Management and common sense – not an oxymoron!

 Whenever I read an article or expert opinion on how to be a better boss I often think it strikes me as common sense and that’s not a bad thing. 

In a new article in the Wall Street Journal on October 30 they detailed the biggest mistakes bosses make when making decisions.

Her's the gist of the article in three lines:

1. Don’t tell people something that isn’t true.
2. Understand when to push and went to let things flow.
3. Treat decisions as something completed yet not as a substitute for action.

The article lays out 4 tenets starting with not just pretending to allow employees to have influence. The bottom line is to respect people’s time and include them in the loop when they really can be part of the decision.

The next recommendation is to know when to slow down. The point here is that some decisions require careful thought especially risky, important or complicated ones.

The third and fourth. encourage the boss to make a decision and then stick to it. Balance confidence and doubt however, do not undermine your team by questioning the decision you all made before the project even gets started. And do not use a decision as a substitute fraction. Again, obviously once a decision is made the work has only just begun.  Follow through on any decision and, of course, to get any work done people must be assigned tract and rewarded to make sure that that the decision is turned into effective action.

Check out the article in the Wall Street Journal and keep thinking!

And let us know if we can help you get things done!

Morris@HRComputes.com

7 ways to do more with your current HRIS technology

1.  Use what you paid for

Bring in the vendor or a 3^rd party to evaluate what you don’t use and then implement it or change to not pay for what you can’t use.

2.  Embrace Manager Self Service and Employee Self Service

Reduce the cost of data entry while getting better data entered by someone closer to the source of knowledge about that data AND empower employees and managers to make the data right.

3.  Open skills, certification, license, education and employee preferences areas to get more data and encourage employee development right at the employee level.

4.  Write reports and use them

Start small – give managers basic employee data, ask them for feedback on data validity and value.  Take the time to meet with management at multiple levels to ask what information they want to grow analytics.

5.  Challenge your vendor to do more

Ask them for a report on the real service level they are providing based on issues or tickets that you have reported to them.  Ask them to be proactive to tell you things about your system configuration/set up or data that may cause future issues.

6.  Shop for other options and your vendor know about it

It takes effort and time but what you will learn and the leverage you can bring to bear is worth it.

7.  Join the user community and attend the conference

Learn how to drive the software, establish relationships with support and development teams and influence future design.

Contact me at Morris@HRComputes.com to find out more!!