Managing your people

Managing people is a daunting task and most of the time the job itself is not really that tough but people management is what the company pays a top manager for!

Most of the smaller companies will judge you by the results that you deliver, regardless of your ways of getting things done. But for reputable multinational companies, to function as a manager per se in there, you are also judged by how well you perform in the area of employees' satisfaction. This aspect is evaluated hand in hand with the actual result achievable in the work assigned to you. It is easy to rule with an iron fist and get quick and short term results but before long the organization will suffer the loss of employees and subordinates. I had learnt this concept of "preferred employer"management from HP, which I worked there 2 years and it was an eye opener that took me to a different level, and also gained substantial people management experience which is beneficial for my working career later on.

HP employs a lot of graduates from top universities both local and overseas with first class honors of academic excellence. The bulk of the executives are highly qualified professionals, and therefore require a more comprehensive and employee-centered kind of management approach to handle them. It was difficult for managers recruited from other companies of different culture to grasp the concept; very often when you thought you had done a good job but the boss told you that you miss out the human aspect and the subordinates did not like your style of doing things. They ranked your management skill  by giving a lousy score in their satisfacion survey carried out every year. HP expects you to optimize employees' satisfaction and work performance, and that is really not easy and it is almost an art! After working in the corporate world for many years, if one could ever manage to juggle the magic of managing 70% of the people favor you as their superior while there are still 30% do not like you for no obvious reasons, this is already acceptable.

When I come to manage the present factory, a totally different and extreme situation exists here! Most of the executives wanted to become nice guys, recommending good grades for year end performance evaluation practically for everyone of their subordinates despite they are always being late for work, sloppy workmanship, inefficient or even insubordination at times,  and you name it.  It is probably a "nice guys" culture here,  in which things only get done at their own pace. They are not exposed so much to the kind of goals driven and mean operations in the very competitive electronic industry environment which I used to come from!

An organization has to distribute its allocated incentives such as bonuses, raise in grades etc based on merits in the form of a normal distribution curve. With everyone falling onto the top end of the curve, how could a fair distribution of incentives or performance evaluation could be carried out? It is an easy operation with simple expectation here, therefore an executive needs not work extra hard to pass the grade.  Even with this low expectation an executive needs not choose to be a mediocre. One has to realize the fact that inefficient subordinates will reflect on you and actually hamper your career growth in the eyes of the management if you choose to be good guys that are slack in managing your staff, which implies a typical characteristic of weak leadership that could not be entrusted with more important and urgent task!

A company is not a charitable organization that pays every month and also to give automatic increment in salary after every year of service. Employees need to do the basic task that they are expected to do for the company and the basic task expectation will change every year after you get your raise in salary. As superiors of your staff, we have to make clear to them our expectation and company objectives. Other than that, one has the added responsibility to ensure the subordinates under you are well trained to carry out the task assigned. It is also our social responsibility for these young employees to be eventually well equipped with the knowledge, know-how and experience so that they could survive in any other organization when one day they step out of the door of the company.  Their performance within or without the company is reflective of how good you are as their boss. I would be extremely proud if any one of my subordinates quits the job because he or she is well trained and competent enough to become a GM of another organization.

Manage your people well because they are the greatest asset of the company and if you have good employees working for you then your job and life as manager will be made much easier for sure!