Low-performing managers might be the reason why an organisation as a whole falls short of excellence. If you want your organisation to be excellent, pay attention to the following points:
- Cleaning up the mess of the previous person in the role. But perhaps there is no mess to clean up. If a new manager claims it will take a long time before everything is again in order, maybe they just want to cover themselves for the future.
- Being always busy. If someone is so busy that there is no time left to work on regular tasks and departmental targets, this is a clear sign of a bad manager.
- Adjusting the goals. Misusing loosely defined goals so as to get away with an inefficient working style. Setting targets which are easy to achieve will mean never obtaining truly optimal results. A bad manager prefers low performance to the risk of not reaching ambitious targets.
- Always working remotely. If a manager constantly relies only on performance indicators as a way to avoid day to day activities, it is not good. The department needs its manager to be at the office, amongst other things so that the manager cannot dodge accountability by saying they were not present.
- Always blaming others. When something goes wrong, there are always plenty of excuses, including poorly prepared reports, bad attitudes or ineffective employees. That doesn't alter the fact that managers are responsible for their departments.
- Blaming external factors. If they don’t hit the targets, it is because the economy is in decline. Or bad weather is the culprit. Or it is simply because the whole world is against the department.
- Making over-ambitious long-term plans. Creating grandiose plans to impress top management. However, these plans also contain various hidden assumptions and preconditions; thus the managers are covered even if the ambitious goals are not achieved. This is the conclusion of the management-issues.com website.
-jk-