A Manager’s Mirror, Episode VII

Build, integrate, handover and take new challenge!

by Georgina Popescu

https://www.heise.de/foto/galerie/benutzer/Flaechenkind-726128/fotos/

I do not know if this is a general treat of my generation (I am from the vintage of ‘70s), but I always liked to seek new things to learn and explore. Even before switching to managerial positions, enlarging my understanding of the roles and expectations of various activity areas within the organisation was a crucial part of doing my job. I believe this had to do both with the need to integrate my work in ‘the big picture’ and the desire to avoid redundancies (or gaps!) in order to optimize results.

As a first time manager, when my then-boss entrusted me with the creation of a new department within a large bank, I set out an ambitious objective. My aim was to organize the process while motivating and empowering the team members in such a manner that, within three months from our kick-off meeting, they would be in the position to deliver almost anything on their own, as if I were not there. Of course I would stay on for a longer period of time, at least until we achieve stabilization of the new area we were supposed to build. However I wanted them to work as autonomously as possible, as this would allow me to focus on those managerial undertakings that had to do with political power balance within the organization, integration of the new process, establishing awareness and finally recognition of our team’s competence and results. And along the way, my other favorite priorities – travelling to understand better the local specifics, training and personal development of staff, within the team but also beyond...

The first adventure was cut short a little too soon in my perception, as I was offered an almost ‘mandatory’ promotion… don’t misunderstand me, it was not THAT kind of ‘mandatory’… purely once in a lifetime opportunity, which could not be passed. The decision to accept was also kind of a team decision and the carrot was a unique mix between an exceptional boss and the invitation to build another new area, on a higher level. Still, as the results seemed really great at that point, I decided to approach with similar simplicity the next journey. And so on…

In my opinion, the first phase of a managerial itinerary is building – process and team. No matter if this means to start from scratch or take over fully functional existing ones, it is a step no captain can skip, as sailors know very well… no matter how calm the weather looks when you start, you need to know that you can depend both on the ship and on every member of your crew when times get tough – and they always do!

I consider this phase as ‘delivered’ as soon as the team is able to operate efficiently on ‘business as usual’ mode, independently of my involvement. It can take from a couple of months to almost a year, depending on size and complexity, and it needs continuous fine-tuning and maintenance afterwards. For this purpose I usually recommend to focus on your own behavior: be fair and square with everyone, and make sure you are the first one to respect the new rules (which should be established in a transparent, credible and functional way!). Do not encourage people to jump ranks all day long, however keep your door open and listen patiently to all those who have good reason to address you with their concerns. Make sure your team can count on your support whenever duly needed. Finally, do not hesitate to recognize and timely address bad influence hubs, no matter if they threaten to contaminate the people or the processes. 

The second phase, or better said focus area, is the integration of the construction into the bigger picture. This may overlap sometimes with the first, especially if the building phase takes a long time. As a manager, you need to ensure process feasibility for all the stakeholders involved, as well as position your team properly – power balance, remuneration, recognition of expertise, dependability of results. As one of my former bosses used to say, the first few months are crucial from this perspective – you should aim to achieve a quick gain (success story with notable impact) and a constructive lesson, and make sure they both spread through the organisation, in order to build trust and motivate the other stakeholders in future co-operation. The recognition should then consolidate over time, with due care towards both exceptional results and proper communication.

The last phase, just before steering the wheel to a new challenge, is the successful handover to the next manager. Ideally, this should happen smoothly if the building and integration phases includes a succession planning that gains acceptance from the main counterparts – the team and the higher managerial ranks. If this is not the case, then you will probably need to make the best of what you have, meaning you should not leave (too many) untied ends and loose cannons… if you care about reputation in the long run!

If you successfully went through all those three phases, you should now be ready to… start again!

And because this is the last episode of the Manager’s Mirror series, I will conclude it the same as the first episode – by extending what I shared today to all professionals out there, managers or ‘not yet’… While I believe specific expertise in the area you are about to embark upon is paramount in order to achieve best results within reasonable time, I also incline to recommend expanding your knowledge with every new challenge approached in your career. Step one would then be to build (your new expertise and support network), step two to integrate (into what you already know, into the team, into the future…), then handover to the next ‘former you’ and move on to the ‘future you’ – on a different (hopefully higher) level!

One positive aspect of this approach is that once you prove yourself reliable, result-oriented and loyal to a complex organization that you are compatible with, you can keep on learning and progressing every few years, and this will most probably pay off in the long run also from a managerial perspective.

And because I know that younger vintages are tempted to make changes rather often, I will close by sharing another advise from a former boss: you should learn new things every 2 years while in your 20s, every 3 years while in your 30s and stabilize within your comfort zone after 40s… as you should know by then what fits you best!

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode VI

Trust people, build confidence, cast away fear 
by Georgina Popescu

Source: https://elysianwaters.com/tag/robert-brault/

Before going into the details of this episode, I need to get back to the idea of the entire series and, more important, to its title – A Manager’s Mirror.

It does not only reflect the need for self-assessment (see the pilot episode) or the permanent exploration of the environment around (as mentioned in Episode I - just as in a thrilling but safe driving experience, you should put to good use all the mirrors in the car, while keeping eyes both on the road ahead and on the picturesque surroundings!).

The most important mirrors on a successful manager’s path are actually… his (her) people! They are all mirroring the attitude and responding to the feed-back they receive with the same coin, only usually amplified in terms of effect. Trust returns loyalty, confidence returns enthusiasm, while fear returns discontent. It has to do with the basic law of cause and effect, concentrated in an old Romanian proverb saying: ‘how you lay your bed determines how you sleep’.

Experience has revealed to me many times in different organizations that proper delegation and empowerment proves and at the same time strengthens reciprocal trust, builds mutual confidence and casts away everybody’s fears (or at least silences them for as long as necessary to get the job done!).

The key word here is ‘proper’ and it means that it does not work if the three conditions above are not met.

Before delegating an important task, you have to believe in the integrity of the person, in their professional ability to carry it through and in their maturity not to be overwhelmed by negative feelings and get lost along the way. You can start with smaller and less important things and support your colleague on the path of self-development, so that he (she) grows both professionally and personally until ready to take on more challenging jobs.

You also need to be fair and transparent in your feed-back, not hide behind your position to avoid conflict or put others down when they fail. Management is a two-way street and the best means to enlarge it is by sharing and learning from each other.

The first ingredient is the most essential – mutual trust. It is hard to build and easy to loose, and once it is lost becomes really difficult to get back (even though not always impossible!). The other two – confidence and fearlessness - are usually rooted in this one. Therefore, if you want to have a winning team, you need to relate with each of its member on that level or be honest and carefully separate your ways, as fair and constructively as possible, but still as early in the process as necessary not to hurt the rest of the team.

I believe you all wonder by now – is there a simple ‘ABC success key’ to unlock and align the three properly on your managerial path?

The good news is that once you see them in your own mirror, it is not so hard to contaminate everyone around. The bad news is that I do not believe in universal recipes for that. The only thing I can do is share mine today, as I see it when I look back on the past 10 years or so…

‘My way’ basically consists in a mix of honest smile, enthusiastic story-telling and transparency over ‘the bigger picture’ for every task I give. I approach delegation based on confidence, empowerment and control in variable dosage, depending on the compatibility between the person and the task. I strive to ensure individual (or team) recognition for the result, and share failure in a manner aimed not to judge, but to learn from what went wrong. I can be understanding and demanding at the same time, but I do commit to personal involvement whenever needed (either as a fall-back option or as an escalation support). Sometimes I need to ask for temporary ‘sacrifices’ but try not to forget compensating for that afterwards.

Finally, I admit that I had my fair shares of failures, but somehow managed not to allow them to discourage me to start over again – and this is exactly the motivation behind today’s Manager’s Mirror.

So… you are now challenged! Look in your mirror once again, find your own way and trust it - today and always!

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode V

Bridge the gap between formal and informal

by Georgina Popescu

In most organisations the formal hierarchies and processes co-exist with an almost parallel universe, conventionally called informal structure.

The most adaptable recognize and strive to understand this reality and its effects on business. Then periodically bridge the gap – either by incorporating clever informal ways of doing things into the formal processes or by adjusting the formal controls in a way to prevent further spread of unhealthy informal practice.

In terms of people, the ‘soft’ skills that enable communication and managerial effectiveness are unevenly distributed among the formal and informal hierarchies.

In my view, a successful manager has a third eye that enables him/her to see through respective universe and thus steer in the right direction for the benefit of the working environment.

I see the measure of success as being able to bring together the best from both sides, by designing a formal frame that fits both theory (technical, legal, moral, regulatory compliance and industry standards) and practice (experience and wisdom from the informal world). At the same time, it means ensuring motivation and empowerment to those informal leaders which can become constructive enablers, while weeding out the unjustified resistance fighters that may compromise beneficial strategic change.

Each organization and manager has to find their own way in bridging this gap, with only one universal solution: common sense!

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode IV

Break for lunch and enjoy… good company!

by Georgina Popescu

It might come as a surprise to most hard-workaholics, but the body periodically needs fuel, the mind continuous challenge and the soul quality companionship. And a good manager knows how important it is to maintain all those in perfect balance.

I have tried almost every alternative to a decent meal in my professional life (even the ‘skip-it-altogether’ version once or twice!). And I have understood while growing mature that organising lunch breaks is essential for the success of any business week.

In my opinion, everyone should allocate proper time for it every day and, more than that, use that time wisely, depending on the area that needs most balancing. As the location choices are rather limited in real life, this translates mostly into alternating the company - colleagues (boss, peers, and team members), business partners, friends or family members. I always strive to keep one day per week free, in order to be able to allocate on short-notice emergencies, or purely to have a quiet lunch with myself from time to time.

Just as the intake of food is all about quality and not quantity, so should be the choice for company during lunch. One should not approach difficult matters, serve notices, give negative feed-back or settle scores over lunch breaks, unless the target is mass indigestion. Such issues are better framed in neutral but professional set-ups. When you invite people to eat together the occasion should be used as a frame for good news, or as a bridge to alignment and mutual understanding. A decent business lunch may facilitate reaching gentleman’s agreements in a positive and constructive way, and build the foundation for future partnership.

In any case, lunch break should allow the body to refuel, the mind to take an active break and the soul to enjoy good company – to get all of you back in sync, ready to approach the second half of the day with the same amount of energy as in the morning (or even better!).

While I perceive the breakfast as an intimate necessity and the dinner as a private reward, whenever I think of the lunch, I see it as the wizard of professional and personal balance. Without forgetting the old saying ‘there is no free lunch’, therefore balancing everything, including the involved bill!

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode III

Align expectations, then update; or expect failure!
by Georgina Popescu

This Episode could be also called ‘Managing - up and down and all around...’

I am talking about one of the basic economic principles, the law of supply and demand, and the effect it has on price, applied to the management of tasks, strategic goals, priorities and (limited!) resources.

The more ‘scarce’ your product is, the better the price you can tag to it (and I am not talking only money, but also time!); the more reliable you prove to be as a supplier in terms of quality, the more orders you will get. It is not really much philosophy, you have to see your team’s work as a high class product and build a brand around it.

Considering this, the message today is: make sure you can deliver what you commit to. Otherwise you will not survive for too long in the market place. Cutting a few corners to deliver ‘something’ just to meet a deadline may get you a pat on the shoulder today, but may prove costly in terms of reputation tomorrow.

The competent and credible manager is actually a contemporary wizard, who creates the right balance between whatever his team supplies and the demand for that ‘thing’ all around - upwards, downwards and lateral, internal and external, formal and informal. He (or she) has the ability to adjust the product / service to the ‘market’, comprehend what is expected from them compared to their delivery capabilities and react in a proper manner - by accepting, refusing or negotiating the conditions of respective ‘order’. And just like in any marketplace, the community prospers when the demand and supply naturally influence each other and move along in a common direction for mutual satisfaction.

That is all I had to say this week. Still, as this is an important week for Christianity all around the world, I will end the post with a managerial approach to the famous ‘Serenity Prayer’:

May my team grant me the serenity to say 'Yes'
to those tasks we can duly deliver in time and within quality parameters expected from us,

May my boss encourage us to say 'No'‎
to those things we cannot deliver or should not waste our time and capacity on (as they are so useless!),

May our (good) reputation grant us the credibility to say 'Yes‎, under condition that...'

to all those things that need a different angle to turn from 'good' to 'great', with a decent marginal ‘effort to result’ rate,

And

May we all have the wisdom to know the difference and timely adjust to changing times whenever needed.

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode II

Understand yesterday, deliver today, plan for tomorrow!

by Georgina Popescu

Simple and self-explanatory, no further details needed.

Let's still expand this a bit, just to make a point: one should neither overdo nor ignore any of those three equally important time dimensions of the managerial experience. And by overdoing it I purely mean outlining one as being the most important, to the detriment of the others.

Past is all about understanding. And not for the sake of curiosity or revenge, but for the sake of forward-looking improvement and growth.

Digging too deep backwards and playing blame-games more than reasonably necessary to prove a point, find a solution and prevent future mistakes will gradually build tension, eliminate trust and erode motivation within a team. Questions need to be asked and lessons learned from the perspective of their relevance to the present and usefulness to the improvement of the company. Long-term vision is something that every manager somehow has - the question is if it's focusing on inner fears or glazing into new beginnings.

Sometimes the past should be left behind, in order to overcome present difficulties and move boldly into a better future. Even in such cases, the need to understand what went wrong is important, at least to avoid tailoring the future in the same way...

On the other hand, past can be an excellent teacher and the source of present wealth – brand awareness, functional process, best practice, team spirit, and so on. Even in such cases, it should not be worshiped without questioning or maintained without permanently looking around and ahead, as the world changes and even great empires eventually fall.

And so, here comes the present – the only one which is actually happening to us, every day!

Present is all about delivery – properly as expected when due, reasonably exceeding whenever possible, but always fair and thus consolidating the past and preparing for the future.

A manager should not lead like there's no tomorrow, as this would be wrong almost all the time - except the day before last. The present should be approached wisely, making the best of resources and opportunities, preparing for the next probable steps in accordance with available information and (yes…) past experience. Just like when planning to go on a holiday to a distant island - check weather conditions, flight schedules and time zone, currency and insurance, local culture and must-see places, best food locations, safety concerns, and so on. Decide, book, pack accordingly and then prepare… to be unprepared.

Really now… if you want a practical hint from my experience, the best way to organise is to close your eyes and bring the future into the present moment – imagine you are already there and picture what you need to have in order to deliver what is expected of you. And make your list(s). Timely preparation gives you comfort, as long as the most important feature of the plan is flexibility! Allow reasonable room for unforeseen events and turns of luck (no matter if we talk about good or nasty luck – you should distribute attention to both!). And be ready to fill holes with creativity, even in case everything goes as planned.

Almost every successful manager I know recognises planning as being the key to balance their assumed past with a fulfilling present and promising future. Everything flows and is correlated – understand cause and deal with the effect (until you learn to influence both), take action (or inaction or reaction) and assume the consequence.

The past and the future are always knitted into, respectively out of the present, where balance (or imbalance!) gets created. And only those well prepared are comfortable enough to deal with the unexpected.

A Manager’s Mirror, Episode I

Your success pillars: hardware, software, content, awareness.
by Georgina Popescu

If you are an experienced headline-news-reader, you may believe this is about IT.

It is not.

It is about focus for efficient management.

IT-like terminology just makes it short and simple.

Any computer-operated system needs both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ to operate properly, and the quality of those makes a big difference in the user’s decision to purchase. While being mandatory for any state-of-the-art machinery, it is however no longer sufficient. In order to differentiate, the producer needs to deliver also quality content – added-value applications with friendly interface, which create ‘best user experience’. Finally, it does not matter if you have the best hardware, software and content if you keep this to yourself… you need to make sure that everyone is aware of that in order to purchase, enjoy and then further disperse the positive feed-back.

Apply now the same rationale to a human being – we are all born with unique hardware and software, develop content and build awareness all around us until the last day of our life. Most of us perpetuate the content and awareness for a while, even past the moment when our hardware and software has stopped functioning…

Can we apply the same to a profession? I believe so. The basis for this lies in the education and continuous learning.

First, there is a set of so-called ‘hard skills’ to be acquired as a pre-requisite by any individual who wishes to adhere to the profession. Then each of those individuals has a blend of unique so-called ‘soft skills’ that differentiate him/her from the other members in the way he/she does things in the area of human interaction. The set of skills needed vary significantly with the profession - for example the hard skills of an actor may represent soft skills for a doctor or mathematician. The backbone (or basic social survival kit) which transcends most of the professions is instilled to most of us from childhood to adolescence, while the adult life is all about further developing our own unique set of skills, according to the content we wish to contribute and the awareness we intend to raise in our environment.

Enlarging now from individual to collective self, I finally get to the point which is that wonderful complex system that a manager has to lead towards greatness nowadays, both in terms of content and awareness (no matter how you may specifically call them - profit, deliverables, bottom line, quantitative and qualitative results, regulatory constraints, team spirit, customer centric, social responsibility etc.).

Any manager, no matter how big a ship he/she needs to steer, has a two-fold focus – human resources and everything else. You cannot cross the street without the first one. The rest is just mandatory hard skills set, which should be a pre-requisite for his/her appointment.

In terms of mastering your team’s performance, it is all about integrating the limited resources at your disposal (hard and soft skills), by generating together credible proper content and facilitating awareness – both inside the team and towards external parties, so that you can add value to all the stakeholders involved. And the best way to do this is in a continuous flow motion, just like going around the world in a car. Set your itinerary, get your resources and passengers on board, check that all your mirrors are adjusted to maximise vision from all possible angles and… start moving! Drive courageously but keep your passengers safe (and make sure they feel that way!), adapt to your surrounding and maintain schedule. And… don’t forget to refuel and enjoy!

The longer the trip, the more you will need to make adjustments – to the car, itinerary or passengers. And when this happens, my advice is to concentrate on the future usefulness of needed changes. If you want to stay one step ahead of (real!) competitors you should get comfortable with an anticyclical approach. Romanians have a saying for this – responsible people build sleigh in the summer and carriage during winter.

In times of profits flowing and markets growing you may want to invest in expensive ‘hard’ components and content design while maintaining all the rest. In times of difficult survival and shrinking demand you should direct your scarce resources to ‘soft’ skills and awareness (including loyalty of best people!) while maintaining all the rest. Never forget that driving under difficult conditions requires the best set of skills and the most feasible (not fast!) car for survival. You should use hardship periods to unload unnecessary burden, but make sure you don’t lose top performance drivers in the process.

If you distribute your management priorities around those four pillars in an anticyclical and forward-looking manner, you will notice that your team members will start self-investing in their own upgrade to generate better content, to the benefit of the entire system.

Finally, even if you are not yet a team manager, you may find that the same logic can be applied to everything important in life, both in terms of personal and professional accomplishment. It helps turning dreams into plans and executing them without losing focus.

I know this is no easy challenge, because anticyclical approach actually requires abilities to understand the past and see the present as it is, with the purpose of anticipating the future. Which is actually the topic of the next episode…

WAYS IV – THE MANAGER

Motto: Never point a finger where you never lent a hand.  Robert Brault

Today I decided to share with you some thoughts about what I believe should be the main focus areas of a good manager. To put the things into perspective, I would have to say that by ‘manager’ I do not necessarily refer to a boss and a professional life. Management is a part of everyone’s life just as much as air, food, sleep. We are all managers in our private life, when we relate to our families or circle of friends. The manager is basically a person which manages something or someone. You hear often ‘he/she manages well under the circumstances’ – referring to either state of mind or behavior or results.

What I will try today to put in writing may be seen as an oversimplification of management function. I love simple things and I believe all our life should be governed by simplicity. We are the ones who overcomplicate matters. And sometimes bringing them back to their initial simplicity is the shortest way to seeing their beauty again.

Why I have chosen to do this under the ‘ways’ series and not the ‘roots’ one? Simply because I have decided to focus more on the positive part – how it should be. Of course ‘the manager’ can be always re-written as a ‘root’ piece, by simply pointing out the negative side of things, the fact that current crisis is deeply rooted in management errors or pure mismanagement – on different levels.

Enough introduction, let’s get started. You will not find here any history of management trends or any definition of management styles, as this is really not the purpose of this exercise. Personally I believe that most of the things written and spoken about pluses and minuses of management styles have their fair share of truth and deceit. I will just share with you my personal view of various areas of daily business (or daily life) which a manager needs to address for success. And I will do so without separating personal from professional, as I believe in two basic ideas. First is that both the road and the destination are important. Second that there is no business ethics, but just ethics (there is even a book about this, by John C. Maxwell).

I will start with the results, because most part of management was (and still is) focused on this. It is natural, as the basic idea of ‘managing’ relates to a purpose, a destination. You can of course wonder around and do beautiful things out of luck and without any direction, but that is definitely not management. So, first thing we need to have when we start managing something is a purpose, an idea of what we aim to accomplish. Usually the definition of expected result is called target or objective. During the management journey, it may change and this is one of the most important (and beautiful) aspects of successful management – the dynamism of the objective. Because in normal environment, every manager deals with more than one objective and there is always a relationship between various results. Sometimes the relationship is clear and can be anticipated, other times it is hidden and therefore unforeseeable. A good manager recognizes if and when some of his/her objectives need adjustment and stops before following an unrealistic objective that can even damage the bigger picture which is pursued.

I will use a simple example: going by plane from A to B. Simplest way to optimize this route is to fly on a straight line - fast and efficient. However if you add the restrictions regarding no-fly zones for example, you may find that the plane needs to take some alternative routes which do not seem rational for someone who is not aware of such restrictions. Furthermore, unless you fly a charter, you may find out it is impossible to fly with just one plane and need to change 2 or 3 to get at the destination. Ultimately, once you are in the air, the pilot may need to go around a storm in order to be able to deliver you safely, at point B. You may remember the ‘Cast Away’ movie with Tom Hanks – the parcel gets delivered in the end; whether that is an acceptable result or not, depends of course on the way you look at it.

So it is obvious that the result may vary in terms of quality and therefore one of the biggest challenges of management is to describe as reasonably as possible what is expected. But I will put this aspect on hold for a while, as this comes a little later in my story.

Going back a little, the result is something the manager targets to achieve. Therefore it has to do with the future. Does it also have to do with the actual act of management? Yes and no. Yes, as it is the crucial element shaping the day-to-day actions. No, as it is about the future and we all know that if we want to make God laugh we should show Him our plans.

Then what is actually the manager expected to do? This is simple: to manage his/her way towards the result. How? Let’s take the points of intervention, one by one.

First a manager must efficiently manage available resources. What does ‘available’ mean? Simply what he/she already has, plus what he/she can get in order to accomplish the objective. How limited are those resources? Well, this usually depends on the type or resource but also on the creativity, resourcefulness and personality of the manager. A golden rule about managing resources is that there is a right place, time and purpose for everyone and everything. Sometimes exceptional situations can be managed with exceptional approach toward resources, however in the long run you must clearly understand the structure, strengths and weaknesses of your resources if you really plan to make them more efficient.

In an over-simplified manner, I can imagine grouping resources in material ones (from money, buildings and equipment, car fleet, to paper and coffee...), information and intellectual property, time and human factor (here I include the composition of the staff but also the network linked to it - in case of work; respectively the family, circle of friends etc. - in case of personal life).

The crucial resource proves to be always the human, the only one who can actually make sense of all the rest and is decisive regarding the quality of the result. For example, the same amount of information processed with the same material resources over same period of time but by different people, will translate into different levels of knowledge and will generate different interpretation and correlation paths, thus delivering various results.

Second aspect on which a manager needs to focus is management of situations. Throughout our daily life, things tend to happen around us. Few situations are really neutral on the participants, most of them represent either opportunities or threats for the future chain of events and the humans involved in them. Those effects are commonly referred as consequences. What is also interesting is the fact that every person notices different things from a similar event (that is if he/she notices anything at all). Therefore, a good manager needs to be as attentive as possible to the situations around and at the same time as assertive as possible, interpreting and correlating potential consequences which may arise (either threats or opportunities). A crucial part of the result delivery is translating the situations; playing them to one another, then adjust them to available resources. In this process, a good manager should be always ready to adjust expectations if this proves to favor an overall improvement in results.

And thus, we reach the third crucial focus pillar: management of expectations. A good manager must transmit with clarity, both downwards and upwards, the expectations regarding the result. The message must be tailored to the recipient and must represent a fair correlation with the other pillars. What does this mean? As managers usually depend on others for delivery, they must have a fair understanding of the tasks they cascade down (in terms of both resources and situations), so they can assume realistic result parameters. For example, when you know that one of your staff members has a sick kid at home, you should not expect him/her to stay until 10 pm to finalize an urgent report if this report can be delivered by another staff member or can wait for another day. If you however insist on doing so, you should be ready to ‘compensate’ for the exceptional management of the situation and also understand that by repeating this exercise you will damage the human resource attached to it, in terms of enthusiasm and commitment.

Fourth and somehow already introduced by above three focus pillars comes the management of intervention tools - actually the personal touch given by the personality of the manager. Here we could spend days talking about management styles, but this is out of the scope of today’s exercise. I will just stop on some ideas I have in mind and invite you to expand on your own with whatever fits your managerial profile: enthusiasm, knowledge sharing, prioritization, motivation, recognition, delegation and empowerment (always together!), fairness and ethics, understanding efficiency (always check both quantity and quality of results!).

There are still many things to be said in terms of management however as this is not intended as a lesson, I will move towards closing now.

I believe that human and time factors are amongst the most important for a manager. The rest are easier to attract and also manage, once you get it right with those two. Everything is then indirectly connected to the third pillar described above – the management of expectations.

At the end of the day, a good manager is the one who enjoys the way to the results and thus masters the resources with enthusiasm and fairness. If management is perceived as a struggle, it can sometimes bring results – but only on a short term and is definitely not sustainable. Of course life will put us in front of such situations every now and then, also as a test of our management abilities. We should be able to face such challenges as they come, and temporarily be ready to apply different tools than our usual ‘kit’. But we should also be strong enough to come back to the more sustainable way of managing situations, to that natural way which fits best our personality and life style and allows us to look to ourselves in the mirror with a smile before we go to bed.

Fairness and appreciation for the people, completed by deep understanding of resources and situations, for the benefit of the result – all that sustains a manager’s success in the long run. I firmly believe this is the way we need to approach management if we wish to overcome challenges - be it in our daily personal life or at work.

And remember: There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire (John Churton Collins). Be careful how you set expectations and do not allow them to corrupt your ways as a manager.

Wishing you a great day!

Georgina Popescu

Thoughts for young professionals

While uploading some old posts on my new Romanian blog, I came across some interesting stuff and wanted to share with you in English. It is a collection of lessons learned during my professional life, up to now. Some of them came from my ex-bosses, some of them are just pure conclusions I draw by my own, in the professional life ("trial and experience cycle").

Of course it is only a part of the teachings I remember, will be extended continuously with new aspects. For the time being, it goes like this:

... learn when and how to compromise, without compromising yourself - personally, professionaly and socially

... remember that (wo)man is not a machine, spare parts are neither cheap nor mass-production items; if you perform 110% all the time, sooner or later your circuits will fail; not always in an evident and abrupt way, more often gradually than all at once (just like in the joke about impotence - first you make a full of yourselves a couple of times...). Therefore, even thou competition is good for motivation and drives great results, don't let it turn into a way of life.

... before you demand respect and recognition from others, learn how to judge yourself properly.

... never consider that you know enough, never look down on those who know less or perform poorer than you; it is possible even to learn from such people, at least about how you do not want to be/become.

... a plane cannot fly with only pilots on board. Any functional team needs different sets of skills in different people to achieve overall performance.

... teaching others help you multiply your own knowledge, while continuously extending your professional support network.

... just because you are the greatest specialist in your field, does not mean that you have the right skills to lead other greatest specialists in your field. Or, in other words - a good manager does not need to know how everything himself, but he/she must know just enough to enable him/her to find, properly coordinate, understand, motivate and retain the right people.

... do not let failure to pass by you without learning anything from it.

... do not let success pervert your mind and soul into imagining you are the best.

... remember that trust should be gained and not granted, is easy to loose and difficult to re-gain.

...  praise is quite easily forgotten, offense is remembered for quite a long time; but the helping hand that reaches out to you when you are down is the one never forgotten!

... do not hit someone when he/she is down! Life has ups and downs.

... do not walk in life by burning the bridges behind you; sometimes in order to get ahead you will need to take a few steps back...

... do not wait to give feed-back, otherwise it will build up tension; alternate negative with positive messages in order to get a constructive result.

... understand the nature of a problem before you start offering solutions; explore the consequences and only then start dealing with it; but do not wait too long, as real problems not only do not go away, but have a tendency to grow, and sugar-coating fuels their growth.

... approach your work with enthusiasm and passion, but do not expect it to solve your personal problems or improve the quality of your life. It is still work!

... do not fall in love with companies, because companies never fall back in love with people. But treat your company with respect, which is the key for any long term relationship. Always remember that loyalty, honesty, responsibility, professionalism, but also patience, understanding and compassion are all virtues and not weaknesses.

... and finally: work is not all about having fun, relaxing, getting the thrill of your life, achieving top performance with a smile on your face. It is also about effort, struggle and compromise. Happiness comes once you have done a good job... overall in your LIFE!

I wish you to find a proper balance and enjoy every day - as early as possible in your life!
Georgina Popescu