The Manager Framework
Topics
Active Management Categories
If you were to divide a typical day (averaged over several weeks) into time, the activities of a manager would fall roughly into the categories below:
Active Management
- Actively monitoring or coaching staff in order to maintain or improve team morale and performance
- Time spent in meetings that improve customer satisfaction, improve performance and resolve issues which are preventing team members from performing
- Time spent planning to ensure tasks and activities both for yourself, your team and individuals are effective and aligned with business goals
- Time spent in effectively analysing data and reports to pro-actively drive performance
Passive Management
- Effectively dealing with queries and requests that are instigated by team members
Direct Work
- Carrying out work that is also carried out by the team e.g. progressing an order, taking calls, dealing with a customer. This would usually be because of high work volumes or the low skill of a team member who requires further training
Administration
- Carrying out administrative duties, completing paper work or reports that do not directly relate to improving team performance or improving customer service
- Responding to emails which do not directly relate to improving team performance or improving customer service
Ineffective Work or Lost Time
- Time spent on activities not having a direct impact on the team or their performance
- Attending ineffective meetings
- Carrying out re-work due to errors, or double entry of data
- System down-time
- Any activity which has a negative impact on team morale/performance which could have been avoided with improved contingency planning
Regularly reviewing and assessing exactly how much time you are spending in each category allows you to critically evaluate how you are spending your time so that you can adjust your framework to focus on the activities that help you to become more effective.