucker, Practice of Management
  Simon, Administrative Behavior McGregor, Human
  Side of Management
• History Goodwin, No Ordinary Time Womack, et
  al., The Machine that Changed the World
• Economics Heilbroner, Worldly Philosophers
  and, Modern Economic Society
• Modern Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Successful
  People Peters Waterman, In Search of
  Excellence Davidow Malone, The Virtual
  Corporation Morgan, Imaginization