This could be the longest time consuming chapter I wrote on Surviving The First 100 Days as A First Time Managerseries, and you've probably been waiting for it. Needless to say I'm so busy with my own challenge in professional life that made me on and off in writing this chapter but I still keep my promise to finish what I started. There are so many things I want to share here in this chapter because it is the main idea of being a manager: to manage. In parallel with what you need to learn, -as I mention in chapter 2, Get On board- you definitely need to manage your work to achieve your goals. Of course it's not easy to manage all your work as a new manager while in the same time you need to learn many things fast. So, in this chapter I will focus on what specific things you need to manage and how you can manage it effectively. And I will use my personal experience and judgment plus citations from several best practical book so as to give you broaden perspective.
There are at least five elements one should master if want to become a successful manager, which I called the management imperative. You might see it as too academical or theoretical but it is truly the essence of being a manager based on my personal experience. And I will only cite from renown book just to confirm that experience.
Let's start the discussion.
- Administrative work. You might have this experience prior being a manager. But once you become a manager, your administrative work will become an imperative as you must compile all reports from your employees, analyze it, and make a "manager's report" to be sent to higher management level. Or if you are a single manager, -don't have direct sub ordinate, you still have to manage this administrative work to be reported to your higher manager. Remember, your manager will mainly observe you base on the report you submit. So, the better administrative work you do, the better impression you will get from your higher manager. Now, what kind of administrative work to be focused on?
- Planning. Establishing plan is one of the most important administrative work for a manager. You must write all your work plan as clearly as you can so that anyone relater to your work, including your staff, peers and manager, will understand what you're trying to achieve. And on top of that, your ability to make a good plan will determine your success in achieving your goals. I have this 5P for you to be remembered, that is "Proper Planning Prevent Poor Performance".
- Reporting. Everything you do in your daily work must be recorded and reported to your higher manager! But you need to be smart on this. You must report what you "only" need to report and make it as briefly as you can. Do not put too much detail unless your boss ask you too. Nevertheless, I warn you not to hide something in your report because it will become a time bomb that could blow up anytime.
- Communication. As a manager you have to be able to manage your communication with everybody related to your job. Beside giving order to your staff, you must collaborate and interact, both verbally and written, with your colleagues, peers, higher managers or even customers. To manage your communication to each different position, you definitely need to learn communication skills. I will describe more detail about this skills in the next chapter.
- Resource Allocation. As I was saying in the first chapter of Surviving The First 100 Days as A First Time Manager series, you have the responsibility to manage a limited resource to support you team. This mean you have to be able to allocate all the resource in the most profitable way. As you are still new, I suggest you consult with your higher manager toward this resource allocation because it is difficult and I can't tell you how to do it because every business has their own resouce allocation system. My point is, you need to learn your company's own system from your manager.
- People relation. I only need to say that you need to follow the 80:20 rule in managing your people. Just to refresh your memory, 80:20 is how you must put your self in front of company and employee. Now as you've become part of the company as a manager, you must put your self more on company side than on employee side. But remember, the company is run by a group of people and your goal achievement is also related to other people. Even when I put 20% of being in people side, I mean to suggest you to pay attention to people relation.
- Drive result. This is the main reason your company or your higher manager appointed you. They want you to give them result to achieve a higher goals, their goals. In fact, none of those four imperatives described above will have a meaning if you can't deliver result. So you must try as hard and smart as you can to deliver the expected result by holding your staff accountable in achieving their target as it will impact your performance as well.
In essence, to survive your first 100 days as a manager, you need to ensure resource availability, both human and other resource, then allocate it effectivelly to deliver the expected result.
See you in the next chapter.
