Obsessive Management Disorder

So you are 12 years old, and you are with a group of friends discussing what you all might want to do together on the weekend. You seem to be dominating the conversation with ideas you think will be fun. Other kids offer up suggestions, but you push for your ideas. They finally agree, and that weekend you and your friends participate in the activities you lobbied for. You even check to see if they are enjoying themselves and take some responsibility for the day.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are raising a leader, a manager, a future Master of the Universe. Management and leadership are compulsions, not a job title.

How many times over the years have I met district managers, supervisors, and store managers who got the job because no one else wanted it? Maybe they wanted more money, or senior management thought that person was the lesser of the available evils.

Take a hard look at yourself. Are you one of those people? Then I say, “Get out.” Save your soul, your dignity, your pride. The burden of management is not for you. Have fun selling or paint a picture and sell it. You deserve to enjoy your life.

Leader or follower?
There are leaders and there are followers. We need a whole bunch of both. Management, however, is not a static personality trait, rather quite the opposite; it’s quite dynamic, always changing and evolving. In some parts of my life, I am quite happy to follow. For example, I enjoy winemaking as a hobby. I have a home vineyard and winery, and frankly the wine I make is not all that good. I have a friend who consults on winemaking and that helps. I’m also a member of a winemaking club. I generally have nothing to say. The other members are much more experienced and take a leadership role even in our tasting conversations. Now if I’m to talking to my staff, it’s a whole new ball game. I have ideas, direction, goals and vision. I’m in my element. I am happy with that, but it’s not a choice; it’s DNA, an obsession, a calling as it were. You don’t have to lead or manage everything, or follow everything. No one is a complete natural leader or follower.

Getting to the top
You might be asking yourself right about now, “If I didn’t push my friends around when I was 12, can I still run a store?”. Glad you asked. Yes, but there are caveats. Management is filled with technique and strategy. There are goals to be set, metrics to be analyzed, coaching, progressive discipline, and much, much more to do every day. All that and senior management still wants sales to be better than last year.

Here is the rub, and hope for all of us. There is plenty of room to grow using desire and technique. But you have to want to run the entire place to get to the very top. Take heart; there are very few who get there. Of course, you could buy the position by buying the place, or even better, you could inherit it. Although that wouldn’t mean you were an obsessed manager either. Now if you’re not that lucky, here is what you need to do to become a wonderful manager of people.

Big picture management
Broaden your view. Having a wider and deeper view of things puts them into perspective. Think about a teenager saying to a parent, “I’ll die if I can’t go to that party.” News flash: they ain’t gonna die. Good managers can make decisions today that affect the future as well as the present.

Don’t negotiate what you know to be true. For example, if you believe sales will go up if every salesperson attempts an add-on, make sure that happens every time without fail. Anything less is phooey.

Make decisions on behalf of the company, not the staff. You work for the company, not your staff. And it isn’t all that personal when you write people up for not coming to work on time. You both will live. Trust me; I own a crystal ball.

Don’t spend as much time solving problems as finding out why you have them and how to fix the root cause.

Practice the 3 F’s: fair, firm, and fun. OK, fantastic, fabulous, fearless, and fermentation (it makes grape juice taste better).

So all in all, it’s about taking your staff to places they haven’t been. Reaching goals and having customers who want to shop at your store over and over again. I am kind of obsessed about that; how about you?



© 2008 The Friedman Group

Obsessive Management Disorder - To learn more about this author, visit Harry J. Friedman's Website.

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