What should today’s managers really be managing (part 1)

April 19, 2012

As an executive or leader in your organization, you’re managing many things: the company’s image, numerous projects, and a talented group of people. But you’re also managing many other important things, including the perception others have of you and your department, how distracted you and your team are on a daily basis, and many other things you may not even be aware of. For many people, these “other” things are just part of the job, how things have always been done, and the expected stressors of business. But do they have to be that way?

Let’s start with perception. Why is managing perception important? Because perception is often more important than reality. And in fact, your reality will not be a happy one if you’re not managing perception.

You’ve likely seen many examples of how perception is more important than reality. For example, a stock might be beaten up horribly because of the way people view the company, whether that view of the company is accurate of not. So the point is that perception is something you have to constantly manage. Whose perception? Everyone’s – the C-level executives, the employees, the customer’s customer, and most importantly, your own.

Therefore, ask yourself, “How do I perceive myself?” Do you perceive yourself as trying to keep up? Trying to protect and defend? Trying to integrate the new?

How you perceive yourself is going to reflect how others perceive you. So you need to perceive yourself and everyone in your department as a major competitive advantage and as a major strategic asset for the organization. As long as that’s how you perceive yourself and your team, that’s how you’ll act, and that’s how others will see you as well.

Plug into your future
Equally important to managing perceptions is managing distractions (a.k.a. change). The fact is that in today’s marketplace, change is coming at us fast…and it’s only getting faster. That means organizations will be facing more problems than ever before.

One thing we know for sure is that most distractions or changes come from the outside in – external factors impact the organization. This causes people to react, crisis manage, and continually put out fires. But to be a strategic asset to your company, you can’t simply be a crisis manager; you also have to become an opportunity manager. The question is, how do you do that? The answer is to become an opportunity manager and plug into the future.

To be an opportunity manager and strategic asset for your organization, distraction is the enemy. To provide major new competitive advantage and to create new products, markets, and services, distraction is the enemy. Unfortunately, we have never been more distracted.

Not only is everyone in your organization distracted, but so is everyone in your competitors’ organizations. But in a way, this is actually good news, because it means there’s a huge competitive advantage in pulling out of that mess of distraction. To do so, though, takes leadership and discipline.

Realize that our distraction level has gotten worse over the years rather than better. Why? It used to be that we have several different realities. We had our home reality with our spouse and children, and we had our work reality with our co-workers. Often the spouse and kids didn’t know what we specifically did at work, and all the people in our work reality didn’t know much detail about our home reality.

We also had our leisur4e friends, or our personal reality. And we belonged to a club or church group and had that reality. Finally, we had our vacation time reality.

As we went through life, we would go from one reality to the other. This was a good thing psychologically, because it allowed us to recharge. Then, when we went from one reality to the other, we were refreshed and mentally sharp.

Today, technology has allowed all those realities to become one reality. But before you blame technology for this merging of realities, realize it’s not technology’s fault. Technology is neither good nor evil. It’s all about how we use it. We have the choice whether to plus in or unplug. Therefore, to reduce the level of distraction in your own life, you need to understand the power of unplugging on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, most people are afraid to unplug, even when they’re on vacation. They believe something might happen, so they have to be always connected to work. But this means they’re never really on vacation, and when they’re home, they’re not really home; they’re always working.

But if your people are always working, how well are they functioning? The answer; not very well. They’re certainly not as creative and innovative as they need to be. And if you’re not unplugging on a regular basis, then you’re not as creative an innovative as you need to be either.

Next time, I’ll cover the importance of unplugging and recharging and how to focus on managing what’s really important.