Time management or lack thereof, is a frequent complaint that many managers have of their team members. These managers frequently say things like “they don’t complete their work on time”, or “they always wait until it nearly becomes a crisis to get things finished”. The manager often throws around words like lazy and procrastinator when describing their people.

What I find, in many cases, is not a situation where time is not well managed. Occasionally, I do see a case of deliberate procrastination or lazy work ethic. But this is the general exception and not the rule. Rather, most times I find that priorities are not clearly understood. In fact, many managers create ADT [Attention Deficient Trait] characteristics in the team members.

Some managers believe that they must be a ruthless manager. These ruthless managers operate with a theory X [Douglas McGregor] management philosophy. They use an extrinsic [carrot and sticks] approach to getting others to do their bidding. These ruthless managers believe that anything else would be wreckless; and would mean allowing employees to do whatever they want. This would result in failure.

Allowing employees, who may not have the company’s best interest in mind; to do whatever they want would be wreckless. Even the best intentioned employees, who may not know what’s best for the company, can make poor choices if left on their own. Being wreckless also results in failure.

That’s why the better choice for managers to use when leading others is rigorous. Rigorous involves having clear goals, objectives, and boundaries. And rigorous management ensures that these are all clearly and thoroughly communicated. Rigorous management allows for true commitment and knowledgeable empowerment from dedicated employees.

Keys to Successful Performance Management

Clarity: an important element is clarity. Managers need employees to be the best at what matters most. Employees need to understand exactly what is most important. Lack of clarity around goals/priorities and roles/responsibilities are common dysfunctions. Mixed messages around priorities is a common cause for failure.

A frequent conversation with managers recently is that of dealing with change. There is a great deal of frustration among organizational leaders, and money wasted by these organizations when implementing good, well-meaning change. Yet it seems that even when the change is clearly beneficial – like keeping employees safer – there is still a significant force of resistance to accepting and implementing the new changes.

Rhetorical question: Why would someone refuse to follow rules that will keep them safer?

What we know about change is that somebody will resist it.

~Mark McCatty