10 Inspirational Management Lessons I Didn’t Learn From TED Talks

How to effectively manage everything and everyone in your life, from the top, middle, or bottom

Steve Jobs once said “It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, and how you’re led.” I almost agree. Some of it’s about the money, as I discovered sitting down with Mr. X at my workplace, who taught me some of the best leadership and management lessons I’ve heard.

Management and leadership are all about our relationships with other people. And everyone benefits from good management. Good management means business works well, generates profit, products, or services, and continuously improves. Most importantly, interactions in the workplace have a spillover effect on our relationships at home.

You need someone you respect, who wants to show you how they’ve seen the good, the bad, the ugly — warts and all — of good and bad management, and what you can do to be the best. Here’s what Mr. X told me that I want to share.

1. Know the rules of the game

Know the accounting rules and conventions in different sectors, and know how to exploit them for the greater good (all within legal means of course).

Your job as a manager is to understand the rules and help your team make sense of them so they can work them to their advantage.

Know your ratios, your turnover, your stats & your profit margins, so you know what you can ask for. This is especially important when comparing to your peers.

2. Let the system dictate behavior

People are generally good. They want to do good and to please you, their manager. Not many people rock up to work and think “right, today I’m going to make life difficult for everyone.”

Your job as a manager is to pull the team’s focus to where you need their skills. People respond to positive enforcement.

Assume 10 audits need completing by your department in the run up to accreditation. Hold your team to account: tell when you’ll be checking. Will it be in a week? Two weeks? Then do it.

If they’ve only delivered 8 out of 10 that’s fine, but ask why. Has it been a particularly busy fortnight with sick leave and there simply wasn’t the staff required to complete all 10 audits?

People want to please their boss. People don’t want to be standing in front of their manager explaining why things haven’t been done over and over because it makes them feel crap.

Holding people to account is a way of letting the system dictate the behavior. If you never check if anything is delivered or address this with the team, this reinforces the idea it’s okay not to do everything the manager asks. It detracts from the importance of your requests.

3. Your job as a manager isn’t to know it all

Your job as a manager isn’t to know it all — it’s to channel your team’s knowledge and skills in the right direction. They know more than you about the day-to-day running of things. The pain points. The things that work well. Ideas for improvement.

You want people to tell you things. You want people to feel they can come to you with a problem because you’ll do something about it.

I’m sure most people reading this have had some experience of a culture where people don’t bother raising issues or suggestions to management due to apathy. Because they’re too used to people fobbing them off, saying no (or more likely “we don’t have the budget for that,”) or just being brutally shot down. I’ve been there.

In a community dental practice I used to work in, it was noticed by staff and management that there were increasing issues with missing lab work. Management couldn’t figure out what it was. My nurse and other staff knew the solution was simple.

I told her to go to management with it, as the change would undoubtedly restore order to the chaotic realm of denture deliveries.

She was reluctant. You see, she’d been there a heck of a lot longer than I had, and cycled through lots of managers, and boy she’d been scorned. However, she did appear to have renewed faith in our latest manager, so with a gentle nudge from yours truly, she put her suggestion to him.

The solution was easily implemented and made everyone happy — including the lab who were sick of us complaining about missing and/or late deliveries.

4. Inspect what you’re expecting

This is closely linked to chart-topper number two. Sure, the laissez-faire management approach works well in some instances, but like Monsieur Truffe’s delectable chocolate, is best enjoyed in moderation.

This is best illustrated by organizations who carve out a chunk of regular time for their employees to engage in a choice of activities. Like clinical staff having dedicated time each day to pursue continuing professional development or quality improvement tasks like clinical audits.

If no one checks on these activities, there is no incentive to do them. There’s no need to micromanage, but providing some drive, structure and accountability as a manager is pivotal so time like this isn’t wasted.

5. Keep the decision-makers happy

That goes for those who are influential in your team, too. For instance, assume you — the clever manager with your MBA and Prosci certification — have thought of a way to improve one of your team’s processes.

You put this to your team for discussion, and discover Bill — who the others look up to and respect for his years in the field — has another idea. It’s also good, but it’ll probably take 20% longer to implement than your idea, and might be 20% less effective than your idea.

The rest of the team are enthusiastic about Bill’s idea. Do you choose to push your idea, because you think you know best, or Bill’s?

The smart cookie would without hesitancy agree to Bill’s idea, because it has an endorsement from the team. This means they’ll be more invested in its success — they’re more likely to go that extra mile to ensure the idea prospers— and if it fails, they’ll take ownership and be willing to fix it.

None of the above would be not nearly as likely if your own agenda was pushed. If the idea succeeds, they won’t take as much pride as a team-generated solution. If it fails, it’ll be due to your bad idea, and they’ll be less onboard with the next great idea you have.

Keeping people happy can also be as simple as saying hello every now and then to Karen (because Karens need a little slack after all the COVID-heat they’ve been copping recently) — the P.A. of an influential senior manager — who you know has a very busy schedule.

That way, when you desperately need an urgent meeting with said senior manager, Karen is more likely to make it happen. She’s more likely to make an exception, because you know her kids are training to be Australia’s next Olympic Gold medalists. And that her favorite coffee is an almond milk latte (it’s Melbourne, after all).

There’s no need to brown-nose and bribe, but kindness costs nothing, yet pays dividends in a crisis.

6. Don’t commit to the impossible

Sounds obvious, but if you’re under pressure from your boss to cut $1m of your $10m budget and you know it can’t be done, don’t say yes you’ll try, then fail to deliver. If you know it takes a minimum $10m to run your unit, then stick to your guns.

Your boss will say “oh, you said you could do $9m and you’ve gone over. We’re going to have to let you go.” Exemplary leadership right there 😝.

7. The place needs to run

We’ve all experienced an operational crisis. Going back to trusty healthcare, imagine there’s a flood that damages all the cardiac monitors beyond repair. Instead of fretting there’s no budget to replace this equipment and trying to beg, borrow and/or steal from other departments who are actually in no position to lend equipment, just buy the equipment.

The place has to run. What a blatantly obvious statement, you might say?

Well, sad to say, I’ve encountered situations where managers try to ‘make-do’ without (yes, in healthcare of all industries).

They restrict services and basically slap a proverbial out-of-order sign on vital clinical operations due to budget constraints. Staff are pressurized to come up with unthinkable lackluster workarounds that jeopardize their own safety as well as that of patients.

It shouldn’t happen but it does. The money will come from somewhere in a Black Swan Event. Don’t force your staff into a corner.

8. Boards back winners

Let’s assume as a new manager you need to ask the Board for $250k in capital investment to avert disaster from dated plant machinery. Sadly, the Board is used to approving less than a third of that, because your predecessor didn’t see the need in investing in maintenance and cash-cowed the business.

Oh, and the Board wants to know why the business isn’t making much money anymore. It’s a loser. And by association, so are you, unless you can prove otherwise. So where do you start?

You ask for $80k initially to do urgent patch-up work to stem the fiscal bleeding. They agree because they want something done. You deliver on the $80k investment.

Next, you ask for $120k, with evidence to show this investment will have a positive return and start to make the bank balance a little more healthy. Because the last investment turned out so well, the Board gives you another chance and grants you the $120k.

You’re now a ‘winner’ in the Board’s eyes, with demonstrated capability to deliver, and Boards back winners.

9. No doesn’t mean no

It means either:

• Not right now
• Sell it to me in a different way
• Come back with more information

You need to be persistent about the issues that matter. Explain what will happen if you don’t say yes to an extra $50k in capital budget for next year.

People don’t like surprises. If you foresee a potential problem and who you’re trying to raise this with doesn’t see the urgency in preventative maintenance, for example, then they need continuously reminding.

10. Good people vote with their feet

A bit of an oldie, but true in labor as it is in politics. If you don’t harness the needs and desires of good people in your organization, they’ll leave and go somewhere else.

In workplaces with a toxic culture, when cream rises to the top, it gets skimmed off, leaving you with the sour taste of organizational workforce detritus.

If you start to witness a mass exodus in your organization, it’s time to stop and take a good, hard look at why.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed listening to them from the wise sage who passed them onto me (who sadly isn’t on this platform for me to tag).

To summarize:

1. Know the rules of the game
2. Let the system dictate the rules of the behavior
3. Your job as a manager isn’t to know it all
4. Inspect what you’re expecting
5. Keep the decision-makers happy
6. Don’t commit to the impossible
7. The place needs to run
8. Boards back winners
9. No doesn’t mean no
10. Good people vote with their feet

Implementing these ‘Ten Commandments’ or top ten chart-toppers, will hopefully see your work relationships flourish, and in turn, breed harmony in your personal lives, too 😃.