Habits of a good manager

Read the full article 1st: The Seven habits of a typical bad manager

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbit%2Ely%2F7HabitsBadManager&urlhash=ulwE&_t=disc_detail_link

I would like to add few more comments from readers across the world that you would also like to hear and may help 'some of us' in becoming a 'good manager' also.

• Always insecure and relying on shouting (lung power instead of brain power) to understand in attempt to fix any problem.
• Concentrates more on discussing things that are low on priority or any past mistake by others.
  
• Managers who doesn't believe what their Project leads says and make everything an open issue for brain storming. They take every issue with suspicion and wanted to clarify the same issue with some one whom they trust but has lesser knowledge. Suggestion- If you are unable to comprehend an issue related to technology, pls trust the people who are experts in that particular area and have the issue escalated for appropriate support instead of doing R&D to justify his ignorance by saying "its not rocket science".
• Constantly demanding your employees work faster, even when there's no pressing deadline and no road map.
• Trying to guilt-trip or bully your employees into doing what you want to make stories to save his skin than solving the problem.
• Takes two weeks to make a decision on even the most menial topics.
• People who worked would never be promoted because then there would be no one to do the actual work.
• Stealing the show from their subordinates - Often it happens that when the focus is on the success and easy bonus, these bad managers will depict them as the real achievers without any shame.
• Not owning the failure - This is again similar but reverse to above point, in case of failure, they dont own it, but scold the subordinates in front of everybody.
• Unwanted advise to peers - These bad managers will always poke nose in to others work and try to prove that their peers are less competent than themselves. They always give advise to others just to prove that they know better..
• Enough already with a spreadsheet that tracks everything from deliverables to the color socks you wore at the launch meeting. You gotta be engrossed in it 6 hours a day to understand how it can help you.
• They have no clear definition of direction where the organization is supposed to move to.
• Bad Managers treat people like equipment.
• The manager is always busy creating reports of work to be accomplished, but nothing ever gets accomplished because he is busy having his staff create pretty reports.
• The lack of common sense is the worst "habbit" could happen to a someone.
• There are managers who have bad sense of humor. They're always angry because they think it's going to get the team more productive.
• Acceptable sub-ordinates are those who dress like them, talks like them, and always agree with them.
• I see more managers who are good dressers than good planners. Seriously. I previously did audits for a very respected multinational company.
  
• A lot of folks want to be "managers" for the pay and power and career progress NOT because its their forte. In my last job, one chap was an engineer and he was promoted to manager the next day with zero training. You would not promote an air steward to pilot just because s/he has put in the time would you ?. s/he will be a really bad Pilot because he will be pretending whole day to be a genuine pilot. Long story short, often its not a person's fault when they are "Bad". Its fault of the person who hired him. He is doing the best he can do (ie pretensions).
  

Now My Comments:

1. I don't trash everything mentioned in the articles or the comments in the name of optimism and positively. You can always take lessons from such debates. Many so-called senior people may not agree with most of the things but these may help us in understanding the reasons for the last few failed projects in your co.. If you also don't agree then you are also among those bad managers who are misfits in the co. and thus screwing it everyday. Again, its not always persons fault when they are bad. Someone in the co. is responsible for breeding that culture of incompetence. Incompetence is a contagious disease that's is usually spread by few persons at the top. I have no doubts about it.

“Surround yourself with great people. Where you have intellect and brains, you’ll find the right answers.” Bad Managers can be changed into Good Managers, if they realise their weaknesses and improve themselves to have more confidence and less pretensions to survive in the business. Its a task that only they can do it for themselves. Buying degrees and certificates will not help much. Most of these bad traits have been noticed in the managers who lack subject knowledge and understanding of business and rely too much on commercially off-the shelf degrees and certificates to stay in the market. Its one who is suspicious about everything he listens from his own experts/staff and then relies on things from people who are not equipped to tell him the complete thing.

Many thinkers have taken different stances on describing this common crisis affecting the corporate world, but one thing is for sure, that one reason remains the same for all, and that there is a bad managers hidden somewhere within all of us and these things are helping in the rise of "Rajus"( small or big) in every organization.

And the one solution - The world needs to go back to the mantra of atleast some minimum level of honesty, work ethics and lesser drama to prove that "I got it coz I Deserve' it in the work place.

2. There should not be any PM who doesn't understand the domain and visualize the ultimate business needs of clients beyond the SRS document. A minimum level of first hand knowledge is required if not the expertise. 'General knowledge' is not usable knowledge because most of the time it is acquired by PMs during crisis when the problem is full blown. Its good for time pass only. They do a lot of miss-communication also and then create additional problems for the team. Domain knowledge helps a lot in the early stage of project when most of the challenges are identified and a lot depends on the PM to choose the right options and share the knowledge of his team members as well as the client. Usual manager who entered riding on degrees like MBA and certificates like PMSs etc alone will have no oversight and long term perspective and at the end totally fail in understanding these aspects and give undue importance to usual planning stuff like cost etc to show he is doing his best and only he can understand these things. Fact of the matter is that it doesn't help any way without the understanding of real issues affecting the project success. An ill conceived project will cost you many times more than initially planned no matter how many hours PM (with domain weaknesses) spends on planning and discussions.