AND LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ELSE I WILL DO

"Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work."

Mark Twain

19th century American humorist/writer

Envision "lightning" as what you do, "thunder"what you say you will do.

Get the idea?

The Real Test

"A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner."

English proverb

As good a manager as you might be during good times, you won't know if that is good enough until bad times.

Averages Are Made Up Of Differences

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."

Aristotle

3rd century BC Greek philosopher

Because it can't be done.

You can treat unequal things and people the same but that doesn't make them equal.

How's your promotion policy?

Positive Reinforcement

"Criticism should be a casual conversation."

W. H. Auden

20th century English born poet

One of your responsibilities as a manager is to review the efforts of those who report to you.

Another is to do so in such a way that encourages rather than discourages the person whose work you are reviewing.

Rating Managers: What's Your Number?

"People, materials, facilities, money, and time are the resources available to us for conducting our business. By applying our skills, we turn these resources into useful products and services. If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents the value we add to the resources we utilize."

David Packard
Co Founder Hewlett-Packard

I can't imagine a better way to determine the value of management. If you manage your resources well, including the people who work in your company, including yourself, you make money and if you don't . . .

But I've never seen this done. Typically when a company is in trouble the tendency is to cite all manner of things as the cause, all except management.

What if we developed a universally accepted score that would follow all managers throughout their career; a number that ties them to the performance in their previous positions? Maybe something like a FICA score or a credit rating all fed into some central manager BCS rating computer. The equivalent of GPA's and GMAT or SAT scores in school.

Scary isn't it?