Managers should be the "idle people" of the team, that is, to do nothing, what is the rule of inaction? On the surface, the leader doesn't have to do anything at all, and the team members don't feel the tension of being managed, but everything is being done in an orderly manner. You can imagine a picture where managers only need to drink coffee in the office, approve documents, and employees work hard during working hours and leave on time. Or we'll hear employees at some companies say, "We see that our BOSS is always traveling and doesn't feel busy at all." This seemingly easy way of managing is what we call the "idle person" management model.
Of course, the rule of inaction does not mean that the team leader does nothing and is not responsible for anything, but that the employees of the team do not feel the sense of constraint of being managed. Let employees not feel management, this is the essence of management. Of course, to achieve "inaction" requires prerequisites: First, the team has a sound management system and rules, and employees can work in accordance with the framework of the system, which can ensure that employees will not have major flaws. Secondly, team employees are required to have good quality and professional accomplishment, which is often valued by managers. Finally, managers are required to be a leader who is good at empowerment, not a follower of everything. So, what are the benefits of doing nothing?
Take some companies that require employees to clock in and out of work, the purpose is to require employees to commute to work on time, and not to affect the work because of the employee's personal affairs, but this has become a condition for many people to choose whether to engage in a job.
I have analyzed two companies, one company requires employees to clock in on time, overtime work no matter how late to punch, if there is no punch card to deduct money, the company's employees in order to try to work on time, will race against the clock to squeeze the elevator, after punching the card will immediately run downstairs to buy breakfast, so I found that it takes at least 20 minutes to complete this thing. Another company does not require employees to clock in to work, but only stipulates the working hours of employees and the daily workload, I found that the employees of this company do not have many people late and leave early in a month, and everyone can enter the working state to work when they enter the company.
For the management of employees, leaders should follow the principle of "grasping the big and letting go of the small", big things should be asked and participated, and small things should not be managed. The management mode of no matter how big or small, not only the managers themselves will feel tired, the team members will also be tired, the work efficiency will not be high, and finally it is easy to cause the loss of team personnel.
In the past, we generally thought that managing things is much simpler than managing people, because people change far more than the variables of the problem you encounter. But for leaders who are good at empowerment and decentralization, they will use "managing people" as a way to manage effectively. So how can we achieve "rule by doing nothing"?
First, ensure the maturity of the team's various systems and mechanisms. An enterprise or a team, if the manager wants to decentralize the power, it must first have a perfect system, whether it is a personnel system, or a promotion system, whether it is a financial authorization system, or a market sales specification. Only by sorting out and implementing the system of each line and combining it with the actual situation of each department can the conditions for decentralization be met.
Second, divide the scope of work and job responsibilities. If a team's job responsibilities are not clear and the scope of work is not clear, it is easy to cause internal friction to increase. In any team, the increase in internal friction is bound to affect the development of the team.
Third, prioritize things. From the perspective of the manager's own job responsibilities, it may be faced with large and small things every day, at this time, it is best to classify things, prioritize, do important and urgent work first, and finally do things that are not urgent and not very important. Distinguishing the priorities of work can also help the team to be more productive.
There is a decoration company in Tianjin that is not very large, with less than 100 people, and on one of the company's white walls, a large "ten" shelf is drawn with a marker pen. The upper left corner, the upper right corner, the lower left corner, and the lower right corner are written with the words "heavy", "urgent", "light" and "slow", in these four areas, they are plastered with post-it notes, what work is written on the sticky notes, who is in charge, and the deadline for completion.
Curious, I asked the company's general manager, Wang Zhi, why he posted his work project here. His answer was: "The purpose of this is to let each department know what its key work is, and to supervise and urge each department to complete its work and avoid procrastination." As he answered my question, I looked at all the post-it notes on the wall, but did not find that the person in charge of one was Wang Zhi's. I then asked why I didn't see his work project, and he smiled and said, "My job is to supervise the completion of the work of various departments, and when the coordination between departments fails to work, I will go out again."
After listening to his answer, I jokingly asked, "Isn't your work very leisurely?" He laughed even louder and replied, "At the beginning, there were more problems, but after the various departments were smooth, I was relatively the most idle employee in the company."
It is not difficult to see that it is not a simple thing for a manager to become the most "idle" person in the whole team. In terms of operation methods, it is also necessary to decide according to the actual situation of the company. In some foreign companies, we will find that when the big boss of the enterprise travels on business, the company's various powers may need to be grasped by the employees themselves, and at this time, the rules and regulations have become the best "monitoring".
Managers should learn to make themselves "idle people" does not mean that managers do not have to care about anything, do not have to ask anything, to grasp the degree of decentralization, but also to learn to do a good job of reasonable control, which is difficult to control in the management process. For a smart manager, he will try his best to allocate the right things to the right subordinates, so that he seems to be an "idle person", but in fact he knows the team's affairs very well.