This question and answer series of articles provides scenarios for business owners to find answers to business frustrations. Today we discuss how to hire a manager.
Q: What characteristics should I look for when hiring a manager? So far I have had two who have not worked out and I’m gun shy about hiring another.
Michael Gerber, author of the best selling small business book, The E-Myth Revisited, believes there aren’t any bad managers; only untrained managers, unmanaged managers, managers operating without a management system or managers expected to produce miracles without the right perspective and without the right tools and training.
Sounds a bit harsh maybe, but it holds a great deal of truth. Appointing someone as manager and leaving them to own devices is abdication. If you can apply any of the above scenarios to your previous managers, put some thought into what actually was missing.
Before you work out the ‘who’, decide on the why and the what, then the who and the how. Why do you want a manager? To take over from you? To free you up so you can … Do more strategic work? Move away from the business? Spend more time selling? Hopefully it’s one of the first two. If it’s the third, your time might be better spent training someone else to sell the way you do.
What exactly do you want them to do and what are your expectations? What do you have in place to support them achieving the results you expect? Do you have a bigger picture strategy for your business you can lay out for them so they can help you drive the business in that direction? Do you have systems in place that set out the way you play the game at your place?
When you have all that sussed, work out the who. What sort of person will perform this position? And perhaps more importantly, do they have values around work, people and service that match yours?
Now think about the how. How do you want them to do what they have to do as a manager of your business? Have you considered or even documented how things are done in your company, or if they’re not being done right now – how you want them done?
Set out to have a good, trained, managed manager, operating with the right tools and systems.
Watch for Part Thirty-Five of the Q & A series…coming next week!
Until next time…
P.S. Learn more about working ON your business–talk to the coach! Click here to connect with me!