I trust you enjoyed a nice Christmas day doing whatever makes you happy with people that are special to you.

It’s Boxing Day, so I trust you’ll enjoy today as well.

“I want to be micromanaged”, said no-one ever.

This week I conducted some recruitment interviews for a client.

One of the questions I ask is, “How do you like to be managed?”

The answer to that gives us a clue as to how to work with them rather than taking 6 months to work it out during probation.

In all the interviews I’ve conducted, not one person has ever said, “I want to be micromanaged”.

In fact, most start with “I don’t want to be micromanaged”.

So how do you manage and supervise to give yourself a level of comfort that your people know what they have to do and are doing it correctly?

The answer is a special type of job description known as Key Performance Indicators and Key Behaviour Indicators. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to this in my book, “The Loyal Lieutenant: How The Second-in-Command Brings the CEO’s Vision to Life”.

People want to know what they have to do, to what standard so it’s your responsibility to make it clear for them.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) describe the outcome for the role. Why is the role important? For example, one KPI for a property manager could be “a maximum of 2% of tenants in arrears”.

Key Behaviour Indicators (KBI’s) are the tasks the employee does to achieve the outcome, including the standard to be met. For example, “Generate a Weekly Arrears Report”. The employee will either do it or not. One advantage of using KPIs and KBIs is that you get to set the standard. If you want weekly, then it’s weekly. Another advantage is that it is measurable. They either do or do not generate the report weekly. This takes away any subjectivity for you. Performance is based on competency.

If the report is not generated weekly, look for the reason. Is there a system problem that caused them not to do the report? Are they unable or unwilling? If unable, do they need more training?

If they know what to do and they know how to do it (ie. you have trained them) and there is no system problem, then it’s a case of unwilling.

In my experience, KPIs and KBIs are much better than the generic job descriptions that state responsibilities because job descriptions don’t generally include the specific measure, e.g. responsible to ensure tenant payments are made on time.

KPIs and KBIs also ensure you revert back to your policies and procedures by including something like, “Follow the company policies and procedures to complete the below” before listing the KBI’s.

This way you can change the way you do things (your procedures) without having to update the KPI/KBI. It simply means, in this example, the employee is using a different procedure or app to  generate the weekly arrears report.

That’s how you can make it easy for yourself to supervise and manage without micromanaging whilst making it absolutely crystal clear what the employee is expected to do, to what standard.

Let me know what you think.

Reach out if you’d like more information or some help to prepare your own KPIs and KBIs.

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Go to https://shirleydalton.com/Weekly-Thoughts.

Many many years ago, Ross and I went to the bank with my father to help him consolidate his accounts.

He had been dealing with the same bank manager for years and to our surprise, the bank manager had left and been replaced by a young woman.

Listening to the way she spoke to the staff and the way she confidently advised us that she would get the team to do the tasks because she was a “manager”, led me to think she hadn’t had a lot of leadership training.

Sadly, this situation is quite common.

Many people aspire to leadership and management positions but it’s not until they get into the roles that they realise that there is a lot more responsibility required before they reap the rewards.

As the leader you now have to step up. Your team are watching. They want a role model.

You can be friendly, you can’t be their friend. Why not? Because it’s challenging to go out and socialise over the weekend and then have to come in and hold your friend accountable for poor performance on Monday.

The rewards are there, however they are not free.  There is a cost and that cost is responsibility.

Your team need your support. They want your attention. They want feedback. They want training. They want smooth operations.

Leadership is about doing the right things and management is about doing things right. Leadership and management are not mutually exclusive.

Whilst beginning leaders and managers often perceive they are going to have the freedom and autonomy to come and go as they please, in reality, they end up working longer to make sure everything and everyone is working well.

And let’s not forget the increase in pay.  This too is appealing to new leaders and managers. I remember when I was promoted to COO at Kip McGrath Education Centres and became the most senior non family executive, Kip said to me, “That’s why you get paid the big bucks. If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

Being a leader and a manager is not easy.

It requires different skills to technical skills.  You are reliant on your people to do the work and they may have different values and beliefs to you.  They get sick. They go on holidays. You need to know how to deal with the “people issues”.

You need to know how to have those conversations – to hold people accountable, to give them feedback, to encourage when they lose confidence, to listen when they need to be heard.

These are known as “soft skills” but there is nothing soft about these skills.  Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO since 2014 says that “the soft skills are the hardest skills to master”.

If you’re a leader or manager, I expect you’ve experienced most, if not all of the above.

If you’re new to leading and managing, take heart, you’re on a journey of self-discovery and personal and professional development.

Know that it is possible to take on the responsibility and enjoy the rewards. It might just be a bit bumpy at the start.

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Go to https://shirleydalton.com/Weekly-Thoughts.

I was showing a client what can be done with AI.

I showed him how easy it is now, compared to 20 years ago when I first started my business helping business owners streamline their operations.

Twenty years ago, it would take me 3-4 hours offsite to draft procedures for every hour I spent onsite.

These days with the help of AI, I can get a draft procedure is less than 15 minutes.

That saves me and the client.

A few days later he came back to me and asked if “that thing” I showed him could analyse data.

“Let’s find out.”

We trialled a pdf which didn’t work so well.

We trialled a single tab from an excel spreadsheet and gave it specific instructions for what we wanted analysed, including suggestions for categories of expenses plus a total for the number of items and the amount spent.

Amazingly, we had all the information we wanted within about 30 minutes of trial and error.

What we found in 30 minutes could save hours and hours of painstaking data analysis, not to mention eye strain.

We were both amazed and thrilled and excited at what we could do.

He almost skipped out the door as he headed home.

If you’re not using AI you’re going to get left behind.

If you’re not using AI, your competitors are—and they’re delivering better outcomes, faster, at a sharper price. And no, AI won’t make you dumber. It makes you more strategic and creative because it rewards better questions.

We didn’t know if what we wanted could be done. We took the attitude of playing with it.

Here’s your challenge for this week:

Identify one thing you could potentially get AI to do for you and play with it. Have fun.

• It could be data analysis.
• It could be writing copy for a Facebook ad.
• It could be creating a procedure.
• It could be as simple as using a recording and transcription service such as Otter.ai or screen capture your procedures using Loom.com

You might be surprised at how much help you can get and how much smarter you can become.

Let me know what you find.

P.S.  Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thought delivered directly to their inbox.

Go to https://shirleydalton.com/Weekly-Thoughts.