Values-freeResource Management for efficient people

Wake up your inner clever dodger.

By WojciechPrzychodzen

The vision Lets get started Cover story The goal Getting rid of obstacles Working with People Strategy Hiring new people Interview tips. Team Meetings Difficult employees Boss Management Innovation Impression Management

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The vision

Being a manager means responsibility. If you are just starting this adventure, please be aware that you have been granted a rare chance. Managing others is a responsible job. It is rewarding job. Its a meaningful job. All the above means, that, if played well, it is a job where you are paid considerable money and not asked to do any work in exchange. It is your great chance and do not ruin it. This book will help you to stay focused and become indispensable manager for your organization.

Lets get started

This book contains some tips and hints. Those are not to be talked over, but silently acted upon. Even if you do not talk about it, still be careful - people will watch you to find out why you are making such a progress and they do not. Always have a story ready to cover why you do something which will act as distractor as to what for your real values and goals are.

Cover story
Your official managerial credo What this story should look like? Some handy, good selling stuff is about being on the same page , working together towards one goal , addressing issues, win-win situations, you probably know this by heart already.

You should spend some time buildi ng one solid, trustworthy cover story to explain all your further actions so that you are regarded as re liable, consistent and trustworthy individual. If you add a touch of being action -oriented and achiever, nobody will resist temptation to put you in charge of thin gs they cant be bothered with.

Once you have it and it seems pretty coherent, make sure your boss, your colleagues and your clients are aware of your admirable attitude and of possible potential you bring to their work environment, their own careers (All those wonderful things we can achieve together, just imagine Tom) and even their social lives Of course it all should be as natural as possible.

The goal
One of the goals of this book (apart from paying for my hobbies) is to help you realiz e that you will be spending a lot of time at work. It probably is a good idea that you make as much money on it as you pos sibly can. If you remember this, you will be focused while most people around you will be lost, bored, or running in wrong directions. Means - you get in and they stay on a station.

Most people do not know neither what are they doing nor why. All think they have free will which makes life a little more bearable.

Being the only focused person around will not only make you formal leader, but also informal one as well. You will stand out from the crowd. And that is beneficial and will serve you good.

Now, if you are to spend so much time at your job, be sure you are in a career path that promises most rewards.

Getting rid of obstacles

After choosing best you can, accordingly to your background, as a next step you need to get rid of socially induced ideas that are in place to keep you at bay :

-hard work will make you rich -if you work hard and honestly you will be recogni zed and promoted -being professional and good at what you do is the best key to career

All those great looking convictions are a device which aims at making you work for little money doing things no -one else want to do. In reality, its all about impress ions. You will find plen ty of people who are better in w hat they do than you. Thats not a problem. You just need to make sure they work for you.

Although socialising is a long process and starts when you cannot object to it, it is still weaker than heal thy approach. Healthy approach starts when you rather do, what you feel is right , than what you have been told is right and efficient. Always, when you hear about something which is right or efficient , have a good look at who the person speaking is. If she is not from the top - you know that by listening to her you will not go to the top either. If she is at the top, she probablywant s you to stay where you are and let her continue being on top.

This book is about stop listening to books and follow up you r own goals. The only assumptionis: you are a manager an d you want to have most out of it.

Working with People

Working with people gives you great opportunities to:

y y y

Feel important Finally have some power Hire lots of pretty girls /handsome boys who will always smile to you and be obedient.

Always be encouraged by good examples. Every company is full of people who achieved everything (or at least enough to have really good fun in their lives) not representing any real value to their organisatio ns, companies, teams or to anybody. They just developed highly effective social survival systems during their struggles for food, attention, love or Barbie dolls during tough childhood . You can be one of them. Additionally , towards your way up the life itselfwill throw enough opportunities for you do some really good things per clear chance, because you are just there. Do not be beguiled it would eventually fall on anybody in the same place at the right time. You just make sure its really you.

Going back to those achievers.You have been fighting for the same things as they did, whether with your parents, your siblings, teachers, colleagues at school. So the good news is that you also have those skills. And they are very basic and very deeply rooted. The only problem is once you grown up you decided to follow some more civilised rules. And than you started to loose Now thank all those good people who made you become impotent, and get back on tracks.

Do not waste your time trying to be better, faster, more detail oriented, more customer focused, more business -oriented, or whoever or whatever you want to be. By trying to be someone else that you really are, you just waste your time and you lie down all your weapons you already have. All you need to do it to forget what you do not have and concentrate on what you have. Never waste your time on learning things you will never be good at anyway. You will have people for that. You just spend time on gaining what you want, arriving a t places you want to be at, achieving things you want to achieve.

Do your job this way and as for the competition throw that all on them in tu rn. Corporate environment have all t he blessed tools and support for you that you need:
y y y y

Corporate bullshit talk Company values Personal Development Plans, Motivation tools, incentives,

All that you need to keep your people in a position where they do hard work for youand are happy that they still have a job and are being paid with respect and recognition instead of real money or promotions.

Strategy
Plan is simple: do not plan , just do. You will get there faster and earn an action oriented man reputation immediately. Do n ot spend all your time at your desk. Go around, talk to people, and when working, do it quickly.No point in wasting a good day sitting long hours in the office.

Remember to have your limits clearly defined and ma rketed, so that everybody knows that you do not accept extra work or overtime (especially unpaid overtime). While marketing this, j ust remember to talk a lot about good task and time management and you will gain even more reputation.

Managing people has one big advantage over any other job. You do not have to do anything. Its enough if you are not late (very important) and dressed properly (little bit less important) and this way you act as a role model for your team. Is this not a beautiful concept?

Soon enough your people will see that you are just a worthless prick ( that is, a real manager) and will cease to worry you with any questions or reque sts for guidnace. Just make sure everybody shares the same vision of a really great manager. This vision is that real manager spends his days with his feet on the desk and a gentle sound of snoring comes from his room. Another good thing about that strategy is that part of your potential competitors will try to mimic your successful strategy and will star to do nothing, thus securing your position.

During your managerial career you will be challenged by people who think they know better what you should be doing. First task is always to prove them wrong. You are the manager and you know best what you should be doing, its embedded in the term itself. By definition everything you do is planned, is a part of a strategy, or something you wanted to make it looked like it did. That is the general message that you should be sending - Im always in control and all that I do is a part of a bigger, strategic plan.

Ive seen perfect examples at work. If you are sure of yourself and your managerial talk, nobody will challenge you in the face. If there will be some strong personality to see through you and challenge you, there are plenty of ways to deal with that. Read more in Difficult employees section on those.

Your strategic goal is to become more and more powerful manager of higher and higher level. Everything else at your workplace is a tool and opportunity for this: Friends, colleagues, money, gossip, ridiculing somebo dy (really powerful tool), sale stalk, managerial babble talk, al that at your sole disposal to help you to achieve your goals.

Hiring new people

You need some people to work hard for you w hile you utilise fruits of their hard labour to shine before your management. Perfect candidates for you are people who are shy, have low self -esteem and high level of anxiety. Also of great benefit would be if they are not schooled in the area where you want to employ them, and are not likely to find other jobs. Young mothers, so t he people who most employers would not hire, are very good. They will be grateful for the opportunity and ready to work long hours without pay for security. Make sure though all those who fit into the above description are at least a little intelligent, because after all they will need to do the work. Shyness and low self -esteem will make them pretty obedient and you can hardly expect somebody questioning your ideas. Also, you can pay them more with g ood word than with money and even earn a reputation of be ing best employer in their lives. Cases of worshipping can take place if you play it well. High level of anxiety will make them double check their work before they will bring it to you, so you are sure it will be relatively free of errors. You just need to stress how important it is to you and how much you trust them on this.

Interview tips.

During interview you introduce yourself as boss and let them have no doubts about it. You do not smile first, you do not laugh at their jokes and you look at the m in silence for a while. After they say something you say oh or I see, than you pretend to write something on a pad in front of you and pause for a second. After 20 minutes of such treatment each candidate will be somewhat shattered and shaken from their carefully prepared positions have been choosing for this interview. Than you can see how they react to stress and demanding boss. If you want to make them a little more nervous sit directly in front of them. Do not hold any particular line of quest ions, do not be bound by logic too predictable and easy to defend.

Ask them to tell a joke. Ask them what their friends would say about them , and then question that. Before interview spend some time reading their CV, paying special attention to: -grammatical errors and spelling errors; if you find any ask them on the interview if they perceive themselves as people attentive to details. -check if there are any achievements that make this CV outstanding from others, if not, be sure to ask if they consid er themselves to be achieving persons. If they confirm, ask where is the in their CV. -ask for whatever they have put there about the details. Most of it will be just a story that looks good on paper

Team Meetings
Team meetings are a perfect forum for you achieve many goals at the same time. If properly handled, they may also become one of the most rewarding elements of your weekly routine. You can use them to show your power, safely experiment with how different techniques influence people (r idiculing, humiliating, being sarcastic, choos ing a favourite employee and then changing him next month, etc.) You can also show how much you care about developing your employees by making them keeping minutes and encouraging discussions. This leaves you w ith plenty of time to than sit quiet, rest, think about your shopping or where to go fo r holiday, finally wink to some of best looking girls in your team. Remember that by looking and acting manly and in decisive way you gain a lot in their eyes. Now do you see why it is so important to keep regular, weekly meetings? Meeting tips and hints: Increase level of participation by having somebody taking minutes, You can experiment with holding those meetings with everybody standing up (more difficult to sit back and remain silent) Ask people directly to share their opinion or answer questions Never loose chance to give them a sample of your managerial talk, making sure you are all on the same page and working toward one goal. Encourage new ideas, allow the team t o select the best, and then, humbly but with undisputable courage, present those ideas to your management. Do not pretend you are the owner of those great ideas, just modestly mention that you are the owner of the entire strategic programme that enabled sp ring of those ideas at all.

Difficult employees
Theres always one, what do you expect?

Whenever theres a shortage of suitable girls on the market you are forced to hire people who do not appeal to your higher self. May happen that you will hire a cant-do worker and thus create for yourself real challenge, provided your company is not easy on letting the m grow somewhere else, preferable in your competitors garden ;)

Difficult employees comes in few types:

-the ones that looked very clever during the interview but then you discovered that they are unable to grasp basic concepts and cannot handle most simple situations -the ones who want to take your place forcing you to do some real work or i mprove on impression management -broad category of pain-in-theback employees group, which contains all other peopl e born to torture and hunt you

When dealing with all three groups , you must have a clear picture of your role and their role.

Its really simple- guy has signed a contract, and if he does not fulfil his d uties, you do your duties. Make sure he understands it .

Looking from this perspective, there is no problem than cannot be solved, by either employee listening and changing their attitude or you finding opportunity to hire somebod y valuable.

Apart from that, you look very well in taking your time to hear employee and trying to help as much as you help before letting him go. Your management will like you for this extra mile an special attention you pay to people.

1st group. Obvious hiring mistakes.

Before letting go, trouble yourself with a lengthy meeting with the person, also make sure somebody is your team is also there. Inexplicit goal of this meeting is for you to find out how you could be so wrong, for your company to show hum much you care and that you do your utmost to keep people in and that you are so considerate to have lessons learned out of this unfortunate event. Explicit goal of the meeting is to see what went wrong dur ing the training and come up with the improvement plan with direct involvement and input from employee. Only after this fails you can let the person goal and be able to claim another victory on a difficult field of making hard choices as a efficient manage r. 2nd group.

Strong challengers. Strong challenger means an ambitious person. Ambitious individual is the one who wants to take your place, or even to take the place of your manager. Such individual will not be afraid to loudly unmask your smart strate gies in front of your team. Such threat needs to be taken out quickly. Weak point of such person is that he or she wants to make a career in the same organization. If you have good contacts within managerial team, find some opportunity for this person outside of your team. If successful, just make sure they know it was all your personal effort and commitment to promote them and find a way to grow them. If the believe your good intentions have just gained a supporter within organization. They owe you.

If, on the other hand you do not have this option, most wise is to make this person your right hand. Take them out of your regular team and make them feel important and directly responsible before you for something. The more ambitious and hard -working they are, the more work they will do in your behalf. By recognizing them and treating them on special terms, you will take them out from their supportive environment and people will feel betrayed by the one who was complaining so much, and now ceased when given some more power. People will start to not like them to say the least. So your position in the team is saved. Just make sure there is no direct communication between this young, promising individual you have just recognised and your direct manager. If you allow direct communication between them, your manager might also start to see through your strategy and can start to think your replacement will do his organisation good. Avoid that for obvious reasons. If your ambitious young man refuses to take so genero usly offered position, than, regretfully, you will be left with no choice but to start talking the issue with difficult, always complaining individual who refuses to take on more responsibility over with your boss. Naturally you and him cannot afford to ha ve somebody like that on board for long.

3rd group. All unhappy mediocre workers.

Third group contains all those people who just complain but lack will, determination or skills to threaten your position. In other words all immature types who do not yet realised that their real status is that of a modern slave who works for as much as possible (is increased efficiency part of your company strategy?) for as little as possible (is cost effectiveness among the strategic goals of your company leadership team ?). They are dealt with by a combination of your god -like authority of an experienced and inapproachable manager (outcome of all techniques listed so far), soft incentives like hand shakes from management and distant but always real visions of disciplinary actions. They can actually act as a guinea pig for all the techniques you want to invent yourself and then master, just make sure you do not exaggerate or stress them too much. If you would rather have a little more time to surf internet during your busin ess hours, it is always a good idea to have some sort of team leaders, formal or informal to deal with them. Just make them responsible and they will take care of all those small issues of day to day operations of your unit.

Bo

anage en

Your boss like to have as easy time with you as you want with your team. It means you have all the ideas and you put them forward first. In order to achieve both goals- so to be perceived as a perfect manager by both your team and your boss, you just need to place establish yourself asa liaison.

Your Boss You

Recei es i eas, recei es deli erables, recei es proacti e support and help

Act a a liaison with good 'manager' interface to your people and to your boss Produce ideas, produce deli erables, upon your request performs tasks for your boss

Your team

As you can see it does not take much to be perceivedas an excellent team manager by your direct supervisor. You just need to leverage your team efforts well. s

What also works great is going to a shop in the morning and offering to buy something for your boss like sandwich or donut. After all, you are already going there to buy something for yourself, why not taking also something for your dear friend - boss? Go for a lunch with them as often as opportunity presents itself , and between one bite and another show how much you agree with her about all those idiots you are forced to work with and offer sincere feedback on great performance of your boss. Mentioning on just how hard you work and how good progress you are making is also a nice option. And do not forget to show your human face as well by throwing one or two jokes so the pork can taste better.

As soon as you had personal contact with some part of management team of your company, you can establish an unofficial ema il distribution list and occasionally send them interesting links to trainings, branch events, jokes and stuff like that. Let them be fully aware of just how helpful, engaged and dedicated you are, not losing your life -work balance in the process.

Innovation
It helps to realise that ideas do not belong to anybody but are just expression ofcreativity of universe. Knowing that, you can go o n a rampage of borrowing or reusing someone elses ideas for your benefit - and thus for the benefit of all the creation . Widely known phrase of standing on the shoulders of giants makes it sound even better.

One of the old tricks is to ask your people for generating some new and useful ideas so that you can review them and assess their usability for company. Next step is to simply thank for submitted ideas, gently point out how slightly inadequate they are at the moment and strongly encourage to continue working on them. Than you take best of those, add something from yourself, trying not to damage the idea, and present it to upper management as your own. Another one is to propose to you manage ment a lot of i des you now that will be too costly, but still they will think you have the companys growth in your mind You can also try to engage any of widely spread quality management techniques. They obviously bright side is that people are actively engaged in eli minating their own jobs through continuous improvements leading to cost savings - mainly allowing eventually to reduce staff or to put more work on their shoulders.

Impression Management
As you probably noticed, all this book was about impression management. Use it wisely and sky is the limit .