People Management

Rus Slater

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780007346783
• eBook ISBN: 9780007360406
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The people management secrets that experts and top professionals use.

Set goals and targets

When you set meaningful targets and goals, your people have something to strive for and know what is expected of them. Goal-setting allows you to monitor the progress of individuals and the team, which in turn allows you to reward accordingly. People who are seen to be achieving their targets and goals need less micro-management from you, and everyone will generally benefit.

3.1
Make proper plans

In an ever-changing world there is a strong likelihood that any plan will be superseded before it is executed. This leads to a temptation for some managers to avoid planning and try always to be flexible instead. However, a better approach is to make good plans and be open to changing them if need be.

A plan has a number of common elements, no matter what industry you are in and what level you are at. You need to work out the answers to the following questions in writing.

1 Why does the plan exist? In other words, define what it is you are attempting to achieve overall. This should clarify what successful achievement of the plan will look like.

2 How are you proposing to achieve this? Answer this in relatively ‘big picture’ terms. You can include a summary of the answers to the next three questions in the ‘big picture’.

3 Who is going to be involved? This can range from names of people to names of departments and organizations.

“I love it when a plan comes together” Hannibal Smith, character in ‘The A-Team’ TV series

4 What are they going to be doing? This is important so that everyone can see what everyone else is doing, which ensures that there is no unnecessary crossover and highlights areas that have been missed.

5 When is the plan scheduled to be completed? Initially this may simply be the end date of the overall plan, but as the plan is developed in more detail it may also contain the completion dates for milestones within the plan.

In the modern world we are usually under pressure (some of it self-generated) to “stop thinking/talking about it, and get on with it”. Sadly this discourages us from spending time planning, which usually results in a false start that wastes time, energy and money.

Making a plan provides a range of benefits. For example, you know what you are doing day to day; your team knows what it’s trying to achieve; each team member knows what his or her part is in the plan; you can use the plan to tell yourself and your boss of your commitments; the plan tells you what resources are needed; having a plan raises morale.

A detailed written plan proves to your team and your boss that you are thinking intelligently. Having spent the time in planning, you are less likely to be caught out by something you hadn’t considered.

It is said that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail!

3.2
Define meaningful goals

People work better when they are working towards a definite goal. As the team leader or manager, a large part of your job will be done if you set meaningful goals, both for the individual people on your team and for the team as a whole.

Getting meaningful goals from your boss

Unless you are an entrepreneur, then you need to be given meaningful goals by your boss before you can set goals for others. However, getting clear and concise goals from your boss is not always easy. He or she will, like you, be under a considerable degree of pressure and will have conflicting calls on his or her time.

If meaningful goals are not automatically given by your boss, then you will have to ask. You need to know your manager’s overall expectations of you and your team for the next 12 months. Presuming that there will be more than one single objective, you need to know what the priorities are – what are the first quarter goals?

If you are unable to get an answer immediately, then ask again. This time point out that you don’t want to disappoint your boss or waste a year of the organization’s time.

one minute wonder You cannot set meaningful goals unless you get meaningful goals; therefore you may have to ask and challenge your boss in order to act like a good boss. This common scenario is part of the challenge of being a good manager of people!

If you still can’t get your boss to offer a sensible set of goals, you should write a set of goals and priorities that seem appropriate. Take these to your boss and ask if they are acceptable. This, if nothing else, forces a debate about the direction your team should be taking.

Giving meaningful goals to your people

Once you have a set of goals and priorities for your team, you are able to start allocating individual goals and priorities for each team member. Remember that you don’t want your people to disappoint you or waste a year, so you need to give each of them a personally meaningful set of goals and priorities.

When you have decided what you want each person to do, you need to have a discussion with each of them to ensure they accept that the goals are achievable. This isn’t handing it over to a democracy, but a matter of ensuring that each person feels confident that they can, with your support, actually fulfil their goals. Whereas trying to do something that they resent because they don’t think it is achievable is to head for disaster.

See also Secret 1.5 about delegation.

If you don’t set meaningful goals for your people, who will? (“The devil makes work for idle hands!”)

3.3
Understand SMART goals

When you set goals for people you need to ensure that the goal you set is not open to misinterpretation and provides as much appropriate detail as it can. To this end there is a mnemonic, SMART. This is a tried and trusted ‘method’ that is used (in one form or another) by numerous organizations in all sectors.

If you do an Internet search for ‘SMART goal setting’, you will find that even in English there is a wide range of interpretations for SMART, as different organizations develop the basic theory to fit their culture and circumstances. For the purposes of this Secret, and the five Secrets that follow we are going to say that SMART stands for:

• S = Specific. This means that you need to make the goal as specific as possible. It is easy to be vague, but more useful for you (to appraise performance) and for the individual (to know what to do and how they are doing) to be clear and detailed about the goal. You don’t have to tell them how to do it, but you should tell them exactly what you want it to look like at the end. Secret 3.4 contains more detail and examples.

• M = Measurable. Measuring things is the way we take any subjectivity out of the future appraisal of whether the goal has been met. Usually by setting a measurement we are also able to assess the level of success achieved if the goal wasn’t fully met. The difficulty is finding a suitable measure for many of the goals that we set. Secret 3.5 contains more detail and examples.

• A = Achievable. This is a stumbling block for many managers. If a goal has to be accepted as achievable by the person undertaking it, doesn’t that mean that people can simply refuse a goal and only agree something easy? The answer to this is no. The individual is able to argue the case that a specific goal is not achievable, but as the manager you have the final say. Secret 3.6 contains more detail and examples of achievable goals.

• R = Relevant. Every goal you set has to be relevant to the overall purpose of the individual’s job and the overall goal of the team. Secret 3.7 contains more detail and examples.

• T = Timebound. Each individual goal you set will feed into the overall purpose and goal of the team. The team’s goals will feed into the organization’s goals. Consequently any goal achieved late has a knock-on effect. Therefore it is absolutely imperative that every goal is ‘timebound’ – people know when they are expected to deliver. Secret 3.8 contains more detail and examples.

SMART objectives can be expressed in a single sentence. For example: “My objective is to write 50 Secrets on the subject of People Management in MS Word format and submit them to the editor by close of business on the 15th of October.”

SMART goals are set in organizations across the world. The next five secrets explain SMART factors in more detail.

3.4
SMART is specific

Most of us have a habit of presuming that when we communicate with other people, they understand exactly what we mean. However, the less specific we are, the less likely it is that other people will place the same interpretations on our words as we do.

If you ever find yourself giving an instruction like “get a grip”, “sort it out”, “take action now”, “get rid of it” (or any other colloquialisms you might habitually use in your native parlance), you must stop and ask yourself whether the other people are likely to know what you mean by such instructions.

Similarly if you give someone a goal of “market the new product”, do you mean “market” or “sell”? The two words have different meanings.

“Produce a report on”, doesn’t tell the person what the purpose of the report is. As a result, they don’t know whether they are supposed to produce a report that compares, assesses, recommends or simply describes. “Take the visitors back to the airport” may be adequate if there is only one airport, it has only one terminal, the person knows how many visitors there are and how much luggage they have…if the recipient of this instruction isn’t already armed with this information then the instruction is hopelessly non-specific.

“To choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.” Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General (1997-2007)

Here are some examples of specific goals:

• Sell the product for a margin of $1.65.

• Produce a re...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Managing people is hard but rewarding
• Build a strong foundation
• Create a great team
• Set goals and targets
• Motivate yourself and your people
• Manage good performance
• Manage poor performance
• Develop your people
• Jargon buster
• Further reading
• About the author
• Author’s note
• About the Publisher