Quiz–Rate Your Management

In our company, it’s fairly common for middle managers to provide 3-4 expected focus areas each week which motivate their direct supports.

Workers are familiar with consistent weekly expectations.

More often than not, our organization catches mistakes in quality, late deliverables or cost overruns the first or second time.

More often than not, our organization’s unwritten rules support change, initiative and feedback.

When employees arrive, they have an exact way to know what work they have to do that day.

Abraham Lincoln reportedly said, “Give me six hours to cut down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening my axe.” My organization routinely spends at least one third, if not more, of their time on planning.

Our company spends time challenging the plan to make sure the plan lays out the process steps in an accurate way that will achieve the goal on budget, with quality and in a timely manner.

On our particularly complicated work projects, most of the workers are aware of the significance when major milestones are met and what they mean.

At least once a month, each manager has 5 -7 pieces of quantitative information to funnel to upper management. This information accurately highlights to top management the 5 things they need to know to report to stakeholders and make strategic decisions.

Executives aren’t reactive, but act on the right things at critical times to ensure significant issues are addressed.

The workers I know are comfortable bringing timely quantitative bad news to the supervisor to highlight what occurred and the trend.

Workers are aware within a few days to a week of an issue arising and the trend.

Managers review a simple weekly spreadsheet of their department’s output and can tell where the problems are right away.

Middle-managers don’t provide massive amounts of detailed information to top management—they provide what is needed.

My manager knows exactly what to look for and is at my work center within a few days of the problem.

Key decision makers have the data needed for the most important decisions facing the organization.

My subordinates give me information the way I like it, customized for the way I think.

When my subordinate brings me the weekly report, she/he has included everything I need for control.

My direct reports give me factual good and bad news. They will delve into the problem, potential solutions and reveal where a failure may have occurred.

Last time we were late on a deadline, my direct-report told me within 3-7 days of the incident. It took 1-2 re-occurrences, but after that, we changed our process so that the same thing wouldn’t happen again.

A structured approach to management is commonplace in our organization.

Review meetings are very clearly defined in our company, happen on a routine basis, and at the minimum, occur once a month.

Crises have decreased as our organization and team learns from past efforts.

I have learned to manage my e-mail, walk-in appointments and phone calls so they don’t take over my day.

The executive can look at our database (or other product), at any time, to see the OVERALL cost, schedule, performance and status on top issues that affect the company image and ability to meet customer needs.

We have a learning organization that does not repeat the same things again and again.

Workers throughout our organization, for the most part, are confident about the progress we are making in the service (or product) we provide to our customer.

We are expanding our mission set all the time because we are riding a wave of multiple successes.

Although there is some level of fear in any organization, the steps we have taken the past few years have reinforced trust and our core values.

The data shows that we fixed a problem that yielded two more. However, we are tracking those with a precise, recurring method as well…so we are making progress!