Management Secrets by Mary Elston

Two Minute Video Management Tip — Managing Communication and Interactions

Communication issues surround us. While eating a casual dinner at a restaurant a few weeks ago, I overheard a little girl in the next booth ordering a grilled cheese sandwich off the kid’s menu. It took me back to a communication challenge I encountered when I was about the same age as that little girl. Sitting at a drug store diner with my Aunt Bessie and Grandma in Rock Island, Illinois, we perused the usual cafe choices.   I sat up tall in my fresh cotton dress, black patent leather shoes and lace-edged white socks and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. Communication turned out to be a problem.

I had asked for a “cheese sandwich” thinking everyone knew the only cheese sandwich on earth was a crispy grilled cheese. Ten minutes later I found out that wasn’t true. I was served a cold cheese sandwich on cold white bread. My much anticipated buttered and perfectly golden, toasted bread with melted cheese center was nowhere to be found. I was perplexed and frustrated. What had I done wrong to deserve this injustice? I had said please and thank you too! My aunt softly explained I had not correctly communicated what I wanted.

As a manager communicating to your team, how often have you been frustrated and perplexed that your employees didn’t respond to your requests with the behavior or deliverables you were expecting? What’s more frustrating is the time and effort involved is much more than what’s required to whip up a grilled cheese sandwich! One of my management programs that I deliver to professionals covers “Secrets for Finding Your Winning Management Style.” One of these secrets is interacting the right way with your team. Managers who interact the right way with their team must do three essential things: Communicate, Enable and Support. It is these three actions that we’ll cover over the next few weeks in this blog series.

Managing productive interactions with your team starts with communicating the right way with your group. During the many seminars I’ve taught on management methods found in my book “Master Your Middle Management Universe;” we discuss management issues professional participants are facing. Every group includes communication challenges on their list of issues. STOP — before you say — “I know this stuff already.”  Think about it … if you know it are you actually practicing it??  Most admit they’re not — at least not on a consistent basis.  With that in mind, let’s keep going.  Look at this info as either good enlightenment or a good reminder.  For a manager to be effective, what constitutes communicating the right way with your team? Communication must be open, accurate, honest and provided on a regular basis. These are communication “must haves” for every manager. This means your team wants to be given information and instructions that help them understand what’s needed, allows them to ask questions and indicates what great performance looks like. Managers who communicate with a lot of bull, rhetoric and cryptic requests are probably getting mixed results from their team. Likewise, managers who are overly detailed may be generating resentment for being micro managers.

What’s the happy medium? Ask your team! If once a week works well, go with it. If once every two weeks is better, consider that option. During high stress times, daily communication may be needed. In all cases, open, accurate and honest communication from management must be genuine and sincere – no bull. It must include updates and detail to make employees feel motivated, appreciated and informed. As a manager, if you expect your team to provide you with consistent input on a request, then take the time to figure out what you want and the format you want it in. Do this before you throw it in their laps and make them do it over four times because, you, the manager, didn’t bother to define what was needed up front! In short, don’t baby your team but do be a manager who communicates with accountability and respect for your team’s time and effort.

Management communication must also be provided regularly in a variety of formats. Face to face, email, memos, phone conversations and staff meetings — including both one way and two way dialogue. It’s amazing to me how many managers think “management” means one-way communication only when a manager feels like giving it. Wrong! Two way dialogue is essential! Communicate – often and in a variety ways – as part of interacting the right way with your team.

That covers the first portion of the three elements required for managers to interact the right way with your team. We’ll dive into the second element in my next blog installment. What are your communication techniques for managing your group? As a manager, what was your most recent “grilled cheese” communication challenge? Let me know! I’ll look forward to talking with you again in a couple of weeks.*

*excerpted in part and reprinted from Mary Elston management column with permission from Soundings Publications, LLC

Over the last few weeks as we all began the new decade and shifted our management mojo into gear, I’ve been sharing with you three major goals or high level priorities to keep in mind. Let’s recap the first two goals now – reduce costs and make money.

When it comes to keeping expenses in line, you’ll want to look at your first priority of managing cost reduction with strategic, short term and long range impacts in mind. Make sure cost cutting goals are pervasive, collaborative and timely by holding a brainstorming session for cost cutting with your trusted team leaders. Ask yourselves: What do we really need to keep the business running? Where can we shift gears that will help us achieve cost containment goals? As I mentioned in an earlier blog, look at costs line by line on your budget — particularly the big costs — consider common and uncommon options that will deliver measurable benefits from cost cutting decisions.

For our second high level management goal – make money – you’re going to make sure you keep your team in an energized, money making mode. This involves staying tuned into customer needs, aggressively marketing to a targeted client audience and reviewing your customer base to determine where your best opportunities reside and who are customers you want to keep vs. dis-engage. At the same time, keep on top of managing your team’s ability to consistently deliver high quality products and service.

Now we’re ready to shift into our third and final high level goal for this blog series – grow the business. “Grow?” — you might ask – “How can I do that when the market is punk and sales opportunities are shrinking??!!” That’s exactly the point. While others may be crying in their beer about the poor economy you’re the manager making the most of it by looking ahead now! Gearing up growth goals should include refreshing your marketing efforts; taking advantage of all skills and contacts your employees have and collaboratively building your ideas and actions to position yourself for business gains. Also think about markets you may have previously ignored that show growth potential. Do this now and when dollars start to loosen your company will be front and center as customers open their wallets and start spending again.

You can also influence business growth by checking out demographics for new, innovative products and finding out where pent up demand is waiting for the economy to improve. Evaluate these products now for potential inclusion in your list of offerings. Don’t wait. Think about what makes your customers want to buy and adjust your product line with suppliers who are doing exactly what you are – looking and managing ahead!

Before we leave the topic of growing the business,  you’lll want to make sure part of managing your efforts includes taking your team through a money-making “thought tune up” or “brain flexing for bucks”. As a group, flex your brain in various directions as to how you can grow and make more money by remembering to ask yourselves straight forward questions such as: What business is our competition getting that we’re not getting and why? Do our sales teams have superior product knowledge and do they know how to share it with prospective customers? How do our sales and service skills stack up to our competitors? What training may be needed to stay one step ahead of the other guy? Does our customer service encourage repeat sales?  Do we make customers feel valued and appreciated every time we interact with them?  Do we stay in touch with customer needs as opposed to just giving them what we “think” they want? And on and on …. flex your management brain and deliberately tune your thoughts toward customer needs to help hit your business growth goals.  Doing this will also give you a fresh view of your strengths and weaknesses and better position a shift into growth mode when market conditions are better aligned.  By the way — an essential part of managing your brain flexing efforts includes documenting the great ideas you and your team generate as you answer these questions!

When it comes to goals, no matter what you’re managing – whether it’s a family dinner party that requires shifting gears as the weather changes (and everyone leaves! — as mentioned in my first entry in this blog series), or driving a car and shifting gears to navigate snowy streets — changing conditions require a resilient and flexible approach to how you manage your business.

As you set or revisit your goals for the months ahead, make sure all your decisions contribute to reducing costs, making money and growing your business and you’ll be powering up a program for future success. Put muscle into your goals as well. This means you need to write goals down to strengthen commitment. Quantify your timing and results you are shooting for and review and measure your results at prescribed dates on the calendar. When goals are achieved, deliberately celebrate and keep pursuing newly updated goals. Shifting gears and goals doesn’t have to be difficult but it does have to be done. Make sure it’s you and not the other guy who makes smart goal shifts now. Those who shift will be those who win.

What are your top three, high level management goals for shifting gears and moving ahead in the new year? Let me know! Send in your comments, questions and challenges. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new blog series …talk to you then.*

*excerpted in part and reprinted from Mary Elston management column with permission from Soundings Publications, LLC.

Happy New Year to all and hope your celebration for ringing in the new decade — whether low key or high flying – was enjoyable!

As we approached the end of 2009 in my last blog entry, we began looking at high level management goals for driving success in 2010. Our discussion involves three essential goals that are always in style: reduce costs, make money, grow the business. The first high level component, reducing costs, was covered in my last blog (see below this entry for details). Your next goal is another core priority: making money and goals that go with it. For every manager, making money is often where the rubber meets the road when it comes to knowing if you have shifted goals and gears in the right direction.

You’re already improving your odds for black ink on the bottom line – your expenses are skinnier and you’re keeping major costs in check through our earlier cost reduction discussion– nice work! Even tougher; how are you going to keep making money in tough times? Targeted, focused marketing and contact goals for your customer base is key. Instead of letting market share get squishy, make it stronger. While you’re at it, look at expanding your market reach. This means consider shifting your business model and how you approach customer needs you may have overlooked in the past. The smaller deals you blew off before may now be worth grabbing. Where can you afford to slim down margins and still win a reasonable profit? Are you too heavily dependent on one customer segment? Diversify. Look at the customers you should keep, the ones you can’t afford to hang onto and the ones you wish you had.

While you’re diversifying your customers, get your team energized into money making mode. This means keeping current customers satisfied with high caliber service and follow up — which makes them want to buy more — as well as pursuing new customers. What customers are you inadvertently missing? Why is the competition winning and you’re not? As a manager, how are you working with your employees to make sure you’re team efforts consistently resonate quality, caring and competency? All of these factors impact keeping money coming in the door, attracting new sales and generating a turbo charged market buzz that ultimately translates into happy clients, more sales and your goal – making money.

While managing your group’s money making efforts, remember to aggressively maintain essential supplier and business relationships to keep revenue rolling as you ride out the tight market. Query supplier and business partner plans too. In short, ‘dump’ your complacency and ‘pump’ your proactive marketing and relationship management! Talk to your current customers, actively prospect new customers; find out what all of them want today and for the coming year.

As you manage your way through goal setting that covers cost reductions, making money and growing the business, make sure you set goals that are SMART. You may know what SMART goals are; borrowed from the Project Management area; but it’s worth repeating. SMART goals must be: Specific – not generalized, Measurable – bench marked and quantified into a numeric, percentage or dollar value, Attainable – a reachable goal, Realistic – given resources and timing, and Timely – with a time limit and related tracking for goal achievement. Make your SMART goals complete by writing them down. Yes! Write goals down! Writing down goals creates a cerebral contract for increasing the probability that your goals will actually be attained. No kidding!

That covers our second high level management goal — making money. What are your secret management weapons for making the cash register ring? Let me know! Share your input and tell me what management methods work best with your team when it comes to making money. Now that we’ve covered the first two – reducing cost and making money — we have one core, high level goal left to cover in this blog series. Join me next time and we’ll talk about it. See you then.*

*excerpted in part and reprinted from Mary Elston management column with permission from Soundings Publications, LLC.