How managers can improve their managerial effectiveness (2)

Continued from last edition

Increase efficiency: Efficiency is a measurable concept that can be determined using the ratio of useful output to total input. Increased efficiency minimizes the waste of resources such as physical materials, energy, and time while accomplishing the desired output. Management improves efficiency by minimizing the wastage of resources, that is time, materials, money and efforts. It helps in optimum utilization and deployment of all the resources in an organisation by coordinating all the activities performed by individuals in the achievement of organisations’ common goal. 

Quality control: Quality control (QC) is a process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved. Quality control refers to a company’s methods for assessing product quality and, if possible, improving it. There are various ways to perform quality control, including benchmarking, examining manufacturing procedures, and testing products.

Optimize resources: Resource optimization involves identifying, prioritizing, and utilizing resources in the most efficient and effective manner possible. The aim is to meet project requirements and quality standards, while minimizing waste, redundancies, and costs.

Prioritise organisation: Prioritization is a valuable organisational skill. Some tasks may require immediate attention, others can wait. This skill set is closely linked to time management. We only have a limited amount of time to utilise during our workday, so place those tasks that have to be completed first at the head of activities list or checklist.

Promoting innovation: Innovation of products and production methods are constantly required in a competitive world. This implies the creation of a completely new product or service, or the improvement of features of an already existing one. This enables the creation of a more valuable product, the improvement of the quality of a product, and the increase in the effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. Innovation in management principles and processes can create long-lasting advantages and produce dramatic shifts in competitive position. 

Staffing in management: Staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly. A staffing method involves recruiting staff based on experience and skills, while another is based on educational qualification of applicants and training them. A model of staff performance is a dataset that measures work activities, how many labour hours are needed, and how employee time is spent.

Managers who want to improve their managerial effectiveness must do the following:- 

Establish clear objectives for the organisation: It is important that workers have clear organisation’s objectives. When workers are aware of the objectives of an organisation, they find it easy to achieve goals.

Good communication: An effective manager must have good communication skills and be able to communicate with his workers in clear terms. 

Decision-making: An effective manager is the one that is fast and robust in decision-making. He networks with managers in similar organisations to be abreast of latest developments in his sector that may affect his organisation.

Encourage teamwork: Effective managers encourage teamwork among their workers. They call meetings regularly and make sure those workers in their teams gel together.

Lead by example: Managers that want to be effective must be ready to lead by example. A manager that is disciplined, generous, punctual, time-conscious, dutiful and trustworthy will get obedient, motivated and responsible workers in his team. 

Delegate: An effective manager must know how to delegate functions to workers. He must be able to identify different workers with different skills and apportion appropriate work for each worker. With time, he must have a lieutenant among the workers that can take charge for him whenever he is not around. 

Give feedback: Effective managers give feedback to their workers regularly to improve the workers and not mainly to rebuke them. 

Leadership: Effective managers are good leaders in all ramifications to their workers. They influence and coach.

Setting goals: Effective managers know how to set achievable goals for their workers. Setting achievable goals must involve the members of the team so that they can have buy-in of the organisation goals. 

Celebrate milestones: Managers with the aim of improving their effectiveness must celebrate milestones with their workers. Milestones in organisations include team members’ birthday, team members’ achievement, public holidays, organisation’s achievement etc. 

Complete management training: Effective managers organise complete training for their workers. 

Cultivate emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI. These are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Foster qualities that matter: Qualities that matter include good deeds of workers which must be emphasised, while bad deeds must only be discussed privately with the worker/s involved. 

Motivate people: Motivated workers work better than unmotivated workers. Effective managers must know how to motivate their workers. 

Offer balanced feedback: Balanced feedback to workers has the benefit of allowing workers’ improvement. 

Promote inter-workers communication: Effective managers encourage inter-workers communication in their organisations. 

Coaching workers to become a good manager: Effective managers are coaches. They teach their team members how to achieve goals and how to manage. They organise sessions through which they coach their workers.

Identify talents: There are various activities in an organisation. Different workers have different skills suitable for different functions. While some workers are good in production, some are good in marketing and some are good in customer relations. An effective manager must be able to identify the different skills of their workers and how to exploit the different skills to their organisation’s advantage. An effective manager must produce future managers within a short period in an organisation. 

Continuous self-improvement: In a dynamic world, managers who want to remain effective must constantly seek self-improvement. They must regularly look for management training because skills necessary for management are daily evolving as resources to manage (employees, finance, machineries, process etc) are daily changing.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com