The Art of Management: Learn to manage yourself before managing others
Managing is something most people don’t think much about while starting a company. We are usually enamored by an idea or a business opportunity and are so focused on succeeding that we don’t take the time to learn the means to get there. Now that I’ve run a company for over a year, I’ve come to a few realizations:
- One, ideas don’t add as much value to a company as processes and structures do.
- Two, your goal as a manager is to effectively squeeze the most out of the 24-hours you get.
- Three, good managers can only enforce discipline if they are effective and efficient themselves.
If I were to start again from day one, the first thing I would do is probably to have a look at my own schedule and see how many things I can optimize to get the most out of my day before I even start thinking about the rest of the team, because your actions percolate to everyone else. At the end of the day, if you don’t follow what you preach, it’s hard for people to take you seriously.
For effective management and delegation, you’ll have to maximize the time and focus spent on each task by managing your time and energy properly.
The ways I’ve found to do this are:
Planning your day
Don’t go through your day by just doing whatever comes up along the way. As a founder, you’ll probably have an infinite number of things you want to look over or work on. However, there will always be too many things to keep up with and it will come at the cost of you not getting anywhere with your own duties to the company. Avoid this by setting goals for each day and only taking up other things within the company unless you are absolutely needed or the task is way too important. Everything else you need to follow up on can be done through effective communication and documentation.
Prioritizing your tasks
Setting goals is one of the pillars of productivity. If you don’t have an effective larger goal you’re working towards, you may feel like you’re working a gazillion hours a day but aren’t getting anywhere. Have a larger goal for yourself and spend at least two to three hours a day working on tasks that directly contribute to them, and use the rest of the day for menial stuff that doesn’t.
Whenever a new task comes up, if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it immediately. Otherwise, add it to your to-do list and set a deadline. Review these tasks at the end of each day and use them to effectively plan the next.
Blocking your time
Divide your tasks up and allocate “blocks” of time each day where you only focus on that one task before moving on to anything else. There is a lot of energy lost when you move your attention from one task to another, i.e, context-switching. If you let everything that’s happening within the company split your attention, you’ll feel mentally taxed and extremely unfocused. Don’t let your mind waver with the wind.
Reducing the number of meetings you take up
Only call for a meeting when you have to, and be okay with walking out on meetings that you no longer need to be involved in. Having too much information is as good as having no information — and you’ll find it much harder to make a decision if you keep collecting opinions. Also, whenever something comes up that you need to talk to someone about, don’t call them immediately (unless it’s extremely important). Put in on an “agenda” list instead, and cover everything under the agenda with that person or department the next time you meet them. Calling for every little thing is extremely inefficient and will waste a lot of your time.
Delegating more work
Trust plays a huge factor when it comes to being effective in a company, and if you don’t trust the people you work with to get the job done, you need to hire better people. Look at your schedule and identify the tasks you can automate or delegate to someone else. It helps if you maintain documentation on what the task entails and everything the person who’s replacing you needs to know, which cuts down on the amount of time you spend training the person before they take over. If you get to the point where you aren’t able to block time effectively, you’ll need to start delegating more work and hiring more people.
These things can take a while to get used to, and they will need active effort and mindfulness to become a habit. The prime philosophy I live off of is that output matters more than the time you put in, and these tips have helped me get more things done in the same amount of time. Once you have this in check, you are ready to start managing your team.
