In the workplace, every student who is already doing management must want to become an excellent manager.
However, it is much more difficult to improve management capabilities than to improve professional skills.
Compared with professional ability, management ability is an ability with more influencing factors, more complex chaos, and nonlinearity.
This is also an important reason why many people in the workplace are uncomfortable after getting promoted, and they can't find the passion and direction of work at once.
Among my readers, there are many students who do management work, and many people have also consulted their confusion.
Many people even asked me: "Brother Yang, should I give up management work and return to the professional line".
"Brother Yang, I prefer coding work, management work makes me at a loss."
As mentioned earlier, everyone must pursue the work they love.
I overlooked a premise here, the work I love, first of all, the work I am good at.
In other words, many employees who are promoted to managers feel that they do not like management work.
The real reason is probably: I don’t know how to manage it!
So how do we make ourselves good at management?
I started to do management work in my second year of work.
It was very lame at the beginning, the team complained, and the output was basically on my own.
After learning from the pain, I started to systematically study management books.
In 2010, I accidentally saw the masterpiece of Drucker.
I just served as a technical director at that time, probably because my understanding of management was insufficient.
Many of the theories of the master are out of place, and do not know how to apply.
After being beaten for many years, many of Drucker's views have finally gained practical experience and gains.
In today’s article, I will talk about a little bit of my understanding of excellent managers based on the master’s philosophy:
— 1 —
Let ordinary people do extraordinary things
In business management, when someone suggests that team members are performing poorly.
Some managers will quote Drucker's words.
But thinking but the angle stays: because we are all ordinary people, such a result can be tolerated.
The point of Drucker's words is precisely to believe that these people can do extraordinary things.
And focus on using the power of team organization to empower individuals, and ultimately achieve extraordinary goals.
In fact, most employees are ordinary people, even most managers themselves.
How can we make everyone do extraordinary things?
In fact, this question should be a question that managers need to think about every day!
Ask yourself two questions: "What are the advantages of these ordinary people" and "How to make them do extraordinary things".
The real meaning behind it is to achieve extraordinary things by "making the members of the organization effective".
Explore the advantages of each subordinate and find a position in the organization that can give full play to the advantages of the subordinates.
This is only the first step. More importantly, it helps subordinates set outstanding goals and stimulate their sense of accomplishment.
At the same time, give full support and guidance to subordinates in the process of achieving excellence goals.
— 2 —
The driving force of motivation is a sense of accomplishment
Drucker's perspective on motivation is different.
Most motivational theories are still obsessed with how to perceive the human nature of employees.
How to drive employees through material incentives and so on.
And Drucker emphasizes how to make employees perform performance and generate a sense of accomplishment.
Obviously more emphasis is placed on the spiritual satisfaction of employees.
In the early days of my management, I had no sense of spiritual satisfaction, and I often fell into the dilemma of basically relying on salary increases.
Later, I discovered that material incentives have a very short validity period.
It may be a few months, or it may be just the day of pay.
Many subordinates who received salary increases quickly offered to resign, which surprised and surprised me.
When I started to publicize the company's vision and strive to make employees feel fulfilled and responsible, the effect was very poor.
Gradually, I realized that it was just the company's vision. What does it have to do with employees?
Did not think deeply about whether this was what the employees wanted.
So what is the solution for continuous and effective incentives?
In-depth integration of company goals, team goals and personal goals.
And let employees understand how every day's work helps the company and team achieve their goals.
In turn, employees have a sense of mission and a sense of accomplishment in the boring work every day.
At the same time, help employees formulate performance plans and growth plans, both of which must be consistent with company and team goals.
Support employees to successfully complete their work, achieve performance and growth.
And after growing up, giving corresponding rewards and incentives can there be a benign interaction.
Speaking of this, it sparked a thought. Last year, I was talking about employee motivation with Song Fan, the head of the future AI lab.
Songfan's view is: The best incentive for employees is the rapid development of the business.
The rapid development of business can naturally stimulate everyone's sense of accomplishment.
But another problem is how to make employees feel fulfilled when the business is not developing rapidly.
This involves the transparency of the overall goal, the dismantling and allocation of major goals, the binding of employee goals and business goals, the follow-up and assistance of employee goal completion, performance appraisal and review.
In addition, some managers like to close information out of a sense of control and security.
The goals and progress of the company and the team have not been understood by as many employees as possible.
Under this circumstance, even if the business develops rapidly, employees do not have any sense of accomplishment or driving force.
In the long run, the team will fall apart, and the high-speed growth will naturally become a bubble.
— 3 —
Focus on contribution
Some managers like to quote Drucker's "contribution focus" idea.
Emphasize whether each employee can make better performance and make more contributions.
What many managers often say:
"Don't ask what the company gave you, ask more what you have contributed to the company!"
"Don't complain, work hard, the company has given you enough!"
What emerges in the minds of these managers is that the employees are aggressive, committed to work, and even insist on working with illness regardless of return.
In my opinion, this is actually conflating dedication and contribution.
Don't think about what kind of help and environment the company and managers can provide to employees.
Blindly emphasizing dedication, in fact, it is close to the "workplace PUA" situation!
I wrote an article about PUA in the workplace.
Those who are interested can take a look: How terrible is workplace PUA?
In fact, dedication emphasizes the process of "investment" without asking for any rewards or results.
For example, the dedication of parents to their children is selfless dedication.
Contribution emphasizes that what you do has an impact on the final result.
And include your position in this result!
The former is how outstanding people sacrifice for their faith, and the latter is how ordinary people work effectively.
In the workplace, never have the idea of letting employees contribute.
Employees are not fools, it is human nature to support their families and grow and develop.
It is easier to gather employees on the right things with the scale of ordinary people.
And focusing on contribution is to put people's talents in the most critical places and produce key results.
A good result must be a result that benefits both the company and employees!
With a correct understanding of contribution, we can better understand the complaints and dissatisfaction of employees.
These complaints and dissatisfaction are precisely the direction that managers need to adjust.
— 4 —
Believe that every employee strives for performance
Many managers do not believe that employees want to work hard.
I am more accustomed to the management style of command and supervision.
In many companies, mandatory employee 996 is the best interpretation of this distrust of employees.
And Drucker believes that managers must believe that employees want to show their best.
At the same time, employees should be given a sense of security and necessary guidance.
More fundamentally, we must inspire the greatest kindness in human nature.
In fact, managers should think about a question: "Are you treating employees as machines or humans?"
The machine is suitable for executing orders and accepts 100% supervision.
Individuals have desire for expression, subjective initiative, sense of accomplishment, and mission.
If you deprive these, then people become machines.
If you inspire these, then everyone will be a super engine.
Some managers will say: human nature is evil, if you don't force it, they will definitely be lazy.
So, is human nature inherently good and evil?
In fact, managers do not need to explore human nature itself.
Drucker emphasizes communication, help and guidance.
It is not to have a complete insight into human nature, but to release the freedom of human nature within the scope of organization.
We cannot fully understand a person, and our goal is not this.
The goal of management is to quickly become truly "free people" when employees come to an organization.
By achieving employees' personal achievements, satisfying employees' desire for expression, and stimulating employees' sense of mission, the organization's goals can be achieved.
Only a team composed of "free people" is a truly combative team!
— 5 —
Employer
Some managers like to use obedient subordinates, because such subordinates bring a sense of satisfaction and security.
Some managers like to use good old people, because such subordinates will not bring management troubles and save worry and trouble.
If you can use someone who is outspoken and straightforward, that's pretty good.
But are these characteristics really good points?
What Drucker said about employing talents is for fruitful services.
Therefore, the "strength" here refers to the outstanding talents that can make employees work more productive.
Such as market analysis, project management, data analysis, strategic analysis and so on.
And "obedient", "good old man", and "outspoken" belong to the category of basic values.
After understanding Drucker's words, many managers have made changes to accept more people with different personalities.
However, the phrase "serving for fruitful results" was ignored.
Did not really explore the outstanding talents of employees, and did not exercise the methodology of discovering employee talents.
In addition, an excellent manager never asks "what can he not do", he will ask "what can he do".
This is not to say that managers should ignore human shortcomings.
The real bottom line is that his shortcomings do not make him incapable of a certain job.
Employing directors and accommodating people's shortcomings correspond to each other, and employing directors also need to accommodate people's advantages as a basis.
Whether subordinates can be allowed to use their strengths and even create unexpected achievements is a test for managers.
Final words
Management is a big topic, so I will talk about it today.
To summarize: "Let ordinary people do extraordinary things", "The best motivation is driven by a sense of accomplishment", "Arouse the greatest kindness of human nature", "Talk more about contribution, don't talk about dedication", "Employing people's strengths, Instead of asking for everything."
I believe that truly understanding Drucker's five points of view will definitely help everyone.
Drucker's classic works emphasize more on the "Tao", and our practice, more of the "shu" is obtained.
The perfect combination of "Tao" and "Science" can bring about a rapid improvement in management awareness and pattern!