23 August 2005

Change your management default settings

Are you a manager? I have a few questions for you:
  • How many emails do you get in a day ?

  • How many decisions are required of you?

  • How often is your approval required, and for what?

Is the answer “Too many?” If so, I have a suggestion: Try re-setting your default from NO to GO. Approve the people, not the proposals. GO means trust. Change the dynamic from “approval required” to “approval assumed.” Expect a good rationale for any NO decision.

Set up a passive approval loop: Unless we hear back within 24 hours we will go ahead with this. Support your GObodies and fluster your NObodies. Institutionalize the GO dynamic.

Try it for a week and see what happens. What have you got to lose?

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6 comments:

Eppur si muove said...

I do completely agree with you.

I read once, that a manager was so good as the time he could spent "dead" in his office without anyone beig aware of it.

Regards

Unknown said...

I fully agree. When I see a manager working long hours (especially when his team is not), I see this as a red flag.

Anonymous said...

Sounds kind of risky though. Are you saying you make approvals purely on the basis of the person sending them and not the message in the email? Maybe I am a control freak but I'd be too scared to blanket approve emails without reviewing them first.

Unknown said...

What I'm saying is, tell them explicitly that you trust their judgment. Let them carry the worry.

That way you will quickly find out if you can trust their judgment or not!

David Nickelson said...

Dave [great name again]...

One of the successful tools I use is agreements and commitments. I work with many subcontractors, employees, designers. We set out our course of action, the time frame involved and set it to schedule. I then get a verbal commitments to that schedule and activities. We put it on printed schedules and distribute to all parties in the process.

I then fully trust those outcomes, and behave accordingly.

dn

Anonymous said...

That "B" word---B O R E D O M. How did i get this wearing word in my work? I got it because i don't have enough to do in my job! Yes. I have completed my assigned tasks, but i have time left over, which leads to boredom, I know that all kinds of jobs have boredom connected to them.
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