5 simple steps to boost your management effectiveness

Where to begin? How to stay focused? What is the best way to remain a key player in your organization?

Rather than get bogged down in “analysis paralysis,” plan to capitalize on specific opportunities that can pay off throughout the year. I suggest starting with the five steps below. They aren’t complicated, difficult or unattainable, and they can help you reflect, focus and act.

Action 1:  Stay on course. Re-visit the annual goals and objectives previously set. Evaluate the positive, neutral and negative actions you and your group accomplished and strategize how you can continue to build on them. You’ve worked hard for these results. Now keep the momentum going.

Action 2:  Acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly. No organization, work group or individual is perfect. Real life includes mistakes and challenges. Claim them and use them as opportunities for advancement and change. Don’t waste time on unproductive blame or defensiveness. Instead, investigate underlying causes, examine alternative options and work toward appropriate solutions.

Action 3:  Work smarter, not harder. Be open to technology, new ideas, information and actions that allow you to most effectively complete your responsibilities. We are all busy and juggling competing deadlines. Efficient time and project management is one key to success.

Action 4:  Rally around a common theme. When I was a training program manager, our work group’s theme was “100% Committed to Training.” We were PROUD of what we did and wanted to share our pride and enthusiasm for training with every other department employee. The guiding theme for every decision we made and every action we took was this commitment. The result was a high level of programming and employee satisfaction.

Action 5:  Be a mentor. A key management responsibility is succession planning for your position and your employees. Prepare your employees to be promoted into the positions they aspire to, including yours. Share critical information, provide challenging assignments and reward accomplishments.

You’ve spent valuable time evaluating how you can improve your individual and group performance. Now, act.

Stuart Karasik spent most of his career in the human resources/personnel arena. He has a Ph.D. in education, a master’s degree in biology, and was the training program manager for the City of San Diego.