How to take responsibility as an executive manager?

What makes a manager?

When you google "manager definition" or look it up in a dictionary you will get something like this " a person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of staff".

Their responsibilities are many and among them, you can find:

• Leadership

• Setting objectives

• Recruitment

• Decision making

• Conflict resolution

• Coaching

• Delegating

Now from these most often you will see delegation. When there are mass layoffs it's seldom the execs. When there are budget cuts or hard times, guess who never gets a pay cut? The managers never get a pay cut.

It seems they get a ton of money for zero responsibility. In IT they are your YES man in most cases. A team leader has to get their hands dirty and manage the team. Usually, it comes with a small pay bump but a lot more responsibility.

A good manager should manage. They should manage time so nobody has to work overtime. One of the myths in the modern age is that you have to work hard and overtime if needed to get the project done in time. The overtime is usually paid in pizza and mandatory parties after the job. You can't even go home to your life.

It seems hard I know but one of the most crucial responsibilities of a manager is managing the team. It means they should be able to pull out the most out of team members. It means they should be able to spot issues on time and manage the expectations of the senior management.

A manager who comes out of the school and has no work experience will be a lousy manager. How can you manage something you do not understand properly? You can see this in everyday life. In stores, hotels, restaurants, car service, telephone companies, etc.

Bad management is the root of a lot of issues. But when most people think about management they think about the middle manager. The one person tasked with their day-to-day. In most companies, it's the TOP-DOWN management that ruins the company.

Now that is not always a bad style if the top management knows how to listen and is flexible. They are rarely flexible. I have a couple of examples where this had bad results and the employees were blamed.

In a company where I was a contractor, their senior management was confused. They did not see eye to eye. They could not agree on the next steps and priorities. This went on for 4 years before I got there. They were moving at a snail's pace because they lacked vision and clarity.

They would push one thing today and next week something else. The reason behind the decisions would be a book, a podcast, or a family member. I put a stop to that with a workshop. But this shows you that you can throw money at a problem and never solve it. If you are leading a company and have no idea what you should do or how it should be done. How are your employees supposed to deliver anything?

In another company where I was contracting, we had a clear vision. We knew what we were building and we knew our customers. When I say we I mean - A product owner, developers, and a designer. And we would often hear updates about our product in a company-wide meeting. Not before, not even our PO was privy to the information. So that resulted in the unhappiness of employees and most of them leaving.

Before everyone left, the confusion was growing each week. The company had scaled from 40 to 600 employees and contractors. Without a clear plan and set structure. Do you think any execs got fired for this? Nope. Not a single one was dropped. I mean it shows what you get when you are running a company as a headless chicken.

I recently checked their web to see if they produced any of the products they were gunning for. They did not. Goes to show that without proper management your goals are not achievable.

How to take responsibility?

You are a senior manager, exec level. You should provide clear guidance on what you expect from your employees.

You are a senior manager, exec level. You should provide clear guidance on what you expect from your employees. You should attend updates every two weeks at least. You should not force your ideas unless you have data to back them up. You should not be a feature freak.

In case of a failure take responsibility. Analyze and investigate where you went wrong and which decision resulted in a failure. If the company is having a hard time and you are not sure who to trust? Bring in outside help. Talk to your bottom-level employees to understand what they see.

In case you are providing a service - try using the service every 3 months. Tell your friends to try it - but not for free and do not announce this because you want a realistic experience. If you are selling a product go see how it's being used and hear some complaints. Take responsibility for what you produce. If you can take the money you can handle the responsibility.

Sure if there is a team member who is doing badly it will reflect on you but it's your job to manage this. If there are setbacks instead of hounding your team, investigate solutions. Ensure they do not repeat.

In a restaurant if the food is coming back and you do nothing. Do you think it is the cook's fault or yours? It's the restaurant manager's job to manage the employees. So the responsibility is his, while the fault is the cooks.

When they say there should be no blame, sure thing. But you need to manage and take and ensure others are responsible for their output as well. If people are left to run the place themselves it will almost always go down in flames.

Every team needs a leader, a final decision-maker, a vision, and a code of conduct. If a team knows what is expected, what the standard is, and what is acceptable, and if they know they will held accountable for their mistakes. They will try their best not to make mistakes.

If they do make mistakes, investigate why, analyze, and see if there is a pattern. If you can help them not make mistakes, do it, if not, replace them. It might be hard but a business needs to make money.

How to be better?

Executive managers are busy people, they have a lot to oversee and do each day. They should still find time to talk to the people doing most of the work.

Surround yourself with experts, find somebody who can tell you NO, and stand by their words. Lose the feature freaks, "yes" men, and slackers. Do not force people to work overtime.

If you notice that your teams are struggling, or creating a lot of spreadsheets. Investigate and put some people on it, not additional managers, but product people. Each workaround or spreadsheet is usually a good opportunity for automatization. When I say automatization I mean, reading and entering data.

There are countless systems out there that promise the world, but usually, you will need a custom one. This is where your employees come in. Listen to what they are telling you. Often execs do not have a good picture of what the people actually have to do. Where are the bottlenecks?

The bottlenecks in your company are costing you money. Imagine you are selling a product, but there is a bottleneck in between a customer ordering something and getting what they ordered. That would turn into fewer and fewer orders.

Imagine you want to charge for a service but your back office is not organized enough, and your accounting has issues with tracking. They have multitudes of different names for the same services, which are later translated into issues.

These are opportunities and should be seen as much. To help you get a bird's eye view of the process, you can hire a service designer such as myself. They will craft a blueprint of how it currently is and where is the holdup. The business team should also craft journeys and then you have a complete picture.

You can then decide where to go, how to focus your resources, and who should be doing what. It's hard for employees to care about their work if you are not making it easy for them to work.

The employee should not be thinking about how to do the work, or what is expected. They should only think about how to do their work in the most optimized way. And you should encourage that. Listen to what people are telling you, but do not always give them what they want!

Hire designers to investigate to see if the employee's wants & needs are the same. The same principle applies to customers.

Go forth and be a better manager. If you want to learn how design can help your business - read my article about it here